By Nilanjana Goswami
Way back in antiquity, it was the Greek philosopher Aristotle who said that every story had to have a proper beginning, middle, and end. According to him, without these components, the story would lose coherence and dissolve into a soup of words, ideas and moments. Fortunately, of course, history is deaf. It kept reinventing the fragment by breaking down time and experience into shorter pieces while the pundits screamed in the background. It found a new meaning in the journey, not regarding the destination. The destination is unchanging and stagnant, but the journey has for long been the metaphor for human life because of their shared conditions of fleetingness and change. Taking account of this while living in an era when the information we consume is tending to smaller and smaller units, it can be said that the greatest story never adequately told is that of the journey: the human life in transit, or growing up.
Defining ‘growing up’
How does one talk about a process so unique? Is it possible to represent ?in any form? this gradual and profound change? Growing up is intrinsically related to our experiences in such a way that it is almost impossible to set one apart from the other. Schools of thought vie with each other over trying to explain the whys and the wherefores: psychoanalysis depicts it as the sometimes-plagued journey through the 5 stages of psychosexual development. Marxism places the subject within the X-Y coordinates of class and capital, while the nosy neighbour tracks the process by the subject?s graduation from clandestinely buying sweetmeats to clandestinely buying a pack of smokes. All these are true; however, none give us the complete picture. The attempt to define the process distances us from it.
Growing up entails, at its most basic, a churning of experiences, memories, emotions, and values. These combine and depart from each other at different stages in our life, and in different contexts take different shapes. We are more Protean in transit than at any other verifiable stage of our lives. Growing up in India, moreover, posits a whole new range of dimensions. There are divisions over caste, class, creed, belief, gender, politics, value-systems, culture and knowledge crammed into 3.29 million square kilometres of land. Naturally, being brought up in such a context would lead to an interesting mix of experiences.
Girl-boy divide
First of all, it should be noted that growing up as a boy is ? generally ? a more privileged situation than growing up as a girl in India. Because of the extremely cemented structural basis of patriarchal oppression in institutions in India ?the fundamental unit of which is the family? this is expressed in deeply problematic ways in various customs and conditions. It?s not a class point; studies show that urban middle and upper-middle-class India treats girls much in the same way as rural India does – secondary compared to the boys. From their very childhood, boys are encouraged to be outgoing, aggressive, are greatly encouraged to take up sports and basically develop a healthy work-life balance. With girls, there?s an inward push: the youngest girl child in the family will have been schooled on how to sit, not to laugh too wide, to be demure by the time she reaches seven. Boys get footballs as gifts while girls are made to take up musical instruments or dancing classes.
However, as children, the ropes may still not have been bound too tight. But by the time they reach puberty, all bets are off. An immense amount of repression regarding proper sex-education and information decontextualizes the changes that teenagers go through during this time. The lack of proper infrastructure to address issues such as sex, mental health, social obligations and academics at this immensely formative synapse culminates in a slew of emotional turbulence, confusion, and crime. Families go up in arms trying to police their daughters ?when she gets back home from tuition, who she stays out with, what she wears, what she thinks. They drive their sons to reach academic excellence; they drive their daughters not to bring ?dishonour? on the family name.
Differences in academic opportunities
The point about academics is important because the male academic endeavour is still prioritized over that of the female. However, annual figures from state and national education boards alike show that female students have consistently performed better than their male counterparts over a 5-year period. A study conducted by IIM Indore finds: ?According to a 2008 government report, educational statistics indicate that the number of girls per 100 boys is around 80% for classes up to the VIII and a little over 70% for secondary higher education that covers classes up to XII. Secondary education generally covers children in the age group of 14-18 years, which are roughly 88.5 million people according to the 2001 Census. However, enrolment figures show that only 31 million of these are attending school.? As a result of this, higher education sees slumps in female enrolment every now and then.
Career Development
From here, it?s a springing board to a new set of problems: career development. In accordance with its claustrophobic patriarchal mores, Indian society tends to push its boys to establish a successful career while it discourages its girls and demonizes those who don?t listen. The report further goes on to clarify: ?Some of the barriers to women’s education are sociological, rooted in gender stereotyping and gender segregation and others are driven by economic concerns and constraints. A consequence of gender profiling and stereotyping is that women tend to participate more in programmes that relate to their domestic role. In institutions of higher learning, women are more inclined to enroll in courses traditionally considered more suitable for them such as arts and education, but less in courses related to science and technology. Likewise, enrolment in vocational and technical fields has been male-dominated.?
The career-oriented, coolheaded girl, rising to be CEO through diligence and perseverance, is deemed to be flawed, seen as a ?non-marriageable? type, considered as an authoritarian personality terrorizing hapless employees. They are slut-shamed; their successes are seen as their failures to conform to societal mores. It is clearly laid out to the girl that marriage, children, a family, and conformity are her ultimate goals in life, and any attempt to step outside the circle would be met with brouhaha. This patriarchal ideal that the Indian society makes every generation stand up to has cultivated a deep-seated neurosis in its very fabric, which often breaks out in violence. The meteoric rise of sexual violence against women is just one of the many symptoms of this problem.
Should one lose hope?
However, it must be kept in mind that the issues this article deals with are slowly and steadily on the mend, more so in urban India. Due to various sensitization drives and a push to develop greater infrastructure and awareness, various sections of the society have set the ball rolling on the tentative measures to follow to reach our goal. Most importantly, we should not let these challenges blind us to the greater positive experience of growing up in India: the sun-drenched winter afternoons, the extended family reunions, the feverish festivities, the big fat Indian weddings and the general wonder of experiencing such a vibrant melting pot of cultures up so close.
Featured Image Source: Visual Hunt
Live News Daily is a trusted name in the digital news space, delivering accurate, timely, and in-depth reporting on a wide range of topics.