Aadha teetar, aadha batair (half partridge, half quail)

I am so tired of being ticked off about how much more my career is affected by being a mother than my husband's is by being a father. Every few months I start to think that I've finally learned to deal with it, and then something throws me into a tailspin.

Fundamentally, of course, the problem is that I'm not really convinced that I should learn how to deal with it. A big part of me thinks that I should change things so that my husband and I have more evenly distributed responsibilities as parents ("The personal is political," etc.). But I also know that it's not something I can do unilaterally. I'm skeptical about how much people's opinions on these issues change with time, so I'm not too hopeful about my husband coming around to my point of view. And so the pendulum goes back and forth.

I think my ideas about gender roles in the home are pretty progressive (or radical, depending on who you ask), even by American standards. When you live on campus at a progressive liberal arts college, you tend to see somewhat unconventional living situations, e.g. stay at home dads whose wives are the breadwinners because they're both happy with that set up. You also end up meeting many couples who are less obviously unconventional, but have far more egalitarian households than is the norm: they both work, they both share the housework in an evenhanded way, they share childcare in an evenhanded way, and it's taken for granted that, of course, that is how things are done. And it is in the quiet taken-for-granted nature of the sharing of labour in which the departure from the norm lies.

So my experience of American couples was this egalitarian one, generally. There were exceptions, but they stuck out. More importantly, the fact of their existence meant that it was possible. Guys who were not "wusses" could, in fact, have the sense of justice to recognize what was fair, and the 'gumption' to step up to the plate and take on the responsibilities that follow from that recognition.

The knowledge that this is possible, that what I have always known internally, deep down in my gut, to be right and fair, actually exists in the real world, made concrete for me things that I considered non-negotiable in a marriage. I wasn't going to accept anymore the arguments I had always known to be weak: "well, it might be fair, but that's just not how guys are," "aisa to nahin hota," "women ALWAYS have to compromise in marriage".

Fast forward to 2009, and here I am, in a situation that is utterly conventional: my husband works an insane 70-80-hour work week, my career has come to a screeching stutter, and I am surrounded by housework (which I have always, and will always, hate. Make that HATE. There are SO many more interesting and rewarding things one can do with one's time.).

And the reasons for this are not entirely external. I would love to be able to blame it all on the sexism of those around me, but try as I might, I can't escape the voices in my own head, the ones that expect me to live up to my mother. I am assailed by guilt because I don't find being a wife and mother as fulfilling as she did, and because I don't want to be as devoted to the home as she was, and the sneaking suspicion that I would never be as good at it as she was. Are all women doomed to this constant tussle?

"..must I be content with discontent...?"

Last night I dreamt of Obieland. It feels like I'm staying at Nikki's, although the place is somewhere on E College St. and hers never was. It's night time, and I decide that I need some groceries, having just gotten into town. Friend M doesn't accompany, because she doesn't see the necessity. So I'm walking into town, but for some reason, my first stop on College St is an Indian grocery store. I'm very aware that I only have about $10 or $15 in my pocket (being short of cash is such a familiar feeling from college), so I ask the store owner for some things, but then tell him I'll be back in a bit. What I really want to do is get to Gibson's. I realise that this Indian store is in the place that used to be Hunan when I first arrived in Obieland, and later became the more upscale version of the Mandarin (can't remember the name, but they used to serve the most gorgeous tiger prawn). After the shock of the restaurant simply having disappeared has worn off a bit, I suddenly realise that Gibson's simply isn't there any more. Even the space has disappeared. Then someone tells me that they've taken over the second floor of the Oberlin Bookstore, so up I go, and the Gibson's counter is there.

I forget what happens after that. I suppose the dream comes from having seen the Conservatory magazine yesterday, and not being able to figure out where it is that they're putting the new Con building. Also, just being terribly homesick for Obieland. It's weird, though. Before, dreams about the US have always been about specific people. Last night was definitely about the place.

I've been working on a post about nazar, and how the concept affects me as a parent, but getting it down in words is more complicated than I had anticipated. So here's a less pretentious post in the meantime. :)

Yesterday, I went to a wedding. Given that it's December in Lahore, and yesterday was Sunday, there's nothing unusual about that. But weddings always inspire reflection for me, because they become an opportunity for armchair sociology.

The most interesting part first: The wedding video was being shot by a woman. And all the catering staff (well, the visible ones, anyway) was female. I've never seen a wedding video being shot by a woman. The still photographers at two weddings I've attended in the US have been female, but never the "video guy." In fact, the term "wedding video crew" always inspires in me instant repulsion and memories of assorted annoying men, of varying degrees of sleaziness. I didn't want a video crew at my wedding, partly for that reason. I've also never seen a whole crew of female servers at a formal event.

But the paradox, which is what makes for real sociological interest (at least for me), is that the wedding was a completely segregated affair. As in, they booked two separate halls at a posh hotel, one for male guests, and one for female guests. So you had women taking on roles that are normally the preserve of men in Pakistan, but for reasons that are totally "unliberated." Like the fact that initially women would become ob-gyns here because women didn't want to go to a male doctor (or the men in their families didn't want them going to male doctors).

So I was quite entertained by that paradox. And the lesser paradox of the female videographer wearing a head scarf, taking video of women who only have their head scarves off because they are in an all-female situation. Most of those women would be very uncomfortable with men seeing that video. And yet it's hard to imagine that the wedding video won't be viewed by at least the close male relatives of the bride and groom.

And then there's the idea that arranging separate spaces is more of a religious duty than avoiding extravagance. I've seen segregated weddings before, but usually they involve putting up a partition in the single hall. I've always been uncomfortable at events like that, particularly since I got married (more on that in a second), but given the strength of people's convictions, and how extremely uncomfortable those people would be in the absence of a partition, I've never sat in judgement on it. But this just strikes me as excessive, and more ostentatious than religious.

Why does it make me more uncomfortable now that I'm married? Several reasons, really, all of them practical. For one, once you're married, you get invited to weddings more frequently (don't ask me why, pondering that one may need to be the subject of a whole different post). So the frequency with which I have to deal with segregated weddings has increased. For another, I get invited to weddings where I don't know anyone, because the person getting married is a former colleague of my husband's, for example. So, there I am at a party that I've only gone to because it's important to my husband, and I can't even sit with the one person there who I know. Third, co-ordinating exits just becomes irritating. Thank God for cell phones. But still, if one of us forgets to take their phone, or it's accidentally left in silent mode with the vibrate function off, or doesn't hear it ring in the hubbub of the reception, then we are simply doomed. Before I was married, this wasn't an issue, because at such an event, I would usually be on my own.

Another time I will expound further upon the subject of weddings in Pakistan, and related idiocies.

(Re)entering the discourse

I've been silent on this blog for a long time. I've never really managed to get it to the point of being a regular thing.

That's at least in part because I've been too busy sorting myself out to deal with the things that have been on my mind in a more cerebral (and therefore, in my world, requiring writing down) kind of way. It would appear that I have cleared up some mental RAM, however. So I am now in a position to take stock of some of the more pointy headed kinds of things that are on my mind.

One is my research, upon which I need to build a masters thesis.

Then there's the state of my countries, and the world in general, which by rights, is not one topic, but occupies the same part of my brain. And since this is my blog, I get to declare it one topic.

And of course, there's the issue of domesticity, and within that, gender relations in the home space, different ways of organizing homes, the dynamics of extended families, and just how to get housework done more efficiently, so that it takes up less time.

Today I'm going to stick to the research part. I still haven't been able to identify exactly what it is that I want to find out, and it's kind of difficult to plan your thesis research without knowing what the question is.

I've decided on a situation that interests me: a private all-boys school, with a female principal. In Pakistan, no less. I have anecdotal evidence that this is a relative rarity anywhere in the world. I have to figure out where to get real data on the numbers, but that's mostly to support my assumption that this is an unusual phenomenon.

I'm interested in this one principal, in particular, partly because she's just cool. But also I see her opinions on what kind of men her students should grow up to be as being kind of counter-culture.

Now I need to flesh out my vision of the Pakistani context with evidence from the literature (if it exists). And I need to figure out how to get at the questions that I'm interested in answering. Articulating those questions would be a good beginning, but I'm struggling with that for now.

What I have so far is this: What happens when a liberal feminist becomes the principal of an elite all-boys school in Lahore?

Now I could compare this with how things were when the principal at this same school was a man, although gathering data on that might be kind of difficult, given our tendency to generate massive amounts of paperwork with little or no coherent organization.

Or I could compare it with a different elite boys school in Lahore, or several boys schools.

Or I could track down other female principals of all boys schools, figure out where they stand on feminist issues, and what their vision of the ideal student is.

Or I could see how everyone else's perceptions of this particular principal have evolved over time, or are informed by her being a woman.

What gets me most excited is the degree of variance of her vision of "good men" with/from(?) the yardsticks that society at large, parents, teachers, and the students themselves use to gauge whether someone is a "good man." And how this variance plays itself out in organizational dynamics, in curricular priorities, etc.

But how do you turn that unwieldy mess into a "real" research question?