Life in a Village

There was once a village and a pretty big village it was. It was very far from any city. As villages went, it was quite a good one. There were trees yielding mangoes, jackfruits and coconuts. There were green fields of rice and wheat, there were lakes, streams and rivers. The sun shone bright during the day and in the evenings the wind blew in the cold air from the sea. The three seasons arrived duly each year. Summer brought rescue from the cold of the winter, which in turn gave way to the rains that quenched the parched earth followed by the soft cloak of winter. There was, in short, every form of nature that should make living a very pleasant affair, except of course for the mosquitoes and the humans. Both the mosquitoes and the humans, the former because of it's inherent nature and the latter also surprisingly because of their inherent nature, took it upon themselves to make the life of humans around them miserable. The villagers had learnt to control the mosquitoes and keep them at bay by several measures, but the humans - they were free to roam around.  

Now no one knows when it started or how, but it was general wisdom in this village that a good girl should have started her daily household chores in the kitchen before the earliest pink rays of the sun spread over the land. This wisdom, as is with all other wisdom, was passed on for generations - man to son, woman to daughter, man to daughter and woman to son. It was etched into their minds,  mischievously woven into bedtime tales and repeated most religiously by the village elders. There was unfortunately no timing prescribed for men to get up and so that poor sex, miserably confused as they were, left the getting up part wholly to the natural discretion of their bodies.   

Accordingly, the women in this village rose before the cock crowed, they milked the sleepy cows, they cleaned the stone cold floors and prepared breakfast for their families. They bathed in the cold, cold, moon-chilled water of the village pond. They dressed and looked pretty, all by the time, the rest of the family realized it was morning. 

Now this little piece of advice was not the only bit of wisdom that the village lived by. For indeed, if a village were to be running smoothly and plants were to be growing well and children were to be running fast and men were to be smoking beedis, there had to be but a whole set of rules. A book of rules if you may say so. And since it was a very old village and because many of the rules were made by the now-dead ancestors who weren't very fond of reading or writing, either due to a genuine lack of interest in the written form or due to good old illiteracy, these rules were passed on to each generation by the means of oral instructions and reinforced by hidden pinches, dark stares and even a good hearty slap across the face.

One of the unwritten rules from the rule book was that a woman was not to show her face to men except her husband and sons. This was an excellent rule for it was meant to keep the women safe from the covetous, libidinous stare of strange men. And of course women would trip, having had covered their face with shawls and dupattas and that was brilliant because that gave the opportunity to enforce the third rule - that women needed a little physical discipline. A slap was the most accepted convention, though some for better enforcement have even tried, with success, a lash with a whip or a cane and even a few kicks and blows. The villagers also extended their literary skills to redefine certain obsolete words like dutiful, obedient and respectful to slave-like, spineless and subjugated.

And like in all other villages of this time, birth, was a very interesting affair. When the midwife proclaimed that a child was born, there was great fanfare, much distribution of sweets and celebration. And of course, by child I meant boy. And if the midwife announced the birth of a girl, the celebrations consisted mainly in letting the child live.

Now all this was very much accepted. They were the rules of good conduct, it was the wisdom of the ancestors. It was possibly even handed down by the Gods, it was what kept the village running.

There were however a few occasional rule breakers. There were a few men who thought different. There were husbands who didn't think it necessary to have slavish wives. There were fathers who were not very appreciative of their daughters being hit. There were mothers who felt it necessary to keep alive their infant daughters. However, the rest of the village attacked with much ferocity these heretics who dared defy their sacrosanct traditions. And so in private, in hidden rooms, in hushed conversations did these heretics act and talk, afraid to rouse the fury of the villagers.

Then things changed, times changed. Kings came and went. The sun replaced earth as the center of the galaxy. Science developed. Electricity was discovered. Chariots broke and were replaced by motor cars. Horses began to be ridden only for sport. Democracy came and shook up the whole scenario. Man learnt to fly. Man visited the moon!

But the little book of rules was left untouched amidst all this activity. No one dared to amend the ancient wisdom of the centuries. In different forms and under different pretexts existed this age old tradition and still does today.

In recent times, people from other villages have started calling it a misogynistic, patriarchal society.

The villagers however just renamed their village - India.