shredded shraddha, our hindu daughters, puzzling behaviours & value judgements – febrile notes & unformatted musings
November 19, 2022
Chanced upon this tweet-response of Sri Sudhir Srinath – the context is the slaughter & dismemberment of the unfortunate kuf’r girl, Shraddha by an Islamic psychopath – please refer to the previous post, if you want more background.
*sheesh*
:-(
Yes. This can be puzzling – those lingering, ‘why did she not runaway, after all she is educated & was employed…’ etc etc kind of depressing questions…
However.
Longitudinally observing life around us, across economic strata & other demographics + internalizing the fundamental fact that we are also blinkered, may provide some clues.
Hmm… in the above contexts, sometimes I feel that I have been fortunate (or plain stupid) enough to have had very ennobling and enervating experiences and have had more than my share of encounters with all kinds of weird souls & even scoundrels… so, am scribbling down my notes on the terrible tragedies that are all around us, which we note only if we paid any reasonable attention.
Of course, YMMV.
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On to some clues & pointers:
One fundamental existential issue we all seem to have is…
0. Our attention spans (for any one thing or a grouped bunch of things) are being increasingly limited because there are so many things competing for attention, so ‘peaceful, safe existence’ is only one of the many vectors along which we intend to move; also, we seem to be moving towards the ‘next thing’ without properly consolidating & reviewing where we already are.
Whoa! That was a sweeping generalization (therefore there will be exceptions) but let us look at how or why would a ‘victim continue to wallow’ in victim-hood?
The reasons, motives, self-justifications & meaning-creation could be many…
1. Lack of perceived (not real) choices from their particular positions & therefore anti-Agency
2. Infatuation (also stemming from ‘I don’t deserve any better’ kind of insecurity) & assuming that abject submission will somehow make matters better
3. Awareness of perceived sunk costs (“OMG, we have come this far… and let me not screw it up or ditch it now, after all the trouble”) & opportunity costs (“Oh how much time and energy would it take if I were to look at getting out from this and then look for a new partnership!” and “Given that I already paid a price for this, and did not pursue other avenues – what price would I have to pay for the next thing?”) from their particular perspective
4. ‘Okay, this is what ‘lovvu’ actually means, today he/she is having a difficult time in the ‘world outside’ – it is all understandable
5. ‘Look ma, how I’m suffering’ kind of costly virtue signalling & put-on nobleness
6. ‘He/She has his own life, so let me have mine…’ though the ‘mine’ things do not happen at all
7. ‘Now that we have children, what will happen to them, if…’
8. ‘I don’t care what he/she is doing, as long as I have enough to spend and she/he bankrolls me’
9. Availability of well-known examples of folks ‘coping’ & living ‘happily’ in spite of two-timing scoundrels – successful people like Dayalu (w/o Karunanidhi)
10. ‘Okay, today was an aberration, let me give it just one more day’ and then ‘we will happily live ever after.’ (rinse & repeat)
11. (…)
…and they continue to happen until is too late, and the butcher’s knife has already reached for the jugular… :-(
It is always a combination of such factors – and only the people involved, and in their particular positions, can perceive things this way… It is a TOTALLY internally-consistent universe that they are living/dying in…
Others (like us) are only by-standers commenting on Twitter – or are blogging about it. (like this post)
I know of so many males & females from even ‘close’ circles who continue to undergo turmoils but have come to ‘terms’ with them:
Of ‘helpless’ but highly educated & independently well-accomplished wives, but who have two-timing abusive husbands, who still choose to ‘professionally’ work together with their abusers.
Of ‘pitiable’ husbands who somehow plod on with abusive & scheming wives, for no reason other than ‘what other people would say.’
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Given everything, what can be done by us?
Okay, it is not that all spousal relationships are totally abusive or totally hunky-dory. Weddings are merely one day events whereas Marriages take like decades, if not a lifetime, and still would be a work-in-progress – and of course they would go through ups and downs, and there is no reason to runaway or split-up at the sign of first trouble. Am not at all for knee-jerk divorces or breakaways. I am for sustained investments of significant part of our life, into the Marriage – though it consumes a lot of energy and emotion.
But the awareness of what differences can be ironed out and what cannot be (and irredeemable) is a skill that has to be developed, I suppose.
Also, some basics of evolutionary psychology and the way we are wired along with some basic understanding of how Abrahamic theologies work, with parents showing (& leading) by example + parents assuring the Children that, ‘whatever be our current issues, you can always come back to us for a safe refuge & sustenance’ etc – all may help.
But it is all about, the particular positions in which we are all situated. The brilliance of Vedanta helps too.
Otherwise #10 keeps happening until, one day… The Choppers land. Kaput.
On that happy note, I end this post, even as I await the next Chopper incident.
And also the kneejerk scaffolding by LeLis that, ‘it has nothing to do with religion, there are other sweet Abduls.’
Fair enough.
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(somewhat useful & annotative) Postscript:
1. From my experience, I can say that folks who do not have girl kids, cannot really begin to appreciate the parental feelings in this respect at all. More so with couples with no kids – leave alone those folks who are not ‘married’ at all!
But I agree that everyone has a right to their uncalled-for and uninformed opinions. Don’t we have a ‘Right to Free noise’ and all that? yes!
2. I have personally dealt with a few of such ‘abuse’ cases of all genders – have seen a few court cases, fought pitched battles with parents of some affected kids etc.
3. As an full-time teacher of some schools in the ruralia, for a while – I have personally encountered the torture that some unfortunate girls undergo, that are of a terrible kind, not only inflicted on them by their spouses – but also by drunken fathers, with some cases resulting even in their rape. (sometimes I feel that I’ve seen it all :-( oh what to do…)
Time and again, I have had to boringly repeat to my (school) children that ‘Tamil Films’ (for that matter, any film) are NOT real. And that, ‘if you look at your favourite actors & models without all the plaster & botox, they would all be bloody ordinary… and anyway always 100% stupid’ + ‘Life cannot be lived like the jokers on screen and all that…’ etc etc. (dunno whether they even made an impact, sheesh!)
4. I know of enervating specific cases of girls as well as boys – caught in the wrong demographic area, who have paid the price for it. Being in a wrong locality or neighborhood – for a dharmic minority is a terrible situation.
The demographic engulfment is true. But the reverse situation is NOT true. At all.
5. All I am saying is, it is easy for a given outsider to comment on the terrible fact-of-life, but it is a veritable minefield out there.
6. I am definitely NOT trying to paint a bleak, pessimistic picture – but I want to merely be able to have some semblance of a balance; and, generally float above the flotsam & squalor.
Life, in spite of everything, is nice – and one can also be very sanguine, while being fully prepared for the worst. Because, we live in difficult times wherein all Anti-Bharat forces, including the crass class of ‘Public Intellectuals’ are on an onslaught; this is because Bharat = Hindustan and NOT LeListan or Dravidastan.
Yes.
So, we should remember the 7Ps.
Even at a societal level, ‘Proper Prior Planning & Preparation, Prevents Poor Performance.’ *
Therefore, we should inform, educate, scaffold and protect our daughters. They may not like it, but it is IMPORTANT not only for them, but also for our Indic Civilization that they should be made to internalize this…
‘My parents, my family, my brothers and sisters will protect me, welcome me back, if anytime I feel mortally insecure… though I may have annoyed & offended them in the past. I am always welcome at my home, there are my folks who can protect me… It is NOT beneath my dignity to approach them when I am troubled, after all I am one of them…’
This internalization has to be reinforced time and again. There is no other single important factor to help us fight against the onslaught of the marauding Islam (or others such) – especially when, our law enforcement apparatus is hopelessly overloaded and our ‘public intellectuals’ so-called, have all pledged their souls to anti-bharat forces.
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*Thanks, dear Rick Rescorla. You saved 2700+ lives due to your 7Ps and by your gallant death.
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| ஒத்திசைவு | प्रत्याह्वय | resonance | 
November 19, 2022 at 17:45
11. The irrational “love” or “responsibility” women exhibit towards their children, husband or any close relation. They aren’t as transactional as men. That’s what kept families together and that’s what kills girls like Shraddha.
There’s also this ‘fundamental childhood decisions’ that keep playing repeatedly in lives – sometimes as an affinity towards abusive relationships.
Sigh… What do we do? So helpless. :(
November 20, 2022 at 18:17
Understood your pains. The right to return home should have been reassured by her parents. But the cultural hold held them back? Are we Bharaatias losing our civilizational asset, the family? Caste system is not to be blamed fully, so far as it is cleared from interfering in other’s rights? Badly in need of a revived Bhakti movement?
November 20, 2022 at 20:23
Sir, five things:
1. Apparently the hapless shraddha’s parents were reconciled to the idea – but the daughter was the one who did not choose to go back or take refuge with them. (from what I understand)
2. It is easy to behead people lost in bhakti. So, there should be mobilization across other axes. Tools of coercion/violence cannot be allowed to be monopolized by Jihadis – especially when the L&O systems are faltering and the Legal system is antiHindu.
3. With respect to Islam and the way it spreads, it is important to preserve the kuf’r wombs, as much as possible.
4. All of us could see the Hindu family structures struggling, but it does not seem to be endgame, though.
5. This is not a ‘caste’ related issue – though there are vulnerable sections (socially and economically – as also via demographic engulfment) that may continue to fall for the steamrolling/bankrolling of conversions.
A lot need to be clarified, first to ourselves first.
Thanks for your comments, Ofc.
November 20, 2022 at 21:35
The ‘educated Hindu girls/women’ who continue to be hacked/packed/torched are often affected by the leli/woke/yoyo virus with zero education at home about the karnamas of the piecefuls around. They subsequently fall prey to the scheming scoundrels and hallucinate feeling dreadfully ’empowered/cool/rebellious’ that they boast of it as ‘mera wala alag hai’ until they come to their senses to see the real picture, it would have usually been too late by then. There have been awful lot of incidents of this sort in the recent past and yet our people seldom learn anything from them, nomore shraddha here.
November 22, 2022 at 11:20
Hmm… thanks. Apart from how ‘natal family structures’ there is nothing else that can help, I suppose. (applicable to kuf’r boys and girls)
Environs, friends, legal system & L&O machinery are all there – but nothing beats ‘blood relations’ that too of parents-children in offering a safe haven for their progeny. (E&OE)
(every time ‘Country Brute,’ I hear of such halal killings, my heart breaks though – having personally known one such case. :-( oh what to do)
November 27, 2022 at 08:18
I kinda agree with Shridhar Tiruchendurai’s point above and want to take it even further.
It may sound unseemly – like a kind of defence for the mentality whose extreme expression is honor-killing itself:
The issue is ‘individualism’
The holy notion that the individual should be able to do whatever he/she wants and THAT is the purpose of life and social organisation, and anything in the way should be taken out – has been exalted to level an inviolable right. This is simply untenable.
It is very unromantic to ask the basic question: what’s love got to do with a marriage?
Nice to have and all that. But it is hardly something that makes a necessary case for it. Like all meaningful relationships – marriage is primarily an honourable duty.
Since the dawn of time the institution has been about folks coming together to be parents for children.
You chances of getting along with someone from a similar cultural background is higher. Which will likely significantly soften the challenge of the two individuals coming together and spending a lifetime together.
Each one takes one for the team over the years and it is that and the common causes that hold them in good stead.
I can’t ,for the life of me, understand all this rancorous fighting with one’s family in order to be with someone.
What is there to love in a fellow human?
Love is the most evanescence of emotion.
It reeks of arrogance to assume one is perpetually loveable to another individual not bound to us by some sense of duty to course through the difficult times.
Now this will sound like I am making the opposite point and making a case for sticking with an abuser.
No, I am saying if your basis of entering into a relationship is on the individual – cut out from any familial/social context – then ironically you have LESS of a basis to weigh the violations rationally . Everything is coloured by the irrational basis that got you here in the first place!
Transcending social stictures (like abandoning caste, religion, 9×5 work and choosing to make daring life choices, startup, homeschooling kids) is NOT for everyone.
Kudos to those who pull it off.
But an individual who deviates exaggerates his capacity for everything that social structures gave him.
When we have socially normalised- valorised this, as if everyone can handle everything and should ‘just go for it’ else they are wasting their life- we are setting ppl up for disaster.
I know it seems very unseemly that I am using a psychopathic murder as an excuse to make a case for ‘rules based order’ – which many may find suffocating and whose excesses we are only all too familiar with.
I insist it is all related.
Humility is understanding the rules and norms are FOR us and not necessarily AGAINST us, as we are repeatedly told by the system.
It pays to think a thousand times before transgressing and taking the burden on our mere individual shoulders.
November 29, 2022 at 11:24
Okay, read it a couple of times. I agree with your take in-toto. After all, what is ‘culture’ if not a superset of the norms, mores, values, arts, science++ that our societies have created/fine-honed over millennia?
As a general, and an effective & efficient way to organize the human society, fully aware of our long legacy of evolution, psychology & the way we are wired (or weird?) – what you are saying is indeed rational & logical.
‘Love’ IS overrated, just like its literary consort, ‘Romance’ – though Love, per se, is not abhorrent; have seen a few cases of very sweet ‘Love weddings’ that have managed to stay afloat. But, have also seen way too many contra examples (selection bias?) of infatuation or ‘Love,’ which do not compute the price to pay and the opportunity costs thereof. And this ‘Love fructification’ is at the cost of ruthlessly severing any natal connections, unless there is an ‘marriage’ (involving a reasonable mutual understanding and gives-and-takes, over the longhaul) happening between the spouses – it is kind of doomed.
(may be things will change, for the better in the context of ‘Love’ – OTOH, am not passionately batting for exclusive endogamy – but I know for a fact that similar outlooks, cultural practices & upbringing are also critical for the success of a marriage; we are not morose/selfish/elite individualists, but are transactionally happy/sad social animals, after all – and we are most comfortable working with a small group of people… ‘liberty-equality-fraternity’ is a great myth, but is meant only for the exalted timepass of the LeLi classes & Socmedia chatterati+)
Having said that (thanks to my senility and advancing forehead), I should say that, I have supported (going out of the way) at least two ‘Love’ weddings (across jatis) because I personally & longitudinally knew the young people involved, their outlooks on life, their ‘stability’ & importantly their ‘commitment’ to each other – and their fundamental love & affection towards their respective parents; the latter were initially not able to ‘see’ the bare facts, but in any case, there was no question of ‘disowning’ or ‘water-sprinkled and left’ situation from either side.
My only condition for the intervention (not suo-motu, but was requested for it) was that (Of one case, I knew the parents of only the lad very well but not that of the girl), the two should take individual/total responsibility for the long-term outcome of their marriage – and not blame it (should it become difficult) on the ‘society’ and n other strawmen. I also remember to have told them about the ‘parable of the pedestrian.’
OTOH, have been an active part of some very needed/appropriate court proceedings for divorces too. Painful, but they had to be done, in the larger interests of… :-(
I am a mixed bag; um, bagasse actually, a stinking one at that; oh what to do.
Fool disclosure: I am a product of an ‘arranged wedding’ (like it was for ~99% of the instances, in those days) & I went in for one too. Life in the context of marriage also seems to be fine. I hope our children get to choose their spouses – on their own or as arranged/suggested by us or a combo of them – but never at the cost of getting into meaningless loggerheads with their parents.
But I have seen quite a few specific cases of the situation like those of Shraddha and her parents. In very many cases, for some very justifiable reason or the other, each side has its own rationale. Life is really a tough mistress. And human situations are oh so different & sometimes very enervating; and then, there are these proximate and ultimate cause based explanations and rationalizations. (but these deceitful jihadically primed liaisons are vile animals, I sadly agree)
About the ‘humility’ that you are talking about – I think, the responsibility for it is TOTALLY on the parents (factoring in some genetics and behavioural psychology related E&OE) because they get to monopolize (which they can choose to) the initial days of the grooming/developing the child by way of direct and/or indirect presentations of life situations. Rest is fluff of a palimpsest. Parenting is very important or even a critical aspect of the society.
E&OE and YMMV.
So, the stellar core/central idea or an organizing principle of a successful life/society would be – Like EVERYTHING in life, कर्मण्येवाधिकारस्ते मा फलेषु कदाचन++.
bfn.
November 29, 2022 at 13:07
The system of marriage has three flows – like a reasonably designed software. Normal flow, alternate flow, and exceptions. Marriage within the community is the normal flow; designed and tested to work well. Arranged or love marriages within an acceptable larger circle (Brahmin sub-sects, across languages, Iyer-Iyengar) are alternate flows. Slightly less tested than the first but accepted. Exceptional ones are outside of the community. Like software exceptions, they aren’t tested well and don’t give confidence in the stability of the system.
Alternate flows have a better acceptance as there could be social reasons – like the absence of a suitable match within the smaller circle. As far as exceptions go, it is best to prevent and discourage them. If it still happens, let it be so but let’s not treat it as a normal flow like Mumbai advertisers like to see. It is the responsibility of the parents to warn about risks – from basic discontent to extreme like chopping as happened with Shraddha.