Impatient and with no sense of humor: I remain, yours, truly!

A noted lawyer and women's rights' activist visited our office the other day. While leaving she said, "If I would have been a black skinned person from the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s' South Africa and you as a white skinned had told me to be patient about change, almost everyone around the world would have felt I was justified in slapping you hard. But, just because I am a female, you can still hold this unrealistic notion about my level of patience and ask me to wait for the change...forever". I looked down to hide my smile. Here is another impatient one. 20 years my senior and still equally impatient!

I have been reminded time and again about this particular virtue. I am quite well known by my characteristic lacking of this one in particular. But then I regularly get data that makes this virtue completely redundant. Lets take the Hindu Succession Act (HSA), 1956  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_Succession_Act,_1956. The Act only recognized male heirs as the Class I heirs. However, some southern states like Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh passed legislation to include women as natural heirs. Whereas in other states like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, the change came with the new Amendment to the HSA in 2005. Lets see how many women actually have inherited land. In Andhra Pradesh 30 % women have inherited land in comparison to 8% women in Uttar Pradesh and 6% women in Bihar. Then comes the real twist. What happened in their mothers' generation? In Andhra Pradesh more than 25% women had inherited land, in Uttar Pradesh 5% and in Bihar 5%. I am sure I do not need to point out now, that there is almost negligible generational shift in attitude regarding this. 

During the presentation of the study, I heard familiar questions being raised such as "Would it not break the family if women start demanding land rights now?" (Oh the holy cow of family! Women after women can succumb at the high platform of family but "family" can not be touched) "The families are already paying so much dowry, why land then?" "Why don't we address the dowry question first and then start the question of land-rights?" In states such as Andhra Pradesh, women receive land as dowry. But lets look at it in the light of HSAA, 2005 which says daughters and sons have equal rights over land. The gap between the amount of parental land that daughters actually inherit and should inherit is pretty big. According to the responses of the study that was being discussed, women have received 0.93 decimals of land whereas they were supposed to get 11.88 decimals of land through inheritance. These do not say much in the favor of patience. Neither does the fact that when women with land were asked who they would give their land to? They said, "Our sons"!

Now I will present you my non-humorous best! And no apologies here. No excuses. I have just no sense of humor! Or to take a liberal view of my abilities, my limited sense of humor is being severely tested since the last few months. I have a problem here. I do not find anything remotely funny in the wife-bashing jokes. I tend to take them seriously and ask men, if they are so not happy with their wives why don't they move on? I spoil the fun. What's worse! I do so deliberately. This reminds me of a story that my lawyer friend shared with me. A woman was sent a picture of men urinating together (I am assuming in a urinal but with Indian men, you never know!) and one of the men was facing the photographer. The message was "Cooperate! Be a team player!" Some of the judges looking into the matter felt the complainant should have taken it lightly. "You should ignore such things when working outside home!", they said. Now that's another problem. I can not ignore. I can not get amused by the sleazy references in the name of "friendly banters" and can not ignore them. If someone's idea of fun is calling names, strengthening prejudices and making women around them behave like deaf and/or with below average intelligence all of a sudden, they will have to bear with a stern face around. At the least that is. I would keep it to that at least for the first few times. And then they might complain about my preachy nature and complete lack of humor but it would not say much about their abilities to get the hint, either.

In the past few months I have seriously thought about whether I lack humor and then my namesake promptly rescued me the other day. She said, "People often dilute the gravity of the situation by calling harassment 'friendly banters' and 'jokes'. The only question we need to ask is, 'Is this professional?' If the answer is no, it has no space in the office premises" Thanks! You helped me breathe easy in the lacerated world of Tezpal and company.