It's your fault!
Behind
every unsuccessful man we look for the woman who ‘jinxed’ him
Anushka
Sharma has magical powers. Through her presence alone, she can
ensure that her boyfriend fails in every innings, jinx the entire
Indian Test team, and engineer two back-to-back innings defeats in
the recently-concluded India vs England Test series.
Who
knew? Not the BCCI, certainly, which gave Virat Kohli special
permission to take his girlfriend along for the England tour. And
certainly not Virat, or he would have left her behind safely in
Mumbai, while he played the field (I am talking of cricket of
course; what did you think?) in the balmy sunshine of an English
afternoon. But he took the unlucky minx along, and now look what’s
happened: we have suffered our worst defeat since that
much-talked-about Summer of 42 in England!
But
don’t worry, all you cricket lovers (and Virat Kohli fans). The
BCCI is on the ball, revising its rules to ensure that such disaster
never strikes again. The Board has now decreed that cricketers will
not be allowed to take their girlfriends on tour with them. And even
legally wedded and bedded wives will only be allowed to accompany
their cricketer spouses for a limited period of time. This will
ensure, or so the BCCI assures us, that the team is not distracted
by all those pesky little women, who always want to go shopping or
sightseeing (or whisper it, have sex!) and don’t allow their
husbands to get on with serious stuff like practicing at the nets,
working out at the gym, or even winning a match or two.
Honestly,
these evil women with their wiles and their charms, seducing our
heroes away from the straight and narrow path that leads to victory.
These horrid witches who cast a spell on their men, turning them
into a shadow of their former selves. They really should be burnt at
the stake! Or at the very least, have their passports torched so
that they can’t travel along with their husbands/boyfriends.
Yes,
for some reason, it is always the women who bring bad luck, and the
men who have to suffer as a consequence. So, if Dhoni has a bad run
after he gets married, it must be his wife, Sakshi’s fault. She
must be bringing him bad luck with her presence in the stands. And
if Virat is back in the pavilion no sooner than he left, it must be
because he can’t bear to be away from Anushka for a minute longer.
Of
the two evils, wives and girlfriends, wives are just a tad more
tolerable. At least their sexual allure is a little dulled by
familiarity, so they don’t distract their husbands quite so much.
But girlfriends? Tauba, tauba, they must be banished forthwith so
that the boys can get on with the job.
So
far, so sexist. Not just about the women, who are portrayed as
sex-crazed and shopping-mad harpies who won’t give their men a
moment’s rest. But also about the men, who are depicted as sorry
stereotypes, constantly led astray by a certain part of their
anatomy. This kind of scenario doesn’t just demonize women, it
also infantilizes men, to the detriment of both genders.
But
on balance, as always, it is the women who come off worse. They are
the ones held responsible for the non-performance/bad luck of their
men. Virat Kohli is playing so badly because Anushka Sharma is
bringing him bad luck (or leaving him so exhausted and distracted
that he can’t tell a full toss from a yorker). But nobody would
dream of suggesting that Anushka’s movie flopped because her
performance suffered as a consequence of being involved with Virat.
That’s
how it has always been, hasn’t it? Blaming women for stuff that
they couldn’t possibly be responsible for. It happened centuries
ago when women who were widowed young were treated as social lepers
who had to be cordoned off from society in case their bad luck
infected everyone else (in some circles, this is still true even in
the 21st century). We’ve all heard of cases where
young brides are castigated for having brought bad luck when a
family death occurs soon after their wedding (no matter that it
couldn’t possibly have been their fault). And if the death is that
of the husband, then all hell breaks loose.
Yes,
blaming women for all the bad stuff that goes down is as old as time
itself. So, what’s been happening with Anushka Sharma is pretty
much par for the course. And you could argue that it is pretty
harmless. After all, it just boils down to a few jokes on social
media, a brief flurry of commentary pieces on the sports pages, and
a couple of cartoons. It’s hardly serious enough to do her any
damage; as a strong, modern, successful woman, surely she knows how
to take this in her stride?
And
I am sure that she does. But what a pity that we live in a world in
which she has to!
SEEMA
GOSWAMI HTBR 140831
No comments:
Post a Comment