Sati and my Son’s Granny

We know about a lot of social customs that once existed. 
We are relieved that many of those have been discontinued 
– often after a lot of fight or struggle. 
But do we really see them up close – as real? 
Do we ever approach the what-if..?

Watching the television can be trying. Movies have too many advertisements, the news time has very little news, and so on. Given that one cannot stick to Discovery or History all the time, watching movies that one has bought becomes a good way out. And so, one fine evening, we – father, mother and the eight year old son - find ourselves watching Aamir Khan’s Mangal Pandey: The Rising.

The story is such that we have to pause now and then to answer the little boy’s questions. Why were Indians fighting for the British, how could Mangal be friends with Gordon, was Gordon real or the director just put him in the story… and so on.

The movie reaches the point where Gordon, with Mangal’s help, rescues Jwala from the horrible fate of being burnt as sati. So one sees a pyre being readied, Jwala being brought to the pyre and made to sit on it, and her dead husband’s head being put in her lap.

I see two little eyes growing bigger, with questions, with fear. I think hard. Do I stop the movie then and there, or do I explain what is going on. How old was I when I heard about these practices, I find me asking myself. And I remember that I didn’t only know about how women were treated back then through the literature that I had read as a kid, but that the Rupkanwar episode had happened when I was exactly eight, and I had a strong opinion on the whole affair. 

And so I decide to pause the movie and explain the on goings to the boy.

Focused he listens to the explanation about the custom. How it was an accepted practice, how it was always revered, often desired and of at times even forced. How during the British rule some British and also some Indians fought hard to stop it, and how it was finally banned by law. I see thinking wheels moving really fast, the facial expressions undergo rapid changes, before the familiar look is in place on the kid’s face.

Relieved that the sati talk has gone fairly well, we un-pause the movie. Barely a minute into the movie, the kid says, “At least one nice thing the British did with this sati custom”. 

I am about to say something about the contribution of Indian thinkers and activists, but he continues, “Otherwise I would never have been able to meet my granny”.

I just hug him... that is all I can do at that moment.

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