The Value of Loyalty

 I was discussing the Mahabharata with another lady. “Draupadi and Karna are my favourite characters”, she said.

“Draupadi I can understand. But why Karna?”, I asked.

“I love his character so much. He was such a noble person.”

“Noble? Karna? He was the one who instigated the ‘vastraharan’ of Draupadi. How can you call him noble?”

“But he was a loyal friend. I place loyalty above anything else.”

 

This exchange left me shaken up. Yes, loyalty is an important quality. But does loyalty mean that you remain silent when your friend is doing something wrong? In fact, doesn’t loyalty require a person to prevent a friend from doing the wrong thing?

To make things worse, in this particular case, Karna was not even a mute spectator. He was an active participant in the sexual assault on Draupadi. It was Karna who had the idea of disrobing her. It was Karna who insulted her and questioned her chastity. It was Karna who silenced Vikarna when he tried to dissuade his brothers from humiliating Draupadi.

No matter how you look at it, Karna was a perpetrator in the sexual assault of Draupadi. Yet, women defend him because he was “a loyal friend”.

 

It is the same thought process that kicks in when a woman tries to complain of sexual harassment or sexual assault. Her complaint is weighed against the perceived virtues of the perpetrator, and she is found wanting. His crimes are forgiven because he is a top performer, because he comes from a well-respected family, because no complaint has ever been made against him. In the process of making excuses for him, she is disbelieved and her complaints are dismissed.

Karna was an accessory in the sexual assault of Draupadi. As long as we continue making excuses for him, how can we hope to end gender based violence?

Book Review: Second-Hand Time

One tends to use the word “brilliant” quite loosely, but if one book totally deserves being called that, it is this. The book is written as a series of reminiscences- the people are often not identified, and at times one set of memories merges into another, but there are so many perspectives that between them, a composite picture gradually starts to emerge.

One is left almost incredulous at how people, despite suffering in the hands of Communism continue to swear by it. One wonders why some people wanted a change, and others didn’t. One is amazed at how people willingly put up with poverty as long as they had their books. One wonders about the resilience of a nation that keeps springing back.

As someone who believed in Communism and hoped it would usher in a better world. As someone who watched the rise of Gorbachev and bought into his vision of perestroika and glasnost. As one who saw the death of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the CIS, the book was a fascinating look from within.

Svetlana Alexievich has been called the ‘memory and conscience of the twentieth century’. This book proves why she earned the title. Her’s is a unique literary genre, one that blends journalism with lyricism; or as the Nobel Prize committee described it, “a history of emotions . . . a history of the soul.”

But what stands tall over her literally style, is the portrait of the nation and her people. What remains with you after you finish the books is this one quote- “In five years, everything can change in Russia, but in two hundred — nothing.”

Book Review: On Balance, An Autobiography

We are what we are because of the many women who opened doors and left them ajar for us. Leila Seth is one such woman. I knew she had been a practicing lawyer, the first female judge to be appointed to the Delhi High Court judge and the first woman to be the Chief Justice of a High Court. I also knew her as a woman who stood up for LGBTQ rights, and who wrote a beautiful book for children introducing them to the Constitution. I picked up "On Balance, An Autobiography" because I was curious to know the lady behind those accomplishments. And I was delighted.

In a lot of ways, Leila Seth reminds me of so many women of her generation that I know. Women like my mother and grandmother who kept perfect homes. Women like my grandmother who ran households which straddled joint family sensibilities with nuclear family constraints. Women who took the hard decision to send their children to boarding school so their studies would not be interrupted.

What makes Leila Seth extra special was that she did all of that and also was extremely successful professionally. How she landed up studying and practicing law seems almost serendipitous, but once she qualified, it was clearly her grit and knowledge that got her to scale the professional peaks that she did. Like many other women of her (and subsequent) generations, she followed her husband around, till they (like many other couples) took the decision to settle in a city of their choice. She did it with grace, even though it meant virtually starting afresh each time.

Reading the book through the prism of today, you notice the emotional burden she carried throughout her life. Despite her qualifications and her success, she is the one who silently does the things she would have been expected to do if she had not been working. The only time she speaks of that is in the poignant passage on her time as Chief Justice in the Shimla High Court where she says that for the first time ever she was living for herself. That passage more than anything else, sends out a strong message that this emotional burden is something that should be acknowledged, because only after acknowledging it can we work towards changing it.

As someone who grew up in small towns in Eastern India, I loved the description of her life in Darjeeling and her pen portrait of the many gardens she knew. Her account of her years in Calcutta brought back many pleasant memories. If my mother writes her memoirs, she can pick large chunks out of the book.

Leila Seth is also, as we know, the mother of Vikram Seth, and the protagonist of 'A Suitable Boy' is loosely based on her. A lot of people thought that Latha of the book could have married "better"- that the man she chose was not at all 'a suitable boy'. After reading this autobiography you understand exactly why Premo Seth and only Premo Seth was the "Suitable Boy" for the amazing Leila Seth.

If you like reading a well written autobiographies written in a slightly self deprecating tone; if you are a woman who wants to know and understand the women who paved the way for us; if you love "A Suitable Boy", then this book is for you.