Perpetually Possessed

For some reason, I vividly remember the first time I came across the word ‘possess’. I was 7 and I read in an Archie Comic book that Big Moose was a ‘possessive’ boyfriend and he was hence intimidating and awe inspiring.

This was confusing information for my unconditioned mind, so I guess I simply parked it in my head. Later, in my teens I heard more about ‘possessive’ boyfriends. These men were admired by other men and revered, even coveted by many women. However, when I heard about possessive girlfriends they came with many other adjectives- like ‘insecure’, ‘scary’ and even ‘psycho’.

On an aside, it is interesting to note that dictionary.com lists one definition of 

pos·sess  [puh-zes]  as

5. (of a man) to succeed in having sexual intercourse with

I should have known then that here was a difference that could explain so much about how we view men and women.

For instance, a dedicated wife finds a respectable adjective in ‘pativrata’ but a dedicated husband must be assigned the much condemned epithet of ‘joru ka ghulam’.

For most, a woman being servile is a virtue and a man being servile is just wrong. Though the mindful question would be why anyone needs to be servile at all, I’d side step it at this point considering the extreme mindlessness that surrounds me. The equality debate comes up here, and I find equality a fuzzy idea. It’s a difficult concept to manifest given the very, very disparate nature of men and women. But what is so difficult about mutual respect? Isn’t it simply logical to have the same rules across genders?

But our rules, they are never the same. Self help books teach men how to ‘win’ women and teach women how to ‘keep’ their men. The ‘keeper’ is always the woman, be it of ‘izzat’, of ‘sanskar’, of ‘family name’. There’s no respite from the albatross around her neck.

A married woman cannot have a ‘khaali gala’; she must wear the mangal sutra; others must know she is literally tethered. But a man wears no signs of being ‘possessed’, save for the relatively modern symbol of an elusive wedding band.

When a man is angry, he is a spectacle (our Hindi movies and Amitabh Bachchan being a case in point) - animal-like, he has raw energy, sexual or otherwise, frothing from lesser known orifices. But an angry woman is a contemptible ‘wild cat’ (remember the inauspicious ‘kaali billi’ reference?). Even Priyanka Chopra and Kareena Kapoor aren’t spared; when their egos clash, they have a ‘cat fight’; as opposed to Salman and Aamir, who have a dignified ‘fall out’.

Never has a man been labeled a ‘home breaker’ and I have been waiting for a moment when someone around me would come to a girl's defense and say to a guy, ‘girls will be girls’.

So a woman is there for the taking. She’s to be won, if not treasured, to be guarded, if not cherished. She remains exposed - to comments, to leers, to taunts, to judgments. Fearlessly and perpetually possessed by every soulless man who thinks it’s ok to lech at her. And I look on, with no hope whatsoever of an exorcism in the near future.