Servitude:
As you might know, a semi-decent salary in India (& Pakistan) can give one the cushy luxury that one could only dream of in the States. Most people in the middle to upper-class range here will thus have a servant/cook, maid, and driver. These workers get paid a monthly salary and depending on whether they have their own family to care for, they might also sleep at their bosses’ home. One can only hope that they are treated with the decency any human being deserves.
For someone like myself (and you as well), who has lived on his own for a few years and likes to independently take care of most things- this type of servitude is difficult to receive. To have another person open the door, turn on the light switch, and pick up your dishes just seems a bit ridiculous. And does this servant despise these tedious tasks or does he/she feel they are not doing their job diligently if I, for example, want to pick up my dish and rinse it? I am struggling a bit with this question because I think it is the latter. When telling people around here that I am having some trouble in allowing someone else to do my daily chores, they answer with “You’ll get used to it.” Forget that. I don’t want to get used to it. It almost seems like the faulty argument that gets used to justify sweatshops like Nike’s in Indonesia- “Well, isn’t it true that Nike provides them with a better job than they could get otherwise.” “Yeeeeah, but it’s still not right ya jackass!” There is a better counter, but that one is more fun.
Fortunately, this servitude dilemma is different. It is usually way more positive than any sort of sweatshop condition . If someone works for you in your home and you pay them with money, food, and shelter- how can this be terrible? My Nani-ma here in Karachi likes to give them something more. Each Muslim is supposed to go on HAJ (the pilgrimage to Mecca) sometime in their lifetime, if they can afford it. I’m sure that with the unemployment and poverty that plagues the middle east, many people cannot fulfill this obligation. My Nani-ma has paid for 5 people to go on HAJ…the young man who is currently trekking to Mecca has been paid to go for two months. I think that’s pretty cool.
So I am trying to realize that having servants in this part of the world is okay, but I will stilltry to open the door and turn off the light myself.
Arranged marriages:
My grandparents who live in Calcutta have been married for over 60 years now. But the fact that my grandfather had a mistress for over half of those years, has probably caused me to look at arranged marriages with great skepticism. Most people in the western world also look upon that process as being incredibly flawed and outrageous. I mean “Where’s the love!?” It does seem like such a paradox when you see the storyline of almost every Bollywood film.
Coming to India in the twenty-first century, I thought that this old tradition had been chucked out the window (along with the garbage that everyone throws out their window). This was until an Aunt spoke of her daughter.
“I am trying to arrange something for her. She is twenty-five now and it’s high time. We have three gentlemen who will coming to meet her in February. One from Toronto, one from San Francisco, and another from the UK. I hope that your parents will be able to come out next year for the wedding.”
The last line was what gave me the big shock. Whaaaaaaat?!? How can you expect that out of three fellas, one is the match for the rest of your daughter’s lifetime? How can you be so sure that the sparks are going to fly and wedding bells are gonna be chimed in 2006? I still feel this is way, but I have since understood a tad bit of how an arranged marriage might work. Mr Phillip, the Serbian, who is obsessed with Parsis, (the community of Zoroastrians) gave me some insight. “The parents are giving the daughter a chance to find someone. If she doesn’t, which she hasn’t, then they will arrange something. They feel 25 is way past the age for a girl to be married. The arrangement won’t feel arranged. It’s like a friend setting you and another friend up for a date and hitting it off. People can find ways to make it spark if they try.” Alright, I’ll try to understand. Any thoughts?
I am a feminist. I have no problems with arranged marriages between adults if they both agree to it. I think many times love comes with time, and this parterner becomes someone you learn to trust and who takes care of you as much as you take care of them.
You pegged what is consistently most difficult for me while traveling - getting used to having someone serve me. In Western culture, there is something unjust and straight up wrong about having someone whose sole job is to clean up after you, feed you, look after you. But in much of the world, it’s just part of the division of labor and no different than a janitor cleaning up an office building or a stewardess pouring you soda on a flight.
After my study abroad in Kathmandu, we took a trek through the Himalaya and as part of the program, they had hired porters to carry the bags/equipment of the students. This is pretty standard procedure and I’d say about half of the trekkers in Nepal hire Sherpas as guides and porters to carry gear. But I just couldn’t get used to the idea of someone carrying my 60 pound pack while I hiked around with a water bottle and camera.
So I told the head Sherpa that I’d be carrying my own gear and he told me I was effectively taking a job away from someone who needed to put food on the table for his family.
It’s a dilemma I’ve never been able to quite work out and when staying with guests in another country I almost always clean my own room, do my own laundry, and wash as many dishes as I can get away with even if it’s me imposing my own culture on them.
the caste system has ensured there will always exist a servile class, thus the necessity of the caste system. if you educate and treat equally these Untouchables, who’s going to wash your dishes? granted in a country with a population of 45 billion or whatever the number is, any chance of employment is good. see how perfectly the system worked out? keep the dalits down until the country is so poor and overcrowded they’ll be begging to sweep your floors! now the guilt is off your back because these people are coming to you voluntarily. brilliant!
as far as arranged marriages go, most of the females involved are virgins. its easy to “be in love” with the only man youve ever had sex with, whether he was a stranger or a friend before you got married. once you give it up to him, you naturally want to continue being with him (for a while at least. after the reproductive function has been carried out, its usually just culture and convenience that allow you to put up with his cheating and/or abuse…after all, youre spoiled goods! what man would want you? stick with what you got.) this is why no-sex-before-marriage was so crucial to the success of the marriage. Nowadays, its become so ingrained in the culture that its easy to accept. its perfectly possible that your cousin has “played the field” and gotten a taste of whats out there, yet still does not mind an arranged marraige. marriage in these cultures is seen more as a business transaction than out of romance. got to get your kids married off, so they can give you grandkids, and you can gain esteem within the community. when you put all these factors together, sex, reproduction, finances, and respect, you get one sexy formula for arranged marriage.
moreno, you miss the point, but i have to admit you do it in style.
Any thoughts?
Yes. This is true insanity.
It is absolutely mind boggling to see how many people live their lives in such unnatural ways, and even more so, how they attempt to control others to live like them.
Because of the way we are raised on this planet, the people that we grow up to be are mostly an accumulation of different beliefs put on to us by society, and engraved into our psyche on a conscious or unconscious level. Most of these conditionings are completely “backwards”, unnatural… this is the cause for so much misery on this planet. We have completely lost touch with our true nature. There are so many different aspects to this, but being that love is the glue to existence, I will speak on this matter alone.
How can one arrange love? How can you predict love? Love just is…
Love is completely unpredictable. It is MAD… maybe that’s why people say “Mad Love.”… It is not a business! It is not a contract! It is FREE! It is a flowing…
A free movement. It is bliss, an unpredictable bliss. How can you “arrange” for a state of being which has no boundaries, no presets, no goals. Love is magic.
Not only do I find arranged marriages to be unnatural, but I find all marriages to be unnatural. If you love, why must you make something SO precious a legal contract. Why turn a beautiful rose, into a dead rock? Give it the freedom to grow, to bloom, to become fragrent… does having a piece of paper with your signature on it, guarantee that someone will love you forever? Love is not a tangible phenomena, and yet, because of all of our fears and insecurities, we place all our energy in an attempt to possess it.
This is insane.
People need to wake up!