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That invisible connection
She was a pretty girl, who looked so vulnerable and sad that it did not take much cajoling from me to draw her out during a long haul plane journey as she was seated right beside me.
- Senior Features Writer
- Published: 00:01 March 16, 2008
She was a pretty girl, who looked so vulnerable and sad that it did not take much cajoling from me to draw her out during a long haul plane journey as she was seated right beside me.
She was the duped bride who arrived in the UK after a mail-order marriage to a doctor of Indian origin only to realise he was callous, arrogant, was having an affair with his nurse and only wanted her to look after his home, cook his meals, please his parents and have children to perpetuate his progeny.
The girl was distraught and she sobbed her heart out to me. I could feel her pain and my eyes were moist as I hugged her and infused her with inspirational advice on how life could be kinder and more stable if she started afresh in India.
That was the first and only time I met her. But that is the thing about us women. In our very first meeting, we are capable of doing away with pleasantries, delving deep down into existentialist issues, crying, sobbing, hugging and sharing the profoundest secrets of our life with complete strangers only because the other person is also a woman.
Singing ballads
A powerful invisible connection makes most women instantly tune in to another of their ilk in hostel dormitories, during long journeys, at supermarkets, beauty parlours and in that instant they become soul sisters.
Female bonding is an oft bandied term but if you have witnessed it first-hand you will know that the superglue for that unique bond wells deep down from a need to reach out to another.
You find that unique bond in the song of the tea-leaf pickers in the tea estates on the hills of Assam, when they sing ballads of lost love, of a married woman yearning for her man away to the city for work... you will find that bond in the songs of marriage when women collectively sing about the sweet-bitter pain of marriage, a rite of passage that takes a girl away from her doll-house and her beloved parents to another home and another family, where she has to transform into a grown up woman from a girl overnight and a million other nuances of married life.
Women sing together because there are many collective pains to be sung about and most of our folk songs celebrate these invisible connections.
Parlour therapy
When women talk, they look each other in the eye, smile, and nod, touch each other's arm and also hug each other. I don't think a man greets another man with a hug at the supermarket. He'd probably shake hands or even nod with familiarity and that's it.
If you are a woman, you'd understand why most women love going to a parlour when they feel the need to pamper their beleaguered soul. The beauty therapist is usually someone who greets you with such familiarity as though she were family.
She is a shrink, sister and adviser all rolled into one, who talks about her domestic problems, gets you to share your secrets and in those moments you forget about your status and existence outside the parlour. You are just another girl in that bunch of girls. In that 'strictly female only' ethos, most women shed their masks and feel comfortable as they joke and banter about everything under the sun, sipping tea and smiling away as they get their hair or face done.
Women can be mean, critical, gossipy and bi****, but if a woman is looking for sympathy, she will always reach out to another woman and not a man.
That's because women have this need to care, nurture and protect more strongly than men. The strands of feminine bonding are fragile, but tensile and taut because the glue that binds them doesn't get unstuck with the passage of time.
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