India is a country which is vast, has diverse cultures and
is ultimately a potpourri of everything good and bad. Despite the differences,
there is one particular subject matter which unites the Indian men- the abject
disregard for the women, their health and progress. India is amongst the worst
countries when it comes all kinds of gender indices, including trafficking of
women. But, within that boiling cauldron of neglect, there is a tiny state
called Kerala which tops every gender index, with its seemingly high
sensitivity towards gender parity. I have to stress on the word ‘seemingly’
because, Kerala tops in many other fields as well, including the number of
obscene posts and cyber crime in India. It also hosts covert sexism and misogyny,
starting with the utter inability of women to peacefully use public
transportation without their posteriors being groped or brushed against, to
slut-shaming, moral policing and dowry.
It is in this scenario that the actress Swetha Menon let her
birth of her daughter be filmed by film director Blessy. I am not going to
analyze what their motivation might have been or what incentive might have been
instrumental in Swetha Menon deciding that she will. However, it is extremely
necessary that the intense ramifications of this act be thought of. From the
looks of it, from one blogger overtly suggesting it is the same as porn, to
others characterizing her as a prostitute who did it just for the money, SM is
now the target for a lot of people’s repressed sense of morality.
I call this the Aishwarya Rai Syndrome, where the celebrity,
especially the woman, is supposed to play the perfect Indian woman and be the
perfect mother. In this Syndrome, the celebrity conforms to the majoritarian
(read Hindu) belief system. On screen she is supposed entice the male folk but
off screen she has to belong to one man who sets the trajectory of her actions.
Anyone who deviates is bad.
Here comes the question of agency and personal liberty.
Swetha Menon obviously had no problem in letting someone else see what is only
extremely natural and which she felt is something so emotionally beautiful that
it shouldn’t be deemed to be something one has to be ashamed of. That is her
personal choice. Whether or not to allow it to be shown to the world is also
extremely personal. Here, I must
actually say kudos to SM’s husband as well. He rose above a typical Keralite
man. He also did not hamper her resolve by crying, ‘my woman, hence the womb
and vagina are by contract, mine’. Some have called it the new generation of ‘reality
TV’. They must really spend more time watching Discovery Channel, NatGeo and
The Animal Planet if they feel this is the first time child birth has been
recorded alive. Do you think that it is any easier for any other mammal to push
a progeny through the birth canal? We don’t see it as reality TV because they
can’t scream or shout that they are in pain.
For those of who think that sex does not take place outside
the bedroom or away from porn sets and have been crying out for ‘pay her enough
to let someone film her having sex’, the studies of Masters and Johnson or the
recent MRI of humans during copulation would be a requisite to put their doubts
to rest. There are people willing to have sex, not for money, but merely to
abet the human curiosity surrounding it. But of course, it is hard to think
outside the moral rigidity when you don’t even have enough courage or
conviction to question the archaic notions of morality present in our educated
society, which is constantly shifting its baseline consistent with the dynamics
of the population. The problem is that the dynamics is changing pretty slowly
and whoever creates a counter current in that flow is punished. Create enough
counter currents and slowly the pattern of the flow changes.
Coming to the allegation that filming of SM’s labour is
tantamount to pornography, one has to wonder in which universe the dictionary
contains the meaning of pornography as ‘contractions of uterine muscles which
result in expansion of the vaginal wall and the pushing out of a full grown
foetus’. Pornography is the commercial manifestation of human sexuality, where
the primary objective is the vicarious pleasure of the consumer. Unless the
consumer has a sadistic fetish for blood, fecal matter, placenta and the tiny
genitalia of the newborn, I fail to see how any sane person can equate this
with overtly or covertly with pornography. Any person who goes to watch the
movie ‘Kalimannu’ just for the sake of watching her give birth is just
representing the repressed sexuality and constantly perverted psyche of the archetypal
Malayalee man. Those who write and speak against her, assassinating her
character and intentions, are those who pose to be progressive but whose
conformity is ‘disgusted’ with the transgression of their moral scheme and has
to sublimate their disgust. Similarly about SM being a ‘slut’, a ‘whore’ who
sold the sanctity of childbirth to the highest bidder; here, the basic issue is
that of the V-word. Keralites try to skip that word, hide everything connected
to it. Vagina is bad. So, the issue here is that SM was ready to bare her most ‘sacred’
parts of the body to the people filming ‘it’ and the process (that too men) part
of which is ultimately meant for the public. Adding to it is the objective of
the act; a grey area for the public, which is not educational or purely
commercial in its goal. SM’s intention was not simply professional and from the
look of it, she also wanted to record her journey. She just had the good
fortune of having a professional behind the camera.
In a nation where
motherhood is celebrated culturally, socially and religiously while the only
effort to make sure the Maternity Mortality Ratio goes down is done through
political reforms, programmes and policies, it is understandable that such
stigma exists when it comes to childbirth. The ‘down below’ is a sight only for
the husband and the doctor. If so, then why are men still pacing about the
hospital corridor and not in the labour room in our society? What are they so
terrified of? There are cultures all over the world where the husband’s/partner’s
presence is a necessity. It provides support and much needed encouragement, not
to mention that it is a part of emotional bonding between the parents and the
child. In our society, the father is clinically detached from the mother. As an
educated society, isn’t it high time Malayalee men gave up the pacing and
became pro-active when it came to child birth?
I am grateful that Swetha Menon took this step. Like Khusboo
commenting on and supporting pre-marital sex, through her act, SM broke a
taboo. A taboo which begins from the day a girl gets her menarche – that one
dareth not mention or discuss anything connected to her ‘sacred’ parts. This
narrative is rife with hypocrisy since a woman is valued most in a patriarchal
society for those parts. This has to be broken.
To break it, we need more and more women who come forward and break
small, small barriers, whichever way they can. It is quite a personal journey,
but personal is always political.
