Storms comments : I’ve just read your article about Chapwala (sp?) after following the link in the Pakistan Forum. ‘The lady’ is intellectual, articulate, expressive, fluent and technically gifted…. I knew all these things before I read the article….. what I realised after reading the article was that she’s also very beautiful.
Intelligent and attractive men are few and far between. Intelligent and attractive women are also few and far between.
I think I’ve stumbled on such a rarity, when I refer to ‘The lady’ I’m not talking about Chapwala(sp?) I’m talking about our very own Zahra.
Vah, I’m impressed with the article. Keep it up.
Storms.
P.S. I still have forthright views and am learning more about Islam everyday. A few months ago I used to read practically no namaaz, now I read ¾ a day. My life is genuinely changing and I’m really looking forward to marriage. No doubt we’ll continue our little disagreements on the forum…. but that doesn’t mean I don’t respect you.
There was no need to show Kalpana in bad light by calling her 'childless married woman.'
Journalists are taught in colleges that they should strive to connect the story with the 'average people.' Perhaps the detail 'childless married woman' was an attempt to arouse interest in the readers of India where it is quite uncommon for a woman to be married and not have children as she focuses on her profession. So, arguably, Kalpana, an Indian women who went to space is as interesting as an Indian women who got married and chose not to have kids to advance her profession.
I do not think the journalists meant any thing bad to her; all they wanted was to keep the story interesting.
Regards, Shaukat Khan, MBA
Jayan comments : Professional, Technical skills and talents are beyond the separation line of genders. So this article is pertinent in the scenario that Zahra noticed.
Zahra comments : Shaukat: Thanks for your thoughts. I found the remarks on her simply out of line. The reviews by the media will also be read by her family and of course by her husband as well. If someone does not have kids, you do not point that out to them. This kind of crass and ridiculous mentality may be prevalent in the subcontinent where people start asking the newly marrieds upfront when they are going to have kids without realizing that it is none of their damn business. The media should have behaved more decently. There ought to be some difference amongst people on the street, gossip-mongers,educated and enlightened beings. Period!
Storms: I would appreciate if you stick to the topic under discussion and avoid personal remarks. They are simply not appreciated. Also, your reference to your religious practices and your marriage is your personal business and has nothing to do with the article under discussion.
I did not mean to be oversensitive, but coming from the subcontinent myself and knowing the mentality very well, I could see and feel certain things asap. And, probably as a senistive person, I could read between the lines the mindset which I abhor to the last core. Thanks for being able to relate to where I am coming from. Regards.
Monica comments : Zahra comments : I found the remarks on her simply out of line. The reviews by the media will also be read by her family and of course by her husband as well. If someone does not have kids, you do not point that out to them. This kind of crass and ridiculous mentality may be prevalent in the subcontinent where people start asking the newly marrieds upfront when they are going to have kids without realizing that it is none of their damn business. The media should have behaved more decently. -------------------------------
After following the coverage of Kalpana Chawla's death, I still did not know about 48 hours after her death whether she was married or not. I cannot agree that the media focussed more than was necessary on her marriage. (The way her parents were harassed by the media is extremely deplorable; but that is not the issue here as Zahra's article has not talked about it.) I was a bit curious and did a google search for 'Kalpana Chawla husband'. If some media reports mentioned that she was married and had no children, there is nothing wrong with it. Zahra's charge that only the Asian media talks about the children of the deceased is not even wrong. Go through the obituaries in London Times any day and more often than not, a mention is made of the spouse(es) and the children of the deceased.
It is the western world that has got its values wrong and Asians have followed it like the dumb idiots they are. There is no need for the wives of American Presidents to show their teeth wherever their husband appears. This has induced a mindset which gives more prominence to spouses than is necessary.
When a woman in her early 40s meets an untimely death, one naturally wonders about her children. I don't know what all the fuss in Zahra's article is about. (About Storms, please ignore. The one-line explanation was enough. If Zahra doesn't even know him, a stronger disassociation on that line would have been more effective. If Storms is a known quantity, just ignore the moron.)
As regards people in the subcontinent asking couples about kids, it often shows genuine concern on their part. The western culture takes the stuffy view that a person's personal life is nobody else's concern and can be lived in a vacuum. I am not saying that the topic about a couple's kids is always handled with sensitivity in India (or Pakistan) but it is unfair to paint it only in black colour and, by implication, portraying the Western way as ideal.
You certainly have a point here. I only spoke about "my observations" and what I did not like. You are more than welcome to highlight your observations. But keep in mind that I am talking about what I felt and how I saw that.
There are two main points that I tried to address.
Some did not mention her marriage at all. The ones who did not bring up her marriage did so probably for they did not want to acknowledge that she was married to someone outside of her own community. They wanted to probably portray another picture there. That was ridiculous. As an adult and enlightened woman, it was her prerogative to marry whoever she wanted to.
Those who who mentioned her marital status put in parenthesis that she was childless. I did not like this absurd remark. If you read someone's bio and they mention their marriage and have NO mention of kids then it is obvious that they do not have kids. If someone has a kid or many kids, why would not they like them to be acknowledged ? But if they don't have one, I do not know if they would like that to be brought out or announced. I wanted to see a little sensitivity there. I feel like creating a "fuss" over that. No one has the right to comment that being an Indian Woman in her 40s she did not have kids since she pursued a career. This is a plain rubbish argument in my "sensitive" approach. It's a couple's prerogative to have or not to have kids. What if they could not have kids? I did not want to go there, but reading many viewpoints I had to bring this up.
The point I loved the most was how she assisted other children who may have the same dream she had. That says something about her. She did not have to have kids in order to be socially accepted in that "so-called damn ideal world" that has certain notions associated with women and their biological clock.
Simple.
PS: I detest when certain things are automatically assumed of women. Each person is a separate entity and has to be taken in that stride.
Kind Regards.
Dn comments : It is quite possible that Kalpana Chawla did not want to have children because she wanted to pursue a demanding career. I don't see any insensitivity in mentioning that she had no kids. And I don't agree that no mention of kids automatically implies absence of them. Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence. An explicit mention that she had no kids is much preferrable to suggestions through winks and nods that she might have had no kids. I won't jump to the gratuitous conclusion that the news reports which mentioned that Kalpana Chawla had no kids were insensitive. When her career was being profiled, there was never any (obsessive) dwelling on her personal life. If the media was obsessed about it, the topic of her having no issue would have been raised again and again during her life. The media deserves the benefit of doubt in this case.
I see you are playing the devil's advocate here. I do not disagree with your arguments except for your take on "sensitivity" part.
"Absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence."
(Beautiful!) Theek Hae but this is not applicable to everything in life. Is it?
"When her career was being profiled, there was never any (obsessive) dwelling on her personal life."
I think there WAS indeed significant emphasis on her background. We can separate both personal life and background for the sake of clarity.
"The media deserves the benefit of doubt in this case."
OK. Your rationale certainly strengthens your case and the conclusion, but my way of seeing this particular episode brought out what provoked me to write.
Regards.
Zb comments : Zahra: A real nice article - subjective and objective too.
How many times we feel that things should not appear in the media the way it is portrayed but time and again it appeared the way the media people like it to appear - and they claim that it is the way people want to read - The media works for people and people need not the plain stories but with certain MIRCH MASALA so that is where commercialism come into light and news is diverted or distorted into various directions for various interest groups.........and there exists no MORAL
Zahra - I am not playing devil's advocate. I have never had much more than a passing interest in the Kalpana Chawla story. But after her death, I did wonder whether she had children or not. I noted that she didn't have any. End of story. I think there is no need to see any evil motive on the media's part in the mention of that fact. The media cannot control your or anybody's way of seeing things. You should just pause to consider whether the media has any justification for its way of 'seeing things'. If it does, it deserves the benefit of doubt. If its true motives are evil, you will surely get a chance to expose it sooner or later. But your case needs to rest on more solid grounds than an eagerness on your part to see in the media's behaviour a reflection of some of the (arguably) nasty traits seen in the Asian societies.
Thank you for an equally enlightening perspective. And that's where I am coming from. We all have our own perspectives and we see things in the light of those. I do not agree with everything you have stated in your previous note, but I do appreciate the points you brought up. And, since they were very well put together therefore out of sheer respect I would not argue on them :) Just to mention that I did not ignore those points, but the sensitive me could not help creating a fuss over something that bothered me. I do not expect everyone to feel the same or be bothered in the same way. They may be cut out completely differently than I am.
Zb: Thank You. I do not know if it's nice or not so nice. I do know that I was real mad at a few things I read and I sat down with my broken laptop that needed to go out for repair and started punching in the keystrokes. So, I just wrote this in the heat of the moment. The heat is still there and I am glad to point out a perspective that is often times viewed very differently. Women are not so sheer and easy to understand. They have to be understood. Just like any other human being. But often times there are preconceived notions associated with their persona and I would always always always stand up against those. Regards.
Thanks for the compliments but don't let them stop you from disputing anything I might have said in my posts (the last two, this one and the future ones).
Yet again, if you do not like something, you still owe it to try to view the issue from other angles. I like very few films. But of the remaining lot of junk films, I won't ban or condemn all of them just because I don't like them.
There are films which I like. There are films which other sensible fellows like but I don't. There are films that are garbage but which have a right to exist. If there are people stupid enough to waste their time and money on them, what do I care? There are SOME films, very few, which are harmful (for various reasons) to the point that they should be banned.
Use the above analogy to view the media reaction to Kalpana Chawla and the mention of her having no kids.
You didn't like it. That itself is a wrong reaction according to me. But I won't attack the reports which decided to ignore that point. And you shouldn't attack the reports which decided to address the point. If you want to accuse the media, the onus of proof lies upon you. If you can't prove that the motives were unarguably vile, you have no case. I don't know the media's true motives. I do know that mentioning the deceased person's relatives is common practice. You may nurse a suspicion about the media's motives. But proof by suspicion is never acceptable.
I would even say that many organs of the modern media (Prannoy Roy's NDTV or newspapers or even SAWF) have many women on the staff. Their male staff interacts with the women all the time and (overall) the working environment for the women is far from hostile. It is this media, often women-dominated, that mentioned that Kalpana Chawla had no kids. That is the standard practice; it is not hostile to women. You were wrong to allow it to upset you in the first place. If the media were wrong, I would not have been able to marshall any arguments which might make sense to you. When a 41 years old astronaut, of any sex, dies in an explosion, the question about his/her kids is raised as a matter of natural curiosity. Those old hags in Lahore, aged above 70, whom you have allowed to upset you, are often smarter than you realise, thanks to their experience of the world.
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Zahra comments : DN: Thanks for letting me know your future intentions. There is a saying that a da'naa'(wise)critic is better than a nadaa'n(foolish)friend :)
I like the above myth.
Take Care.
Zahra comments : Without belaboring my point on the media's projection, I would like to point out the following that said it all in my article.
"Personally, I found it very derogatory regardless of the intent."
Thanks.
PS: I will be ending this with some additional thoughts that are still lingering in my mind. I want to do that before Anita gets the next issue of Sawf up and running.
Niru comments : I wish Kalpana had children. Intelleactual people should definitely have children to pass on their genes to generations to come. In fact they should have more children than others. Sadly its just the opposite in our subcontinent.
DN comments : In a post, Zahra had commented : Without belaboring my point on the projection by the media any further, I would like to point out the following that said it all in my article.
"Personally, I found it very derogatory regardless of the intent."
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And that, exactly, makes your accusations untenable.
A dacoit tries to murder a man. He injures the poor man seriously and runs away when he meets resistance. A doctor tries to save the injured man but does not succeed.
So, regardless of the doctor's intent, he (the doctor) can be said to have killed the poor man. After all, the dacoit had only injured him and even had the courtesy to go away, thus giving him a chance to save his life. Correct?
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Zahra comments : DN: Sorry where you made sense you made sense, where you are not making sense I do not intend to waste my time going back and forth. By the way, you have a weird way of introducing yourself in the following:
" those old hags in Lahore, aged above 70, whom you have allowed to upset you, are often smarter than you realise, thanks to their experience of the world."
DN comments : Your article advises the media to realize that 'a female engineer is an engineer and her potential is not determined by her biological clock and who she opts to marry'. I see no evidence that the media does not realize it. You have not provided the evidence at all. 'I felt that way' is never a satisfactory argument and yet you have used it repeatedly. As I said, an angry relative of a dead man may accuse the doctor of muredering the man. Why should I agree with that accusation or your accusation against the media? Someone had mentioned on the forum that the media even mentioned the males to females ratio in Haryana. That was certainly uncalled for. But a mention about her marriage and her kids is in keeping with the general practice followed around the world in obituary columns. So you have no case to get upset there.
Monica has argued against your statement : 'If someone does not have kids, you do not point that out to them. This kind of crass and ridiculous mentality may be prevalent in the subcontinent...' I agree with her argument that 70 years old hags who ask such questions are often moved by good intentions towards the couple instead of pure desire to poke nose. I just put it in my own method using different words. If you find the statement weird, good luck to you. But I have sympathy for the old women (the hags in Lahore or Kolkata or Delhi or any Indian village).
If somebody has laughed at you for some reason in June 1995, I think you will always suspect him of laughing at you on all future occasions when he laughs, never mind that he might be laughing at something genuinely funny. And if the media has upset you by its crassness on some unrelated occasion in Nov 1998, I think you will always suspect it of being crass when it is just following the standard procedures, like mentioning about the husband and the kids of the deceased. The stronger my examples of your unfairness to the media have got, the more uncomfortable your replies have become. Why don't you just tell us how the media can be accused of crassness in this case? If you don't have a case, just forget your earlier charge and move on. Every person should be ready to reassess his/her position if new arguments are forwarded in a debate. But it requires an open mind.
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Zahra comments : As this article will be leaving the scene pretty soon, I would like to conclude my thoughts with some unsaid points.
All women do not think alike and all women do not opt for the same route in life. Most of the ambitious ones(being one myself)have a vision that they like to focus on. While pursuing that they may not opt for the same route that any other woman would take. That includes not having kids or not being married by a certain age. And, that's fine!!!
What matters the most is where the individual wants to see herself vs. how the society desires the individual to lead her life. And, that's where I would certainly commend Kalpana and all the others following the same mantra. You have to be driven by your own aspirations. And, you have to be passionate about certain things in life that provide you with the spark to reach out to others and make a difference in their life. Many with kids are completely caught up with their own kids and don't have the luxury of time and initiative to even consider what Kalpana was doing. By saying that I do not want to imply that people should stop procreating and start reaching out to others only or people with kids are callous and have no heart to help out others. I just want to point out a certain way of thinking and its results. I am positive that her efforts to encourage and motivate the children from her school would not go wasted. Young minds like to find role models and mentors. And, if they are successful in finding such figures, often times those figures stay with them for the rest of their lives. The sad part is that none of us know how long we will be around to multiply the flame of drive, compassion, and desire to learn. And, that's where our helplessness as a human being kicks in. No control on our entry and exit. Well, thank you Allah Ta'ala for giving us the right perspective.
I am reminded of one of my childhood role models, my father's late chacha jaan, a professor of chemistry. Whenever he visited us, he'd go at length discussing the various experiments that were in my curriculum; and always leaving me with too much to contemplate on. There was something very unique about his persona and his depth of knowledge. I opted for chemical engg. for he had somehow inculcated in me that flame to learn more on the subject. It's something else that later on I realized that was not the only area my curriculum focused on. Chacha Jaan was no longer amongst us by the time I had graduated. Putting myself in the shoes of those kids, I wished that chacha jaan was alive for I wanted to discuss quite a few concepts and my findings over the course of my own growth.
Lastly, Kalpana has all my respects for following a non-traditional path. And, that's what I loved the most about her persona.
Zahra comments : While reading the translation of Bhagavad Gita, I came across the following and could not resist quoting:
"Those who seek their own pleasure and ignore the needs of others have wasted their lives.
Strive constantly to serve the welfare of the world; by devotion to selfless work one attains the supreme goal of life."
Some of your crticism of the press is case of Hypersensitivity ,as a woman.Childbearing is an important function of woman & will always remain so.We may not want to know how many children a male astronaut has although from responsibility point of view it is. In being equal to men why woman needs to give up her feminity & all that is unique to her .Make up ,motherhood breast feeding, nurturing ,nursing .
Do you really want to see a unisex or gender neutral world ??I would hate to see that happen no matter what.Nothing is worth more than being a woman who will always be DIFFERENT but Equal to men
Zahra comments : Sunidhi: I am not arguing at all what you have brought up. And, I do not believe in women becoming like men when they are at different professional roles as doctors, engineers, lawyers and technologists. Women's role as mothers is also not in jeopardy or questionable since that is a role assigned to them my Allah Ta'ala and not anyone else. You are reading my thoughts from a completly different lens. In fact, I think you are way off in your interpretation.
This piece is an account of personal observation and did not bring up everything on the face of earth pertaining to women and the role they play in this world.
It only focused on paying a tribute to a person who is no longer around and bringing up two points that stood out.
Probably, the next article on SAWF's ezine should talk about:
- Women: Equal Opportunities vs. Equal Rights Or - Women: Roles, Choices & Options Or - Educated Women: Roles and Responsibilities Or - Professional Women Mentors Or - Professional Women Role Models Or - Women as mothers and professionals
Zb comments : Zahra Women's role as mother if not performed with professional care can never produce generations who can lead but produce generations without vision, creativity and advancement SO it is in itself a role which should be recognized and acknowledged NOT by sons and daughters but by Nations
Zb comments : Zahra Any good reason to remove you picture?
Zahra comments : Dear Zb: I feel like chanting in a trance mode requesting anyone who reads this heartfelt commentary,
Dear Logo, Mujhae Mut Misunderstand Karo, Mujhae Mut Misunderstand Karo :) Mut Misunderstand Karo
I completely concur with your statements. Point is that this is not professional women vs. mothers or should women become mothers or not.
I have immense love and regard for my own mother who is a working woman, a professor. She has been my mentor and friend in all aspects of my life with full faith in me, so I can never think of letting that role disappear from planet earth or letting the value of that role be ever undermined.
Oh, how annoying it is to be misunderstood! :(
Moizullah Tariq Malik comments : As usual a good reading material - not only the article but the material available on comments and explanations My regards
