Why is a visit to a gynecologist like appearing before the Roman Council of Elders?
19 May 2012 4 Comments
I never thought there could be a comparison until I was rushed to a hospital recently for a “ladies’ problem”. Who better to solve a ladies’ problem than a lady doctor? Such conclusions drawn, I was rushed to a hospital run by one of these veritable lady doctors. I have never understood what is exactly implied by this term: the sex of the doctor or that she’s a specialist in “ladies’ problems”? Anyway, I was promised an appointment with a doctor with both these much-desired virtues — female and a qualified gynecologist.
On reaching the hospital, I had to first go through a process: this involved giving all my details to the nurse at the counter, who fed it into a computer. These details included my name, age, my marital status and finally complaint. Now apparently, the last two answers I gave didn’t match.”Unmarried” and “missed period” couldn’t be attributed to one person. The nurse raised her eyebrow. One of the first of the many raised eyebrows that day.
The second step of the process involved repeating my details and the exact nature of my complaint to a lady doctor. I did. She wrote it all down. If I had failed to make the connection when the nurse raised her eyebrow, this doctor made sure I didn’t miss the point. There was much mulling over dates, my missed period and my current condition of excessive bleeding and cramping. And she repeating, “But you’re unmarried?” She disappeared and I went back to the waiting room. The process being completed, I was informed that I was now ready to meet the “Doctor Amma.” The maternal label, a tribute to her seniority.
Doctor Amma turned out to be not one doctor. There was one bespectacled lady, and a whole panel of other women. Five well dressed gynecologists poring over my file. They gave me knowing looks. Doctor Amma repeated all my details back to me, I nodded back at her in confirmation and finally, she looked over her glasses, and the same refrain, “But you’re unmarried.” It wasn’t a question or a statement anymore, it was a judgment. The sound of the gavel was missing. She told one of the panel members to take me into another room where an examination table lay waiting for me.
I lay down on the table, waiting for some fingers to come prodding. None came. More questions, “What does your father do?” “What are you doing in Hyderabad?” “Why did you quit your job to become a student again?” “Why Hyderabad?” “Why so far away from home?” “But your father’s a doctor, why do you want to study Humanities?” Finally, “I know your father. He was an ENT professor.”
I covered my exposed stomach, now recovering from the cramps which had gone completely unaddressed, and went back to the panel. There was one more question to be asked. It was obvious what it would be. Her Highness Doctor Amma finally said it. “Do you think you are pregnant?” I had been bleeding for four days, a fact I’d repeated over and over again. My aunt, who had accompanied me, was asked to come to the room, and the question was asked. I replied “No.”
Sigh of relief from the panel.
The doctor who’d asked me questions. “I know her father. She can’t be like that.” “See, nowadays, girls don’t wait until they’re married.” “I knew I didn’t have to ask you, but we have to ask as a matter of routine.” More muttering from the panel.
Pen scribbling on a pad. A prescription for painkillers. Thank god there was no other word starting from “P” involved. A last retort, “We won’t conduct a physical on her because she’s unmarried.”
I returned home a virgin.
Of burqa bans, secularism and other things…
29 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
in Uncategorized Tags: access to education, equal access, equality, Mangalore pub attacks, secularism, St. Aloysius, St. Aloysius burqa ban
My old school, St. Aloysius College, an institution that loomed large over both my home and hometown, standing high on Eidgah Hill, has just banned the burqa in classrooms, sparking off debate in the entire country about the merits and de-merits of this ban. For me, however, it seems to be the final nail in the coffin of the naive view that I grew up up in a city that was home to many languages and communities that it treated with respect. Ten years ago, I would say “melting pot,” “salad bowl” or “unity and diversity” to describe Mangalore… but these terms no longer apply, not even in the superficial way that they view and describe society.
I have come far from understanding society simply as an appetizer or metallurgical process. I’m writing to register my chagrin; I can no longer take it. I’m tired of people who cannot use the word secularism, without ever pre-fixing it with pseudo. I’m tired of being made to carry the burden of listening to arguments that insist that there are forceful conversions and Love jihads. I’m tired of claims that the Mangalore Pub attacks was a Congress conspiracy; I don’t care how much Sonia Gandhi paid for the video. I’m tired this view that the people are just part of a mass, without any agency, without hearts and minds of their own. I’m tired of those who do not understand that irrespective of Sonia Gandhi, women were made to bear the brunt of politics based on religions. I don’t buy these arguments. Period.
Just like I don’t buy arguments about burqas interfering in classroom interactions. Such a view only takes into account a very limited framework that consist of no one else but the teacher and the student. I think we need to take a reality check: students are people, they come from different socio-economic backgrounds, different religious and cultural traditions. They do not appear out of thin air. Each of them are subject to the limitations of their backgrounds. An education might be their key to social mobility, liberty, equality. An educational institute has to take this into consideration when making rules; they simply can’t make rules keeping only the classroom context in mind. I would say a minority institution like St. Aloysius would have to exhibit better concern for other Minority groups. After all, the right to establish minority educational institutions was given so that Minorities could enjoy their rights even in a society that is dominated by another religion.
And to the second college that has also banned the burqa by not including it in their description of their school/college uniform, does uniform mean the end of all difference? Would that college ban a bindi for example because it’s not specified in the uniform, or make it compulsory for everyone to wear one? Certainly not. The aim of all educational institutions should be making education accessible to all, not throw up obstacles in the way of that access. A uniform is only meant to level socio-economic difference; not to hurt the sentiments of people who might make informed choices on grounds of belief of their faith.
Institutions — educational, religious, social — should take cognisance of the fact that secularism is an ideal of this country. It’s not pseudo in all its forms and avatars. It enables different peoples to access equally; in cases where social heirarchies and economic conditions do not enable equal access, it gives a one up to them.
Institutions cannot make decisions on the behalf of people. It’s finally time to realise that people make choices, yes, really. They’re not always forced. And one statement to all those who will accuse me pseudo-secularism at the end of this post, women in love with Muslim men convert because there’s no question of Hinduism allowing the conversion of a Muslim man. In Islam, there’s at least the promise of horizontal comradeship, of being equals, brothers, not the hierarchised format of the Hindus, who will say their religion and caste are decided by birth. And who converts? People of the “lower castes.” When have they had access to education? Certainly not when they were in the Hindu fold, or rather when they were forced to be the fifth varna, forced out of the Hindu fold.
And finally, one statement that I want to underline over and over again, women can think independently and take decisions for themselves. Yes, really.
I stir myself i…
20 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
I stir myself into a solution,
Losing myself in a vortex of emotion,
But then you come and stand
At the edge of my reason
and I suspend into disbelief.
In this clay st…
19 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
In this clay strip I call home,
there are no welcoming arms,
only a licking sea –
that with all its incessant rewinds
can’t add one more drop
to the ocean inside me.
Three types of …
13 Mar 2012 1 Comment
Three types of moisturizer –
face, body and cracked heels
Nothing for the brokenness
I wrap around me.
Cherry, berry, sunflower balm –
Dry and chapped lips
Nothing for the broken kisses
that haunt my lips.
Short skirts, lacy bras,
Long legs, shapely breasts
Nothing for the broken desire there.
In this tug of …
13 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
In this tug of war
of making love, not war,
I didn’t expect to slip
and fall on shards
so broken.
I didn’t think
I could make love
so hopelessly
when so hopelessly
bound.
No BDSM this.
To be a fly on …
12 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
To be a fly on the wall –
my death wish,
It has come too soon.
Upside-down
23 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
If fruit were root, and root were tree,
And I’m both root and fruit because
the root came from me,
do I have to stand upside down?
In thickening shoot, and glorious burst,
From thickening shoot
If I spit out fruit, maybe flower first,
Will fruit turn into root,and still be me?
Deepti
22 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
Deepti, the one of light,
remember the light of your name,
if thought ever crawls to darkness.
Increasing age is not a sign of the burning out,
but fuel to burn brighter. We grow thick
at the waistlines, grey in the hair,
not with junk-food and coffee stains,
but the light of these eyes.
How much we see,
(And don’t see, and don’t want to see).
Light is who you are. Light is what we see.
You see
what light wants to show. The light, climbing over
our nights, sees all. It stains the darkness,
darkness remains a memory.
Where’s the coffee stain?
Light is everything. You see light
and you see darkness
no more. No night.
Wishing you all that your name promises!
Happy birthday!
Recent Comments