December 15, 2023 • 28 mins
What determines who we love and desire? Is it just down to personal preference? Or isn’t it rather ingrained in our minds through what we learn and see growing up and through pop culture all around us? And when it comes to love and relationships in India: aren’t societal forces shaping the way we love much more than we’d like to think?
In this episode of Love Matters, host Leeza Mangaldas explores these questions and many more with the help of Christina Dhanuja, Writer, Researcher and Convenor of the Global Campaign for Dalit Women. They also tackle questions like - how does endogamy shape the way we see what is deemed desirable and how do power imbalances based on caste affect the real-life experiences of interpersonal relationships and can they be addressed? And much much more.
Leeza Mangaldas’ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leezamangaldas/
Christina Dhanuja’s Website: https://christinadhanuja.com/
Credits:
Produced by: Patricia Szilagyi (DW), Charulata Biswas (IE)
Research & guest acquisition: Sana Rizvi (DW)
Project Manager: Sonja Kaun-Trenkler (DW)
Editorial Support: Shashank Bhargava (IE), Khyati Rajvanshi (IE)
Executive Producer: Melanie von Marschalck (DW Life & Style), Anant Nath Sharma (IE)
Sound Editor: Suresh Pawar (IE)
Love Matters with Leeza Mangaldas is a cooperation between The Indian Express and DW, Germany’s international broadcaster.
Learn more about DW:
https://www.facebook.com/dwasia
https://www.dw.com
In this episode of Love Matters, host Leeza Mangaldas explores these questions and many more with the help of Christina Dhanuja, Writer, Researcher and Convenor of the Global Campaign for Dalit Women. They also tackle questions like - how does endogamy shape the way we see what is deemed desirable and how do power imbalances based on caste affect the real-life experiences of interpersonal relationships and can they be addressed? And much much more.
Leeza Mangaldas’ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/leezamangaldas/
Christina Dhanuja’s Website: https://christinadhanuja.com/
Credits:
Produced by: Patricia Szilagyi (DW), Charulata Biswas (IE)
Research & guest acquisition: Sana Rizvi (DW)
Project Manager: Sonja Kaun-Trenkler (DW)
Editorial Support: Shashank Bhargava (IE), Khyati Rajvanshi (IE)
Executive Producer: Melanie von Marschalck (DW Life & Style), Anant Nath Sharma (IE)
Sound Editor: Suresh Pawar (IE)
Love Matters with Leeza Mangaldas is a cooperation between The Indian Express and DW, Germany’s international broadcaster.
Learn more about DW:
https://www.facebook.com/dwasia
https://www.dw.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
I'm Lisa Mangeldas, and this isLove Matters, and today I'm in conversation
with Christina Danoja about cast, desire, and gender with a focus on lived
experiences. Christina is the co founderof Taleth History Month, and much of
her work is focused on challenging theexisting narrative around Thaloth women. In fact,
she's currently working on a book aboutThaloth women and the fullness of life.
(00:28):
Christina's work has spanned several continents,and today she is joining me from
New York. Welcome to Love Matters. Christina is so glad to have you
here. Thanks so much for havingme, Lisa, It's lovely to be
here. I wanted to start witha quote that I read in one of
the articles you wrote that really reallystruck with me. I'm just going to
read it to you. It wasabout your early experiences while dating in college,
(00:51):
when you assumed that cast identity wassomething that wouldn't matter, and you
wrote, I believe love conquered everything. I couldn't have been further from the
true. I'd love for you toexpound on that, because I've been so
sort of moved by how personal andcandid much of your writing is you always
draw from your lived experiences, andyou know, as the reader, I
(01:11):
find that's so powerful. I believethat quote is from this essay that I
had written, one of my firstessays titled Swipe Me Left. I'm dulleth
and this was commissioned by gender Itwherein we were trying to look at how
technology and cast and love and romanceall came together within the context of an
(01:34):
interpersonal experience, the context being me. I mean, how else do you
write, right like? You baseyour thoughts and your articulations on personal experience.
But that's particularly true and extremely valuablefor dull women authors and dullt women
(01:55):
writers, because there are no precedentsout there and around, say, for
example, around desirability and love andhow that sort of became what it is
today, influenced by pop culture,by history, by conversations around us,
(02:15):
and how do you really make senseof all that. I started off with
this understanding that love is the mostpowerful emotion that's out there, that is
going to heal all of us,that is going to conquer everything, as
the court said, and with love, nothing can come in between, whether
(02:37):
it discussed or class or any sortof power differential is not going to hold
a candle before true love. Butwhat is true love really? Right?
And for me, as a youngThummer person who grew up in the nineties
(02:57):
with cinema that continue to glorify Ilove and in various ways, I just
assumed. I mean, I grewup in a very regular, dullth Christian
family that had its own set ofyou know, own set of restrictions influenced
by both Christianity as well as youknow, cast rules and a whole bunch
(03:23):
of limits that were imposed upon me. But nonetheless, I think when I
first encountered love, romantic love,I assumed that it's all going to be
great, because it is love afterall, only to realize that there are
so many other aspects to it.Right. There's of course the caste,
(03:45):
which is which is the way Indiansociety, most of Indian society functions,
But beyond cast there are also otherthings with which cast interacts. So initially,
while it was a very disappointing experience, I would tell myself that,
you know, everyone goes through thesethings. This is a struggle, And
(04:10):
funnily enough, every time I wasat that depressing juncture of rejection and you
know, trying to get past that. I would be I would be given
a quote, or a quote wouldjust appear of people saying you have to
open up to love because you know, do that again, because go all
the way. Love is a struggle, and there's a whole bunch of influential
(04:33):
quotes that's floating around us. Andthen I would take another step and I
would be like, Okay, maybethis would be different, Maybe this would
be different. And so it justwent on for years together till the time
I realized that, you know,this is probably not a me problem.
And I personalized every rejection and everycondescension and every experience of use as something
(05:00):
that is problematic about me. Butafter years and years and years and knowing
that you are knowing yourself and beingso self aware and doing so much work
on yourself, at some point intime you have to realize. And that
happened to me, and I'm reallythankful that it did, because at some
point I said, this is probablynot a me problem. This is a
(05:25):
systemic issue. Not always do wetalk about it that way as far as
love is concerned, as far asromance is concerned, but this is probably
a systematic systemic issue, and fromthere on, I think I also set
a lot of personal boundaries, andI'm really glad I did that because where
I am today is in an extremelyhealthy relationship which is so accepting and so
(05:51):
beautiful that the only regret I haveis why didn't this happen sooner that I
could have spent longer with this person. I will certainly ask you more about
your husband. He's a lucky man, but I also wanted to just hop
on this idea of systemic forces thatshape our dating behaviors and our desirability and
(06:15):
who we desire. Just sort ofwithin that article as well, you spoke
of how your Savarna friends, forexample, had quite different experiences. But
I want to take a step back, and I want to sort of and
this is also a learning that I'vehad in the recent past since I wrote
that piece. I want to sortof point out that it's quite understandable why
(06:42):
we go into this traps of lookingat everything within a Savanna versus dull it
binary, But that's not always howthings play out in reality. Right Like,
theoretically speaking, it's easier to sortof into that binary, but in
reality, people are living very complexintricate, overlapping, you know, overlapping
(07:08):
lives and are having different sorts ofexperiences depending upon who they are and how
they look and how they carry themselves, who they interact with. So there's
it's it's really confusing and complex andintricate that goes beyond the Savarna binary.
So I would like us to understandtwo things. One is that I think
(07:31):
within Indian society, South Asian society, or any society that is heavily cast
conterered, regardless of whether it iswithin a romantic context or not, we
ascribe value to individuals, collectives,families, and communities based on cost.
(07:53):
That is the primary determinant to howwe ascribe value to people. Perhaps it's
happening subconsciously in some cases also consciously, but mostly it's not at the in
the front and center of our brains. Rather, what we are looking for
our markers we have constructed consciously orsubconsciously, and like you say, we
(08:16):
don't talk about it, but itis there in our minds about who this
ideal is. So when all ofus have a certain value, there is
someone who holds the highest value,or a collective or a group of individuals
that are a five on five ora ten on ten, how muchever we
(08:37):
want to ascribe the final value is. So we have an ideal in mind,
and I think within particularly within romanticcontexts, we have decided as people,
not through a conference or whatever,but over a period of time,
we have decided that this ideal willbe someone who is of a certain body
(09:01):
shape, of a certain skin color, of a certain hair texture, of
a certain you know, class location, of a certain class location. So
there are these markers that point toa certain ideal. So yes, Indeed,
in my article I talk quite abit about you know how Savannah friends
(09:24):
of mine had a different sort ofa journey when it came to their romantic
relationships. And this was something thatI often noticed is that they would they
would they would have their you know, fun, their whole pays or whatever,
but that would have very less impacton at least the generation that I
grew up in. I have noticedwith dullet people, and particularly with dullt
(09:46):
women, who I feel are underwho are pressured to meet different standards,
higher standards of morality and chastity,and that was also a survi well tactic
for them because they were at riskof facing cars, space, sexual violence,
at work or anywhere else, andso they would put on these very
(10:07):
austere masks, or perhaps they wereaustereo themselves. So it's partly coming from
there too, But again I thinkexternally too, there is a lot of
pressure for the women to be tobe a certain way in order to be
accepted as you know, as normal. So to say, well, that's
(10:28):
not the standard that most Saverna womenor most Savarna people have to seem to
be abiding by. So I wouldlove to hear about, you know,
how your experiences have been, andyou know, what are some of the
experiences that you went through, orany observations that you've noticed as to how
Savarna people approach this. Would youwould you agree with what I said or
(10:50):
would you would you differ? Wouldyou think that your observations have been,
you know, starkly different from whatI have mentioned. I think growing up
I wasn't sufficiently aware of my ownprivilege, and I think that I only
really began understanding the realities of casteand how my own social landscape maybe participated
(11:16):
in the sort of inequalities that existin our society much later on. And
I suppose that that is a factorof being from an oppresso cast group.
To have the fantasy of you know, I don't know cast or cast doesn't
exist in my life is something Isuppose only people who are some form of
(11:37):
oppresso cast can experience. So,I mean statistic of observation that's really stood
out for me is the fact thateven in twenty twenty three, only five
percent of marriages in our country areintercast. For me, I mean,
marriage is just an institution that doesn'tresonate. You know. I was that
person. I was this person whenI was growing up thinking that I was
(12:01):
never going to get married. Marriageis a really evil institution. It probably
is, and a whole bunch ofother things, you know, very very
classic feminist in that sense. ButI also realized while I was getting married,
and while I was during my searchof finding the person, while I
was going through the preparations for thewedding, I also sort of realized how
(12:28):
different, for the lack of abetter word, how different my situation is,
my reality is, and by extension, the reality of a lot of
Dalath women, particularly dulleth women.Yeah. I wanted to say dull women
and men, but then I don'tthink perhaps this does not fully apply to
(12:48):
Dallat men, but particularly with dullethwomen. How our situations are different in
the sense that it demands a certainlegitimate relationship in order to exist in the
society, in order to live fullyin society. And so this is not
to say that all dullth women mustget married, or it's better that all
(13:13):
dalt women get married. That isnot what I'm saying. What I'm saying
is that I don't think making achoice. And this is something that I
realized through my experience of reality visawe The liberal theory that I was trying
to ascribe to was that I shouldnot be ashamed to make a choice,
(13:37):
that is that I make for survival, that I make for living a better
life than what my ancestors did.And I don't want dullth women. And
I say this as I'm saying thisto myself. I don't want dullt women
to be pressured into making decisions,whether it is promarg or you know,
(14:01):
anti marriage, to be making thosedecisions based on an artificial based on not
artificial but based on a just aentirely theorized cerebral sort of a standard.
Because what is the alternative. Soin my case, that's how I went
(14:22):
about it. Can I really AndI remember being this massive fan of this
book called The New Single Woman,which was written by a white author.
Perhaps you've read it. It wasan amazing book. It spoke about it
gave really practical tips around you know, how do you create a full life
if you choose not to get married. And I was like, damn it,
(14:43):
this is this is what I'm goingto do. This is this is
the person I am, the Newsingle Woman, and this I would be
doing at a time when, youknow, in the midst of extremely abusive
relationships with extremely horrible castest men whowere condescending, who were castists, who
are racist, who are everything thatyou would not want to be with.
(15:07):
And I would tell myself that theseare the things that I would be doing
because that's what I'm destined for.I can't have a relationship and therefore I
would need to be doing these things. And the things that this author spoke
about was having a very strong friendscircle, you know, a set of
things to do, being creative,being passionate about things, finding ways to
(15:33):
be sensual and sexual whatever that meansto you. And finally, to have
some sort of a relationship with theyounger generation, whether it's through your church,
or through your work, or throughyour extended family, whatever it is.
But all of these things need toexist for us to survive. Like
(15:56):
we need that community, we needthat infrastruateructure, that emotional infrastructure to survive
if particularly if we are choosing nomarriage. And I don't think that infrastructure
is always available for DULLT women,and at least it was not available for
me. So I all that I'mtrying to say is that it's it's it's
(16:18):
it's very interesting. But I thinkfor DULLT women, particularly cast marginalized women,
who are under resourced, and byunder resource, I don't just mean
material resource sources, but also emotionalresources, psychological resources. I think it's
okay to get married. I thinkit's okay not to get married. I
think it's okay to do anything thatyou need to be doing to survive,
(16:42):
to thrive, do what you needto do in order to know in order
to get by. Can we alsotalk about the beautiful photographs behind you?
It's you. One is about yourwedding, Yes it is. I want
to hear about how you met yourpartner you'd be willing to share. Ben
is truly a gift and every andI'm not exaggerating at all. There are
(17:07):
moments when I think, did thisreally happen? Like is this real?
Am I going to wake up fromthis dream? And I and I feel
like my brain goes on an overdrivein terms of anxiety, because it's not
able to handle happiness. It's notable to handle this much peace in the
relationship, this much love. It'snot able to handle it because it's like
(17:32):
something's going to go wrong, Something'sgoing to go wrong. And that's how
anxiety works, right, Like it'sif you're going to bombard your brain and
your body with so much trauma,particularly trauma that comes from interpersonal relationships.
Of course, trauma, I meaninterpersonal relationships is the biggest source of trauma,
(17:53):
but particularly romantic interpersonal relationships. Wherewe've been with I've been with people
who have been extremely condescending, notjust about my social location, but about
my family, my skin color,my body shape, just rejection all out
and just all the time, incessantly, constantly different kinds of rejection, but
(18:21):
while being fetishized sexually and so tobe in such a situation like all the
time for years together can really dothings to your brain, Like your brain's
like, what's happening? Is isthis true? Is this? Is this
for real? Is this person forgood? You know, there's a whole
(18:45):
bunch of things that that that yougo through as a as a battered person,
And it's really embarrassing to talk aboutrejections all the time, Like I
want to be able to talk about, you know, how attractive I am,
and how charming I am, andhow what a what a goddess I
am in bed like I would liketo talk about all of those things.
(19:06):
I would like to position myself thatway rather but to but to have experiences
that seem to be taking a higherpercentage in your life, which is of
rejection and condescension and trauma, it'squite embarrassing at some level. But going
back to what you asked about benUh, the way we met and the
(19:26):
way ben Uh narrates the story isthat it was love at first read,
which I find very cheesy, butin truth, that's how we met.
He he was preparing towards a piecethat he needed to write about about diversity
(19:48):
caspace diversity within the development sector.He was a William J. Clinton fellow
at that time with the American IndianFoundation, and he wanted to interview someone
who had approached this topic. Buthe wanted to interview a dullth woman,
and so he just went about lookingfor that person and he found me and
(20:11):
he slid into my DNS in truemillennial fashion, which I didn't see for
three weeks, and then I didand it was this really beautiful, you
know paragraphs, these beautiful paragraphs aroundwhat he has felt as a dullth man
looking for romance and you know,and by the way, I would like
(20:34):
to interview you for a piece thatI'm writing. And so we got talking
and then he wrote the article thatgot published. But I felt something,
I guess. I was in Beijingat that time and he was in India,
and so I was like, hey, what's up, how are you
(20:56):
doing? And he came down tome me in Beijing, and he was
very sure of it. Initially Itook some time to ease into it,
but there was I remember this particularmoment at work. I wanted to come
(21:18):
back home to him and I waslike, wait, this feels this feels
very different, and this feels sobeautiful, like I hadn't felt that in
a really, really long time,and I think at some point during that
evening I knew this was my person. Thank you for sharing that. And
since we've been talking about you know, what makes someone desirable or why and
(21:45):
how we end up feeling desire?What do you see as the most desirable
qualities in a partner? I thinkthis person who can sort of see you
in your most embarrassing, most awkward, most really pathetic state and still be
able to love you. I thinkthat to me is the most desirable quality
(22:08):
in a partner. And it's greatto have chemistry, it's great to have,
you know, attraction, like theI forget the name of that character,
but she was the protagonist of thefirst season in Bridgeton, who then
talks to her brother in the secondseason and tells him that if this is
(22:32):
the person that you can't even thinkwith, like sorry, If in the
presence of this person you're unable toeven think, then that's love and that
limerence is great and it's so funto go through that. But eventually,
in a long term relationship such asa marriage, or such as a monogamous
(22:56):
or even in a committed polymorous relationship. You will have to get to a
point where you must be vulnerable tothis person. You have to show parts
of yourself. There is no suchthing as I won't change for you.
I mean, there's no such thingas that we change. We evolve,
We change for our people, Wechange for the people that we love,
(23:19):
and they change for us. Andwe make people change. We force people
to change based on our behaviors andour and our demands. And so all
of this really needs to come together. And this person, this partner,
needs to needs to be needs tohave the grit and the resilience to go
(23:41):
with you through that. And Ithink nothing, nothing but that can cut
can constitute desire for me. Thankyou for sharing that. That was beautiful.
And now, as we conclude thisinterview, given it so much of
your work revolves around changing the existingnarrative around cast and desire, I want
to ask you what you think.Too many of us too often get wrong
(24:06):
in our approach. I think oneof the things that we have to be
cognizant of is that we haven't evenbegun to scratch the surface around broadcast experiences
feel like and look like when itcomes to love and romance and sex and
(24:27):
sex positivity and sexual sexuality. Ithink we are only beginning to do that.
And I'm also a little apprehensive abouthow much Western language and Western articulations
we borrow from and they may notnecessarily always be applicable to South Asian contexts.
(24:55):
And so there's definitely a need fornovel thinking. There's definitely a need
for creating a body of work thatis original and authentic and very much based
on our experiences, our experiences,and that is the best that that I
(25:18):
think is the most is the rightway to go about approaching this, this
this whole thing. Uh, thisis not to say that we that we
completely ignore everything that you know,Western articulations have taught us. There's a
lot to gain from it. Thereis, there's black feminist thought, there
(25:41):
is indigenous women's thought, like,there's just so much to gain from all
of that. But at the sametime, I think there's definitely space for
us to sort of, you know, create our own thinking and articulate our
own experiences and create a body ofwork that's authentic and original. Secondly,
(26:06):
I think it's not so much aboutwhat people can do, but it's also
about how they can be like,how does cast apply like, for example,
instead of thinking about how caste isaffecting and having consequences in cost marginalized
people's lives, maybe it would bea good thing to sort of flip that
(26:32):
and talk about how caste is enablingyou to have power and access and capital
social capital within interpersonal relationships. Andthat sort of thinking and that sort of
articulation is definitely important and very muchneeded from uppercast people, from people who
(26:55):
occupy privileged, uppercast locations. AndI think that is going to sort of
revolutionize the way we are approaching allof these things, because it is also
deeply disheartening to constantly think about justcast marginalized lives. When you're thinking about
cast it's very tiring and it's veryvery exhausting to be doing that. So
(27:25):
I think there's definitely that bit thatwe need to take into account. Thank
you for sharing that. Thank youso much. I really thank you,
really really grateful that you could dothis with us today. Thanks so much
for having me, Lisa, itwas wonderful talking to you, and thank
you for tuning into love matters.If you'd like to read more of Christina's
(27:45):
writing, as well as more abouther work. We're going to leave our
website in our show notes. Wealso would love it if you shared this
podcast with your friends, read itwherever you're listening, and left us a
comment with your thoughts. You canalso write to us at Lovematters at DW
dot com. Lovematters is produced bythe Indian Express and DW Germany's international broadcaster.
(28:08):
I'm Lisa Mangeldas and I believe LoveMatters
I'm Lisa Mangeldas, and this isLove Matters, and today I'm in conversation
with Christina Danoja about cast, desire, and gender with a focus on lived
experiences. Christina is the co founderof Taleth History Month, and much of
her work is focused on challenging theexisting narrative around Thaloth women. In fact,
she's currently working on a book aboutThaloth women and the fullness of life.
(00:28):
Christina's work has spanned several continents,and today she is joining me from
New York. Welcome to Love Matters. Christina is so glad to have you
here. Thanks so much for havingme, Lisa, It's lovely to be
here. I wanted to start witha quote that I read in one of
the articles you wrote that really reallystruck with me. I'm just going to
read it to you. It wasabout your early experiences while dating in college,
(00:51):
when you assumed that cast identity wassomething that wouldn't matter, and you
wrote, I believe love conquered everything. I couldn't have been further from the
true. I'd love for you toexpound on that, because I've been so
sort of moved by how personal andcandid much of your writing is you always
draw from your lived experiences, andyou know, as the reader, I
(01:11):
find that's so powerful. I believethat quote is from this essay that I
had written, one of my firstessays titled Swipe Me Left. I'm dulleth
and this was commissioned by gender Itwherein we were trying to look at how
technology and cast and love and romanceall came together within the context of an
(01:34):
interpersonal experience, the context being me. I mean, how else do you
write, right like? You baseyour thoughts and your articulations on personal experience.
But that's particularly true and extremely valuablefor dull women authors and dullt women
(01:55):
writers, because there are no precedentsout there and around, say, for
example, around desirability and love andhow that sort of became what it is
today, influenced by pop culture,by history, by conversations around us,
(02:15):
and how do you really make senseof all that. I started off with
this understanding that love is the mostpowerful emotion that's out there, that is
going to heal all of us,that is going to conquer everything, as
the court said, and with love, nothing can come in between, whether
(02:37):
it discussed or class or any sortof power differential is not going to hold
a candle before true love. Butwhat is true love really? Right?
And for me, as a youngThummer person who grew up in the nineties
(02:57):
with cinema that continue to glorify Ilove and in various ways, I just
assumed. I mean, I grewup in a very regular, dullth Christian
family that had its own set ofyou know, own set of restrictions influenced
by both Christianity as well as youknow, cast rules and a whole bunch
(03:23):
of limits that were imposed upon me. But nonetheless, I think when I
first encountered love, romantic love,I assumed that it's all going to be
great, because it is love afterall, only to realize that there are
so many other aspects to it.Right. There's of course the caste,
(03:45):
which is which is the way Indiansociety, most of Indian society functions,
But beyond cast there are also otherthings with which cast interacts. So initially,
while it was a very disappointing experience, I would tell myself that,
you know, everyone goes through thesethings. This is a struggle, And
(04:10):
funnily enough, every time I wasat that depressing juncture of rejection and you
know, trying to get past that. I would be I would be given
a quote, or a quote wouldjust appear of people saying you have to
open up to love because you know, do that again, because go all
the way. Love is a struggle, and there's a whole bunch of influential
(04:33):
quotes that's floating around us. Andthen I would take another step and I
would be like, Okay, maybethis would be different, Maybe this would
be different. And so it justwent on for years together till the time
I realized that, you know,this is probably not a me problem.
And I personalized every rejection and everycondescension and every experience of use as something
(05:00):
that is problematic about me. Butafter years and years and years and knowing
that you are knowing yourself and beingso self aware and doing so much work
on yourself, at some point intime you have to realize. And that
happened to me, and I'm reallythankful that it did, because at some
point I said, this is probablynot a me problem. This is a
(05:25):
systemic issue. Not always do wetalk about it that way as far as
love is concerned, as far asromance is concerned, but this is probably
a systematic systemic issue, and fromthere on, I think I also set
a lot of personal boundaries, andI'm really glad I did that because where
I am today is in an extremelyhealthy relationship which is so accepting and so
(05:51):
beautiful that the only regret I haveis why didn't this happen sooner that I
could have spent longer with this person. I will certainly ask you more about
your husband. He's a lucky man, but I also wanted to just hop
on this idea of systemic forces thatshape our dating behaviors and our desirability and
(06:15):
who we desire. Just sort ofwithin that article as well, you spoke
of how your Savarna friends, forexample, had quite different experiences. But
I want to take a step back, and I want to sort of and
this is also a learning that I'vehad in the recent past since I wrote
that piece. I want to sortof point out that it's quite understandable why
(06:42):
we go into this traps of lookingat everything within a Savanna versus dull it
binary, But that's not always howthings play out in reality. Right Like,
theoretically speaking, it's easier to sortof into that binary, but in
reality, people are living very complexintricate, overlapping, you know, overlapping
(07:08):
lives and are having different sorts ofexperiences depending upon who they are and how
they look and how they carry themselves, who they interact with. So there's
it's it's really confusing and complex andintricate that goes beyond the Savarna binary.
So I would like us to understandtwo things. One is that I think
(07:31):
within Indian society, South Asian society, or any society that is heavily cast
conterered, regardless of whether it iswithin a romantic context or not, we
ascribe value to individuals, collectives,families, and communities based on cost.
(07:53):
That is the primary determinant to howwe ascribe value to people. Perhaps it's
happening subconsciously in some cases also consciously, but mostly it's not at the in
the front and center of our brains. Rather, what we are looking for
our markers we have constructed consciously orsubconsciously, and like you say, we
(08:16):
don't talk about it, but itis there in our minds about who this
ideal is. So when all ofus have a certain value, there is
someone who holds the highest value,or a collective or a group of individuals
that are a five on five ora ten on ten, how muchever we
(08:37):
want to ascribe the final value is. So we have an ideal in mind,
and I think within particularly within romanticcontexts, we have decided as people,
not through a conference or whatever,but over a period of time,
we have decided that this ideal willbe someone who is of a certain body
(09:01):
shape, of a certain skin color, of a certain hair texture, of
a certain you know, class location, of a certain class location. So
there are these markers that point toa certain ideal. So yes, Indeed,
in my article I talk quite abit about you know how Savannah friends
(09:24):
of mine had a different sort ofa journey when it came to their romantic
relationships. And this was something thatI often noticed is that they would they
would they would have their you know, fun, their whole pays or whatever,
but that would have very less impacton at least the generation that I
grew up in. I have noticedwith dullet people, and particularly with dullt
(09:46):
women, who I feel are underwho are pressured to meet different standards,
higher standards of morality and chastity,and that was also a survi well tactic
for them because they were at riskof facing cars, space, sexual violence,
at work or anywhere else, andso they would put on these very
(10:07):
austere masks, or perhaps they wereaustereo themselves. So it's partly coming from
there too, But again I thinkexternally too, there is a lot of
pressure for the women to be tobe a certain way in order to be
accepted as you know, as normal. So to say, well, that's
(10:28):
not the standard that most Saverna womenor most Savarna people have to seem to
be abiding by. So I wouldlove to hear about, you know,
how your experiences have been, andyou know, what are some of the
experiences that you went through, orany observations that you've noticed as to how
Savarna people approach this. Would youwould you agree with what I said or
(10:50):
would you would you differ? Wouldyou think that your observations have been,
you know, starkly different from whatI have mentioned. I think growing up
I wasn't sufficiently aware of my ownprivilege, and I think that I only
really began understanding the realities of casteand how my own social landscape maybe participated
(11:16):
in the sort of inequalities that existin our society much later on. And
I suppose that that is a factorof being from an oppresso cast group.
To have the fantasy of you know, I don't know cast or cast doesn't
exist in my life is something Isuppose only people who are some form of
(11:37):
oppresso cast can experience. So,I mean statistic of observation that's really stood
out for me is the fact thateven in twenty twenty three, only five
percent of marriages in our country areintercast. For me, I mean,
marriage is just an institution that doesn'tresonate. You know. I was that
person. I was this person whenI was growing up thinking that I was
(12:01):
never going to get married. Marriageis a really evil institution. It probably
is, and a whole bunch ofother things, you know, very very
classic feminist in that sense. ButI also realized while I was getting married,
and while I was during my searchof finding the person, while I
was going through the preparations for thewedding, I also sort of realized how
(12:28):
different, for the lack of abetter word, how different my situation is,
my reality is, and by extension, the reality of a lot of
Dalath women, particularly dulleth women.Yeah. I wanted to say dull women
and men, but then I don'tthink perhaps this does not fully apply to
(12:48):
Dallat men, but particularly with dullethwomen. How our situations are different in
the sense that it demands a certainlegitimate relationship in order to exist in the
society, in order to live fullyin society. And so this is not
to say that all dullth women mustget married, or it's better that all
(13:13):
dalt women get married. That isnot what I'm saying. What I'm saying
is that I don't think making achoice. And this is something that I
realized through my experience of reality visawe The liberal theory that I was trying
to ascribe to was that I shouldnot be ashamed to make a choice,
(13:37):
that is that I make for survival, that I make for living a better
life than what my ancestors did.And I don't want dullth women. And
I say this as I'm saying thisto myself. I don't want dullt women
to be pressured into making decisions,whether it is promarg or you know,
(14:01):
anti marriage, to be making thosedecisions based on an artificial based on not
artificial but based on a just aentirely theorized cerebral sort of a standard.
Because what is the alternative. Soin my case, that's how I went
(14:22):
about it. Can I really AndI remember being this massive fan of this
book called The New Single Woman,which was written by a white author.
Perhaps you've read it. It wasan amazing book. It spoke about it
gave really practical tips around you know, how do you create a full life
if you choose not to get married. And I was like, damn it,
(14:43):
this is this is what I'm goingto do. This is this is
the person I am, the Newsingle Woman, and this I would be
doing at a time when, youknow, in the midst of extremely abusive
relationships with extremely horrible castest men whowere condescending, who were castists, who
are racist, who are everything thatyou would not want to be with.
(15:07):
And I would tell myself that theseare the things that I would be doing
because that's what I'm destined for.I can't have a relationship and therefore I
would need to be doing these things. And the things that this author spoke
about was having a very strong friendscircle, you know, a set of
things to do, being creative,being passionate about things, finding ways to
(15:33):
be sensual and sexual whatever that meansto you. And finally, to have
some sort of a relationship with theyounger generation, whether it's through your church,
or through your work, or throughyour extended family, whatever it is.
But all of these things need toexist for us to survive. Like
(15:56):
we need that community, we needthat infrastruateructure, that emotional infrastructure to survive
if particularly if we are choosing nomarriage. And I don't think that infrastructure
is always available for DULLT women,and at least it was not available for
me. So I all that I'mtrying to say is that it's it's it's
(16:18):
it's very interesting. But I thinkfor DULLT women, particularly cast marginalized women,
who are under resourced, and byunder resource, I don't just mean
material resource sources, but also emotionalresources, psychological resources. I think it's
okay to get married. I thinkit's okay not to get married. I
think it's okay to do anything thatyou need to be doing to survive,
(16:42):
to thrive, do what you needto do in order to know in order
to get by. Can we alsotalk about the beautiful photographs behind you?
It's you. One is about yourwedding, Yes it is. I want
to hear about how you met yourpartner you'd be willing to share. Ben
is truly a gift and every andI'm not exaggerating at all. There are
(17:07):
moments when I think, did thisreally happen? Like is this real?
Am I going to wake up fromthis dream? And I and I feel
like my brain goes on an overdrivein terms of anxiety, because it's not
able to handle happiness. It's notable to handle this much peace in the
relationship, this much love. It'snot able to handle it because it's like
(17:32):
something's going to go wrong, Something'sgoing to go wrong. And that's how
anxiety works, right, Like it'sif you're going to bombard your brain and
your body with so much trauma,particularly trauma that comes from interpersonal relationships.
Of course, trauma, I meaninterpersonal relationships is the biggest source of trauma,
(17:53):
but particularly romantic interpersonal relationships. Wherewe've been with I've been with people
who have been extremely condescending, notjust about my social location, but about
my family, my skin color,my body shape, just rejection all out
and just all the time, incessantly, constantly different kinds of rejection, but
(18:21):
while being fetishized sexually and so tobe in such a situation like all the
time for years together can really dothings to your brain, Like your brain's
like, what's happening? Is isthis true? Is this? Is this
for real? Is this person forgood? You know, there's a whole
(18:45):
bunch of things that that that yougo through as a as a battered person,
And it's really embarrassing to talk aboutrejections all the time, Like I
want to be able to talk about, you know, how attractive I am,
and how charming I am, andhow what a what a goddess I
am in bed like I would liketo talk about all of those things.
(19:06):
I would like to position myself thatway rather but to but to have experiences
that seem to be taking a higherpercentage in your life, which is of
rejection and condescension and trauma, it'squite embarrassing at some level. But going
back to what you asked about benUh, the way we met and the
(19:26):
way ben Uh narrates the story isthat it was love at first read,
which I find very cheesy, butin truth, that's how we met.
He he was preparing towards a piecethat he needed to write about about diversity
(19:48):
caspace diversity within the development sector.He was a William J. Clinton fellow
at that time with the American IndianFoundation, and he wanted to interview someone
who had approached this topic. Buthe wanted to interview a dullth woman,
and so he just went about lookingfor that person and he found me and
(20:11):
he slid into my DNS in truemillennial fashion, which I didn't see for
three weeks, and then I didand it was this really beautiful, you
know paragraphs, these beautiful paragraphs aroundwhat he has felt as a dullth man
looking for romance and you know,and by the way, I would like
(20:34):
to interview you for a piece thatI'm writing. And so we got talking
and then he wrote the article thatgot published. But I felt something,
I guess. I was in Beijingat that time and he was in India,
and so I was like, hey, what's up, how are you
(20:56):
doing? And he came down tome me in Beijing, and he was
very sure of it. Initially Itook some time to ease into it,
but there was I remember this particularmoment at work. I wanted to come
(21:18):
back home to him and I waslike, wait, this feels this feels
very different, and this feels sobeautiful, like I hadn't felt that in
a really, really long time,and I think at some point during that
evening I knew this was my person. Thank you for sharing that. And
since we've been talking about you know, what makes someone desirable or why and
(21:45):
how we end up feeling desire?What do you see as the most desirable
qualities in a partner? I thinkthis person who can sort of see you
in your most embarrassing, most awkward, most really pathetic state and still be
able to love you. I thinkthat to me is the most desirable quality
(22:08):
in a partner. And it's greatto have chemistry, it's great to have,
you know, attraction, like theI forget the name of that character,
but she was the protagonist of thefirst season in Bridgeton, who then
talks to her brother in the secondseason and tells him that if this is
(22:32):
the person that you can't even thinkwith, like sorry, If in the
presence of this person you're unable toeven think, then that's love and that
limerence is great and it's so funto go through that. But eventually,
in a long term relationship such asa marriage, or such as a monogamous
(22:56):
or even in a committed polymorous relationship. You will have to get to a
point where you must be vulnerable tothis person. You have to show parts
of yourself. There is no suchthing as I won't change for you.
I mean, there's no such thingas that we change. We evolve,
We change for our people, Wechange for the people that we love,
(23:19):
and they change for us. Andwe make people change. We force people
to change based on our behaviors andour and our demands. And so all
of this really needs to come together. And this person, this partner,
needs to needs to be needs tohave the grit and the resilience to go
(23:41):
with you through that. And Ithink nothing, nothing but that can cut
can constitute desire for me. Thankyou for sharing that. That was beautiful.
And now, as we conclude thisinterview, given it so much of
your work revolves around changing the existingnarrative around cast and desire, I want
to ask you what you think.Too many of us too often get wrong
(24:06):
in our approach. I think oneof the things that we have to be
cognizant of is that we haven't evenbegun to scratch the surface around broadcast experiences
feel like and look like when itcomes to love and romance and sex and
(24:27):
sex positivity and sexual sexuality. Ithink we are only beginning to do that.
And I'm also a little apprehensive abouthow much Western language and Western articulations
we borrow from and they may notnecessarily always be applicable to South Asian contexts.
(24:55):
And so there's definitely a need fornovel thinking. There's definitely a need
for creating a body of work thatis original and authentic and very much based
on our experiences, our experiences,and that is the best that that I
(25:18):
think is the most is the rightway to go about approaching this, this
this whole thing. Uh, thisis not to say that we that we
completely ignore everything that you know,Western articulations have taught us. There's a
lot to gain from it. Thereis, there's black feminist thought, there
(25:41):
is indigenous women's thought, like,there's just so much to gain from all
of that. But at the sametime, I think there's definitely space for
us to sort of, you know, create our own thinking and articulate our
own experiences and create a body ofwork that's authentic and original. Secondly,
(26:06):
I think it's not so much aboutwhat people can do, but it's also
about how they can be like,how does cast apply like, for example,
instead of thinking about how caste isaffecting and having consequences in cost marginalized
people's lives, maybe it would bea good thing to sort of flip that
(26:32):
and talk about how caste is enablingyou to have power and access and capital
social capital within interpersonal relationships. Andthat sort of thinking and that sort of
articulation is definitely important and very muchneeded from uppercast people, from people who
(26:55):
occupy privileged, uppercast locations. AndI think that is going to sort of
revolutionize the way we are approaching allof these things, because it is also
deeply disheartening to constantly think about justcast marginalized lives. When you're thinking about
cast it's very tiring and it's veryvery exhausting to be doing that. So
(27:25):
I think there's definitely that bit thatwe need to take into account. Thank
you for sharing that. Thank youso much. I really thank you,
really really grateful that you could dothis with us today. Thanks so much
for having me, Lisa, itwas wonderful talking to you, and thank
you for tuning into love matters.If you'd like to read more of Christina's
(27:45):
writing, as well as more abouther work. We're going to leave our
website in our show notes. Wealso would love it if you shared this
podcast with your friends, read itwherever you're listening, and left us a
comment with your thoughts. You canalso write to us at Lovematters at DW
dot com. Lovematters is produced bythe Indian Express and DW Germany's international broadcaster.
(28:08):
I'm Lisa Mangeldas and I believe LoveMatters
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