The entire images, ritualistic details, fasting, dressing and singing lead to cultural embellishment of women under male ritualistic codes. Then there are scopes of joys and celebrations amidst the performing multiplicities of Teej. Another girl said, “I am always happy to wish for my boyfriend and fast for the whole day long.” The first girl retorted, “Even the sense of joy is a male construct. We fast and wish for the well-being of our husbands and boyfriends while most of them roam around drinking and playing paplu.” Her arguments were strong if not convincing to all of us. This is what she argued and explained. Three of the boys supported her ideas while the remaining participants nodded or shook their heads from time to time.
Teej rituals have many regressive male ideologies. Teej itself is not regressive but the underlying grammar of male opinions is what is regressive for women.
There are many Hindu rituals which suffocate women with the metaphors of milk and sacrifice and idealize women with Sita characteristics. Teej may not be an intense festival to corner women into submissive ritualistic performances but if one observes many of our festivals, the functional part and the grammar of festivals have to be taken care by women only. But when it comes to higher attainments of spiritual and intellectual levels, women just appear as impediments. They are put aside when important matters of intellectual sublimity are dealt in religion. So what I object about Teej is not Teej per se but how and to what extent Teej is a continuation of the multiple male religious codes. Teej celebration has less to do with male realization of how many such performances are directed toward women’s well-being.
The problem is that male gratification remains the same in terms with the ideology or mindset that women should be engaged in such performative details and hence are the happy lots. My uncle told her wife, “I am ready to pay a good amount of money this month; celebrate Teej with full enthusiasm otherwise you will not have much to do this season before winter.” I disliked such arrogant patriarchal instruction while my auntie smiled with blissful happiness.
This is where the ideas of social construction comes into our discourse. Her momentary bliss is a male make to my mind. What she did was that she prepared herself into a doll-like redness, bought ornaments better than her in-laws, cooked lavish vegetarian food for the whole day, fasted and then weakened herself in mind and body. This is a signifying practice of a famous festival. And after that, the days follow within the carceral or prison-like family space. She was a beautiful player of Sitar before marriage. She was forbidden to go to music school for her in-laws opinionated that one does not have to be gawaiya (entertainer) in a wealthy family like theirs. She continued studying M Phil from Pokhara University but never came to the class while her mother-in-law was in the town. She could not appear for a course called Postcolonial Debates and Globalization.
She continued her tirade against both male and female hypocrisy (her language). Majority of the South Asian women live under such religious metaphors and my woman partner does not at all represent those billions and me too. That is why such Teej rituals have many regressive male ideologies. Teej itself is not regressive but the underlying grammar of male opinions is what is regressive for women. Let women celebrate and be blissful. Such celebration and happiness is a male space formed by the elitist male religiosity. Then only she looked away into the branches of a tree.
To top it all, the women in Teej look red in unison, in uniformity, in groups and you cannot distinguish them and the more you cannot the more they belong to a universal group of same behavioral psyche. See they all look alike and they look so beautiful and doll-like. The imagery of decorativeness is what is Teej as it comes to us in its visual forms. I know the color red is the sacred color of goddess Laxmi but she again is the same suffering Sita either sitting ideally near reclining Vishnu or expressing her jealousy toward other consorts of the Hindu trinity.
Here I objected and here only: Reducing all goddess to such marginal and submissive space is a gross generalization. She apologized and came up with a harsh conclusion out of her long premises. Teej is an innocent ritual and under this space of Teej, women too become innocent, by being metaphor of purity and sacredness. How much sacred they remain is what the male decides sitting outside such innocent and sacred space.
pallabi@pallabi.wlink.com.np
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