A tale of two women

Sunanda Pushkar and Valerie Trierweiler; and the many parallels between their stories

Two women have dominated the headlines over the last couple of weeks. One of them is Valerie Trierweiler, the now former First Lady of France, whose first public appearance post her separation with Francois Hollande at a charity event in Mumbai created quite a stir. The other is Sunanda Pushkar, the tragically deceased wife of Union minister Shashi Tharoor, who graced the columns of page three while she lived and was splashed all over the front pages after being found dead in a five-star hotel room days after she had ‘outed’ what she believed was an affair between her husband and Pakistani journalist, Mehr Tarar.  

But while their stories played out many thousands of miles apart, the parallels between the two women are all too apparent.

Both had been married twice before, had kids from their second marriages (three sons for Valerie and one for Sunanda), before finding love a third time around. Both were strong independent women who took pride in being successful professionals, Valerie as a senior journalist for Paris Match magazine and a television presenter and Sunanda as a businesswoman (her declared assets included several flats in Dubai valued at 93 crores; and that was just part of her wealth). Both resented being perceived as arm candy for their powerful husbands. When Paris Match put Valerie on the cover calling her Hollande’s ‘charming asset’ she tweeted her outrage “Bravo Paris Match for its sexism. My thoughts go out to all angry women”. Sunanda, for her part, ascribed the IPL scandal in which she became embroiled as an emblem of the sexism and misogyny of the Indian media.

Both wanted a strong identity for themselves in public life. When Hollande was elected President, Valerie declared that she was not going to be ‘une potiche’ (French for trophy wife) and would have her own agenda in the ‘Madame Wing’ of the Elysee Palace. Sunanda, too, didn’t believe in mincing her words while going against the declared position of the Congress party on such contentious issues as Section 370, which she maintained discriminated against Kashmiri women, both Hindu and Muslim, on property rights.

Unfortunately, the central irony of the lives of these women was that despite their best efforts to project themselves as public entities in their own right, both found fame only because of the men they married/lived with. It is hard to believe that national TV channels would have interviewed Sunanda Pushkar and sought her views on political issues if she hadn’t been married to Shashi Tharoor but was just another attractive, successful, late entrant on the Delhi social scene. And certainly, Valerie Trierweiler would not have been invited to Mumbai to promote a charity if she was just another French journalist and not the partner of the President of France.

Another striking parallel is how both suffered, albeit in different ways, because of Twitter. Valerie sent out that now-infamous tweet, supporting a rebel candidate in a French election against Francois’ previous partner, Segolene Royal, because of her pathological jealousy of her former love rival. Segolene lost the election but Valerie lost in the court of public opinion, and many now believe that may have marked the beginning of the end of her relationship with the President.

Sunanda’s indiscretion on Twitter was even more explosive. She sent out a series of messages on her husband’s Twitter account to ‘expose’ his alleged affair with a Pakistani journalist, Mehr Tarar, whom she dubbed an ‘ISI agent’. Tarar responded in kind. Tharoor hastened to clarify that his account had been hacked. Sunanda was having none of that. She gave interviews to insist that she had sent out the tweets in question. And a messy situation got messier and messier.

Sadly, both Sunanda and Valerie found their private lives unraveling in a spectacularly public fashion around the same time. But while in Valerie’s case, it was Closer magazine that revealed that her partner had been cheating on her with a French actress, Julie Gayet, Sunanda’s privacy was invaded by Sunanda herself. And while Valerie survived her heartbreak despite being rushed to hospital after ‘taking one pill too many’ (according to some reports in the French media), Sunanda was found dead in the Leela Hotel of what was described (as I write this) as a possible drug overdose.

What lessons can we draw from the lives of these two women, who lived, loved, rose and then fell dramatically in the public gaze?

Well, first off, don’t hitch your wagon to a man, no matter how much you love him (as Valerie insisted to the end that she did) or how much he worships you (as Tharoor clearly did). Relying on or reveling in the status you derive from a relationship is a dangerous business, no matter how glamorous and desirable it may seem at the time. So, don’t sacrifice your career for a ‘job’ from which you can be fired at any time without any due cause.

And secondly, remember that it’s called ‘private life’ for a reason. It is not supposed to be for public consumption. Because while people may express faux sympathy for you, once your back is turned they will be pointing and laughing. Until, of course, the laughter turns into tears.

Kitchen Confidential

Why is the woman who cooks dismissed as downtrodden while the man who cooks is seen as emancipated?

Growing up, I never once saw my father enter the kitchen. He did not know how to cook; in fact, I doubt if he even knew how to make a cup of coffee for himself. The kitchen was always the exclusive preserve of my grandmother, my mother, and the other ladies of the household. The men never ventured inside; no, not even to fetch themselves a glass of water.

It may sound strange now, but this was pretty much the state of affairs in every home. Women did the ‘womanly’ things like cooking, cleaning, serving, fetching; yes, even the ones who held down jobs outside of the home. And men did ‘manly’ things like go out to work and bring back the daily bread (to be toasted and buttered and served up to them with a strong cup of tea). Men were very much the hunter-gatherers. And women remained nurturers and carers.

There were some men of our acquaintance who knew how to make a decent mutton biryani or a chingri malai curry, but their excursions into the kitchen were treated as momentous events that were marked down in the calendar months in advance. And even then, they were assisted by a flock of women who did all the dirty work – peeling, chopping, cleaning – for them. Once the mise en place was set, the men would sweep in to do the frying, sautéing, roasting or whatever else. And then, they would sweep out leaving the kitchen in an absolute shambles, to take their place at the dining table to be served like the kings they were.

I am glad to say that things have changed since then. Men no longer treat the kitchen as alien territory. Nearly all of them know enough cooking to be able to feed themselves in the absence of a mother or a wife. And many of them actually enjoy cooking, and take pride in their achievements behind the stove. But even so, based on purely empirical evidence, the bulk of the cooking in most households is still done by the women (either the lady of the house or the hired help).

What intrigues me, though, is how cooking has become another battleground of sexual politics. New-age feminism seems to think that a working woman who still cooks (or is expected to cook) at home is downtrodden, the victim of an age-old patriarchal system that decrees that the kitchen is a woman’s preserve. She is buying into sexual stereotypes and letting the sisterhood down with every perfect chapatti she rolls out.

On the other hand, a man who works outside the home and comes back to cook for his family is seen as an enlightened being. We even have a name for him. He is called the New Age Man. He is confident of his masculinity and not afraid of being in touch with his feminine side. He does not buy into any kind of sexual stereotyping. He is equally at ease in the boardroom as he is dexterous at the chopping board. We should all be so lucky as to end up with someone like him!

So basically, a woman who loves to cook for her family is a sell-out. But for a man, cooking for his family is a unique selling point. Can you figure this one out? No, me neither.

Why should the same impulse – to nurture and feed your loved ones – be seen through two such different prisms depending on the gender of the person concerned? Why should a woman be mocked for doing something that a man is congratulated for?

Clearly, as we enter into the second decade of the 21^st century, gender stereotyping has come full circle. But while men are admired for stepping out of their gender-defined roles, women are pilloried for staying within them.

I can still hear the jeers that greeted Sunanda Pushkar Tharoor when she admitted on national television that she enjoyed being a housewife and cooking dinner every night for her husband. How could she possibly say something like that, her critics tut-tutted. Didn’t she know that women were expected to be emancipated from housework now? Being a woman of substance meant having a career outside the home. Admitting to being a homebody, and worse, confessing to cooking for your husband (and actually enjoying it!), was a complete no-no.

And yet, I am sure if the tables had been turned, the public reaction would have been quite different. If Shashi Tharoor had said in an interview that he loved going back home after a hard day at the office and rustling up a nice meal for his wife, he would have been hailed as the epitome of the New Man, an ideal that every male should aspire to.

What is going on here? Why is Sunanda’s goshtaba or tabak maas bad while Shashi’s meen moily or avial is good? Why this double standard when it comes to appraising a primal desire: the impulse to cook for those we love?

The truth is that all of us are good at some things and rubbish at others. Some women enjoy the prospect of cooking for their families while others wouldn’t be caught dead before a stove. Similarly, some men love the idea of cooking while others steer well clear of the kitchen.

So, here’s a novel idea. Why not allow each one of them to do as they please – and what pleases them – without any value judgement? That’s not asking for much, is it?

Sexism? Not quite

The Shashi Tharoor-Sunanda Pushkar controversy is about many things – sexism is not one of them

Sexism is real. It is dangerous. It is shameful. And it is alive and flourishing all around us.

It starts even before birth, when families conspire to get rid of the girl child before she has begun to stir in her mother’s womb. It continues into childhood, when daughters don’t get fed as well as sons. It exists in our school and college system, where girls are more likely to drop out of school and less likely to sign up for higher education.

Sexism is endemic in the professional world, where companies are leery of hiring women of child-bearing age for fear that they will take time off to have babies (and for every cold and cough the child has thereafter); where women routinely earn less than their male counterparts for doing the same job; where the glass ceiling ensures that the representation of women in boardrooms across the country is abysmal.

Yes, sexism exists in our far-from-perfect world. And it’s something that every right-thinking person, whatever their gender, must oppose.

But if we are to fight this battle, it is also essential to understand the distinction between genuine sexism that poses a danger to the values of our liberal society and those issues that may involve a woman but are not sexist in nature.

An attack on a woman’s capability, integrity, honesty or decency does not necessarily become sexist just because a woman is the target of scrutiny. So long as the allegations are well-founded, based on facts that can bear close scrutiny, it doesn’t matter whether the target is a man or a woman. This is about accountability not sexism.

Take the recent brouhaha over former minister Shashi Tharoor and his girlfriend Sunanda Pushkar. Right from the moment Lalit Modi posted that now-infamous tweet about the ownership of the Kochi consortium, Tharoor fell back on what can only be described as the “sexism defence”.

The media, he declaimed loftily, could not accept that an attractive woman could also be a professional in her own right. It was demeaning Sunanda to suggest that she was his proxy in this deal, as if she had no identity of her own. She had achieved far more than he ever could in the world of business, blah, blah, blah.

Three days down the line, the lady herself jumped into the fray. Issuing a statement to announce that she had decided to return her sweat equity to the Kochi consortium, she said, “As a woman professional, I am shocked to find how easily parties with vested interests questioned my credentials mainly because I am a woman.”

Er, hang on a minute. Nobody was questioning Ms Pushkar’s credentials because she was a woman. We were questioning her credentials per se. How did someone who was a sales manager in a Dubai firm suddenly land a gig in which she stood to make Rs 70 crores in sweat equity without investing a penny of her own?

Was she a marketing genius whom no one had ever heard of? What made her worth so much money? What did she bring to the table that no other communications wizard/PR person/event manager could?

The answers to these questions made it clear that it wasn’t her professional capabilities that had gotten Ms Pushkar this sweetheart – or should that be ‘sweat-heart’? – deal. It was her closeness to the minister for external affairs (no, I won’t crack the obvious joke) that made her such a desirable party – especially given that he was taking such a personal interest in the outcome of the Kochi franchise bid.

It was the impropriety of a Union minister using his influence in a commercial deal in which his girlfriend – whom he intended to marry as soon as his second divorce came through – stood to benefit that was the issue here. If the sexes had been reversed, the issue would have remained the same.

Nobody is denying that Sunanda Pushkar is an attractive woman if your taste runs to blonde highlights and industrial-strength mascara. But her looks are not the issue here. Nor are her professional capabilities, such as they are. The issue here is that her boyfriend was a minister of the Union government who, by his own admission, had interceded (or ‘interlocuted’, or whatever he’s calling it these days) with the IPL on behalf of the Kochi consortium.

As long as these facts remained the same, anyone in Ms Pushkar’s position would have come under scrutiny. It had nothing to do with her being a woman, or even a glamorous woman, for that matter.

And yet, both Tharoor and Pushkar are pushing the sexism defence down our throats with a certain desperation, even though as reasonably intelligent creatures they must know that this simply won’t wash. And both seem unmindful of the fact that in the process, they are thumbing their noses at the millions of women in India who have to live with sexism every day of their lives – without a pay-out of Rs 70 crores to sweeten the deal.

Sexism is a serious offence. And it is a serious charge to make. So, those who level it should not do so on frivolous grounds – because to do that is to mock every genuine victim of sexism; to make fun of their misfortune; to heap insult on an already grievous injury.