Few days ago, I went to pick up Yaya from her friend’s house ( mother is my best friend).
This is what I saw.
In the guest bathroom, 5 teenagers ( 3 boys and 2 girls) are sitting in the bathtub packed like sardines in a can. The weather is getting pretty chilly and the kids have created a teenage version of sauna. They jump in to the cold pool and swim for few minutes and run back inside the house and sit in bath tub ( hot water running in full steam !) The girls were wearing bikini and there was a lot of skin contact.
I imagined how my mother would have reacted if she was with me. All hell would have broken loose. If I was in Yaya’s place, Amma would have dragged me out, slapped me a few times and I would have been grounded for eternity, all because I sat semi naked next to two guys.
Sometime ago, a cousin of mine wrote to me to ask if she could stay with me while she writes the Australian medical council exam. she did MD in India and got married to a doctor and is desperate to leave India because her mother in law wouldn’t even let her hold her husband’s hand in public. ( apparently cinema style alla jeevitham)
Why are Indians behaving like this? What will happen if you make a body contact with the opposite sex. It is not like sperm could swim through the skin and impregnate you.
And why can’t a wife hold her husband’s hand in public? What has movies got to do with that?
This has to do with the cultural rules, that you grow up with, define what is accepted norm or not. It is something like, in some African tribes, people eat bush meat, or any meat that you an get your hands on, semi cooked or cooked. Here in developed nations, every one is super vigilant about all kinds of safety on meat cooking and consuming.
For my kids, seeing their mom in bikini, or other people is a normal thing. No one looks at you, when you are semi naked in a pool/beach, the way people look at you in India, even when you are fully clad. In India, cultural norm is to keep girls/women hidden, out of the view. Same is not the case here. However what needs to happen is, “while in Rome, do what romans do”, not the opposite. If I ever told my child, a girl wearing Swim suit is not appropriate, he will look at me, like I came from Mars. People are very comfortable in their skin in west, because that is norm for them.
Joan: My point was more about physical contact. Somehow, Indians still frown up on physical contact between opposite sex and I don’t understand why it is so.
Sarayude “nashta vasanthathin thaptha niswasangal”.
Brings in memories of long ‘kali & kuli’ in river with friends of same age group of 10 to 15, girls clad in petticoat, the thin cotton which turns transparent in the first dip, with touches and more.
Bipin: I wouldn’t think of it as a loss..everything in life is a gain.. the good and the bad… that becomes your memory..woven in to fine tapestry that makes you who you are.