How To Tell Your Aunt She’s Oppressed
Written by Orhan
She’s your father’s second cousin’s wife — or something like that — you’re not sure. She and her husband are the bunch of relatives with similar sounding names you can’t memorize, so you play it safe, call them ‘uncle’ and ‘aunty’. You see this particular uncle and aunty once a year, during Diwali. They are one of the many people who make the annual visit to renew fraying familial bonds, equipped with the latest family gossip and an envelope full of ten crisp hundred-rupee notes.
You shake hands with uncle, you awkwardly hug aunty. He’s dressed in a bright-blue kurta, his potent belly protruding like a mound beneath the fine fabric. She’s dressed in a red sari and is wearing her best earrings and bangles. The fleshy folds of middle-age are barely concealed behind the gold trimmed pallu draped across her chest. He’s diabetic, she’s arthritic.
Every time you meet, aunty always marvels at how much you’ve grown. She’s seen you through all stages of your life — as a bawling toddler, a shy, a gangly-limbed ten-year-old, an obese teenager, and now as a long-haired, condescending college undergraduate. She’s quite fond of you, possibly because you remind her of her son, six years elder to you and now living in the States.
Aunty always leads the conversation. How are you beta? How is college? What are you studying, again? What do you do with an Arts degree? Do you have many girlfriends? You answer in grunts and snorts. You ramble when they ask you about your future — confuse them with detail. It’s okay to ignore her last question. You don’t really want to say, they don’t really want to know.
Eventually, the congregation will split into two, like it always does. Ma and aunty will take the kitchen where they will discuss at length their progeny’s exploits while you sit with Papa and uncle in the living room, zoning in and out of their lively conversation about their respective businesses.
You have dinner with Papa and uncle while Ma and aunty heat the food and fill and refill your plates. The cook zealously makes roti after roti as your uncle dutifully wolfs them down. You don’t like how aunty hovers over your head serving you food but it is very convenient. It took Ma and the cook four hours to prepare the food, twenty minutes to reheat it and serve it on the special china saved for special occasions, and seven minutes for the three of you to wipe your plates clean. Aunty helps Ma clear the table while Papa and uncle go back to the living room.
The conversation now turns to politics, as it always does. The T.V. hums in the background, flashing with the day’s headlines. What starts off as friendly banter becomes a heated argument about the government and everything that is working against it. Uncle loudly proclaims his views on every matter conceivable. Aunty nods and shakes her head at all the right places. Governance, environment, international policy, ethnic conflict, women’s emancipation — uncle preaches and aunty nods. They are a well-oiled machine.
You have to get a word in because gone are the days when you could tune out whenever the adults talk. Now you have an opinion, even if it’s just a sneer to convey your disdain. You challenge uncle at every turn and soon the room is a boiling pot of emotions and garbled facts held together by the thinning fabric of affable smiles Ma and aunty shoot one another every few seconds.
Someone brings up Bollywood and now everyone’s talking about the many men recently knocked down from their high pedestal. Uncle has a lot to say on this matter too. It’s unfair to men, he says. Aunty tries to speak in here. Ma also seems to have something to say. But it’s you; you and uncle and Papa, who undo reels from your mouths as you speak. At some point you blame uncle for being too close-minded, he blames you for being too liberal. Ma blames you for being rude and aunty blames uncle for being too loud. Papa blames the media.
But then aunty speaks. She speaks her mind, she speaks everything she has to all at once, worried she will be interrupted at any moment. While she speaks, you notice how she wrings her hands while she speaks. She speaks in short bursts which leaves her breathless every couple sentences. She keeps looking over to uncle. You’re having trouble paying attention to what she’s saying. She falters and he picks up right then. The conversation is back to where he’d left it. Aunty is nodding again.
You’re seized by the urge to confront uncle: This is misogyny, you’re a patriarch, women need to be emancipated. Aunty needs to be emancipated. The young male savior that you are, you want to shake aunty and tell her to wake up, stop taking this silly man’s nonsense day in and day out. Move to a big city. Stop wasting time at home. Go back to college, get a good job for yourself.
Divorce your husband. Find someone who actually cares about you.
But that’s not how things work, right? Aunty doesn’t need to be emancipated. She’s fine. She has a home, a husband, a son who’s well settled and soon to be married himself. She has enough savings for her retirement. She has her friends whom she visits the mandir with, goes shopping with. Uncle may be rude and a little overbearing, but he’s a good man. They don’t talk much, but that’s fine. They get along just fine. They have been the past thirty years of their lives. You keep saying there’s a problem, but no one other than you can tell what it is.
Maybe it’s your liberal education that’s at fault. You and your verbose ideas that will change the world. What do you know about family? About marriage? These things are not easy, but that’s just how it’s supposed to be. It’s all fine in theory, but when you really think about it, where is it going it get you? Family is forever. You finish college in less than a year.
The conversation soon turns to matters benign and then it’s time to leave. Uncle has already forgotten your little spat with him, although he’ll keep saying how you talk a lot. Aunty will ruffle your hair. He’s so grown up, she’ll say to Ma. Papa will see them off and that’s that. Silence.
So yes, you won that argument, of course, you did. You have all this knowledge backing you. If only they knew where you’re coming from.
But at the back of your mind, you know: you won the argument, but you lost the cause. You changed absolutely NOTHING.
It’s going to be a while before you realise you never really understood the cause.
That will be day One of real progress.
