In the little country

Ah! There it is! The great abyss of deprivation and suffering. The illiterate, undernourished, diseased, votebank tenaciously hanging on to futile promises repeated endlessly every election. Poverty. Glamour-ised by Bollywood, wooed by politicians, lured by the city…

In the mist of all this lived the woman. She was daughter, sister, wife, mother and, for the past 30 years, she looked after her ailing husband. He suffered from TB. But all this is not important. The fact that she lived in the small country is. The big country went about its routine business of forex transactions, international summits and marched to greet the dawn of the 21st century. The little country eked its precarious, parochial existence mired in complacency born of karma and advocated by tradition.

"The role of a woman is to be submissive to the man" Manusmriti. The code of Manu. She knew the laws well. "In childhood, a woman should be under her father’s dominion. In adulthood, under her husband’s and later her son’s." Even her values centred around her gender. They were purity, servility and fidelity. Possible harbingers to her (future) claim to fame.

On November 18 she burned on her husband’s funeral pyre. A suicide is an act of willful death. Her’s was shielded by religious sanctimony.

The big country expressed its shock and disgust. It made all the appropriate noises, questioning female emancipation, morality, purity… But it balanced this with jubilation over Cherie Blair’s blossoming motherhood scion of the 21st century woman, albeit in a faraway country. The little countryside reverberated with pious chants of Rani Sati and Sati Mata.

Whatever the reasons love for an ailing husband, or escape from a life of restraint, taboos and sacrifice the trickle-down effects of changes in the big country must have at least forced her to ponder on her drastic and painful decision. Why not poison? It is less painful. What was it then? Karma? Manu-smriti? Gender?

This was also where the big country and the little country coalesced into a whole. Where gender specific issues still link the urban and the rural. Together they have managed to sprout quite a few names – Kyano Kanwar, Roop Kanwar, Jeevatri De-vi. There must be others who went unnoticed, except in the little lands. And now her Charan Shah. Famous in death, revered as a goddess, with a (future) temple to her name.

Followers, worshippers, the media glare… Elevated to a position which she could never achieve in life.

Which is worse? A big country which looks askance at its little lands building Sati temples blaming the rural-urban divide and shrugging it off in the belief that "it’s a different world altogether" or a little India steadfast in a blind faith and a parochial past? Why? The real answer died with her on the pyre. The rest is merely speculation. Which is even more frightening. Intense speculation can breed blind faith. An ominous warning to a big country waiting to usher in the new millennium.