My Dear Sisterhood

Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State and UN ambassador had made a statement. There’s a Special Place in Hell for women who don’t help other women.

My dear Sisterhood

Do you want to end up in that special place? I heard that special place has a temperature above 450 degrees Celcius, where you will be tandoorified while you keep repeating the definition of Sisterhood and making a promise that you will abide by this definition in your next life.

If you don’t know the definition of Sisterhood, google it up.

Hey Google- what is a sister.

Sisters take care of each other, watch out for each other, comfort each other, and are there for each other through thick and thin. Well, sisters also trust each other, encourage each other to reach for their dreams, and take each other’s professions and intellect quite seriously. And a sister could be your sister-in-law, your mother or mother-in-law, your aunt or aunt-in-law, your friend or friend-in-law, your niece or niece-in-law, or your daughter or daughter-in-law.

Sometimes I wonder if we are specifically aligning our lives to end up in that Special Place in Hell. I am not talking of the big things here. Like – a woman torturing another woman. Or a woman taunting another one for being focused on her job. Or a woman shaming another woman on her choice of clothes. I am talking of small things- like not acknowledging another woman, not trusting she can do a good job, or not respecting her knowledge and opinion.

Let me relate an incident that happened today. I went to the bank- my third follow-up visit on a complaint I had logged. Our dear State Bank of India of “Lunchtime hain baad mein aana” fame. My husband had come with me and we were directed to the Branch manager. The Branch Manager, a grey-haired, soft-spoken lady, took one look at us and addressed my husband. “Sir, how can I help you?” My husband pointed to me and replied that his wife’s account had a problem. I tried to explain the problem, but she kept directing her questions and explanations to him. My efforts to get a word in were royally ignored and she finally told him that she would call him up the next day once the problem got resolved. Call him? Why? I am the account holder!

Now had my husband been a handsome hunk, I would have understood the Bank Manager’s eagerness in talking to him. But her talking to a grey-haired, pot-bellied, middle-aged man who was not the account holder only proved one thing. Madam did not believe that her sister from another mother would have enough brains to understand the issue at hand!

Stairway to that Special Place in Hell, Madam. 450 degrees! Remember?

Lately, my brush or brushes with patriarchy seem to have gone up. And those flag-bearers of patriarchy have been my dearest Sisterhood. Another tale and this time the protagonist is not a stranger but a near and dear relative.

My husband’s uncle and aunt had come to our city for a short visit. One evening, we went to meet them. They were delighted with their excursions around the city. They started describing the metro ride they had taken a few days back. Aunt’s eyes turned basketball size as she expressed how surprised she was to see a woman drive the metro train. She said she was scared to board the train! As the conversation progressed, we understood that she was highly distrustful of women in any job apart from the purely domestic. She categorically told us how she avoids female doctors. She kept saying that women were cowardly by nature, so how could one trust a woman in a power position! All this came from a woman who herself was a graduate teacher and had retired from a government school. Her daughter is a physicist and had studied all alone far away from home!

Fie Aunty Fie! If the Sisterhood doesn’t trust each other, why blame others?

I told myself that these two were aged women. The Bank Manager was around my age and Aunt was my mother’s age. They grew up in an environment where women were primarily homebodies. So maybe that explained their thought and behavior. Maybe the millennials and Gen Zs were more committed to the Sisterhood.

But as I started thinking and my memory flooded with incidents, comments, and treatments, I realized it is not an Oldies thing. This generation is marching with equal speed towards that Special Place in Hell.

Some months back, we had invited a few relations home for dinner. Very soon the conversation steered towards jobs and careers. It was a lovely coincidence that most of the women in the gathering were working women. Our niece started asking, rather started grilling all the men about their careers. What do they do, how’s the money, what are their prospects, and so on. Not once did she ask any of the women about their careers. It was obvious that she did not consider the women’s careers important enough to pique her curiosity.

We have heard terms like mansplaining, chauvinism, misogyny, male-gaze, and sexism and have always attributed them to men. Men not treating women well.

But dear Sisterhood, we are equal partners in this crime. We just HAVE to start being a sister- exactly the way Google defined it. If we do not quickly course correct, that Special Place in Hell and its 450-degree Celcius oven are ours for keeps!