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Social media can be both entertaining and infuriating. And often there is a thin line between the two. Memes and elaborate jokes about women and their habits are by nature misogynistic but, sadly, men usually don’t realize how offensive and derogatory their posts can be—that something ceases to be a joke when it’s at the expense of another person’s dignity.

Recently, a high-ranking official at a renowned media house in Nepal posted a picture of his wife on Facebook. Propped up in bed, surrounded by tissues, pills, and bottles of water, with a hand massaging the bridge of her nose, it was clear that she was unwell. The caption read something along the lines of ‘The wife has all the symptoms of Covid-19 except loss of smell and is incapacitated. The husband’s daily routine suffers.’ The original text, in Nepali, rhymed. The husband obviously thought he was being clever. The post has been removed but it was a hauntingly good example of how the society still largely perceives its women—as those whose lives are best lived on the fringes of men’s wants, ambitions, and idiosyncrasies.

Senior journalist Ruby Rauniyar says our societal structure is such that women are made to feel less important and valued than men. That is, she says, the reality in many educated, well-to-do families too. There are covert ways in which women are sidelined and treated like the weaker sex. If a daughter is strong, confident, and does well in life, she is called the son of the family. The implication being that men are the heroes and women can rarely, if ever, match up.

“Misogyny starts at home when we differentiate between our sons and daughters, when we have different sets of rules for them because of their gender,” says Rauniyar. Change isn’t easy because we have grown up seeing our mothers bend backwards for their families and fathers being unappreciative of the efforts their wives put in to keep the household running smoothly, often without them lifting a finger.

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Our society’s misogynistic mindset is further fueled by the inequality and unfairness that women bear with in order to maintain peace at home. When women stay silent to avoid conflict, despite their feelings being hurt, they reinforce the superiority complex that most men have grown up with. Psychologist Minakshi Rana says we unknowingly nurse the male ego and give men a false sense of power when we don’t express ourselves.  

“That is why I say you shouldn’t let go of the little things. If you have an issue, speak up. Women are usually guilty of letting things slide. By not holding men accountable for their words and ways, you let them think they are right,” she says. Rana adds that it’s appalling how misogyny often goes unnoticed until the little things add up and become too big to contain. Most domestic issues and relationship problems she has seen in her career stem from men having gotten away with things for far too long till women couldn’t take it anymore. “From then on, a simple joke becomes a taunt and you can’t fix that kind of equation,” she says.

There’s no denying that our society undermines its women. It’s sometimes glaringly obvious in the form of violence while other times it hides behind the façade of jokes and traditions. The subconscious belittling of women is perhaps the worst form of torture you can inflict on them. At most homes and parties, the men eat before the women. After a long day at work, the men demand tea and it is the wives who go to the kitchen, having just put their bags down, to fix it and then start preparing dinner. When a husband does the dishes after the wife cooks, he is ‘helping’ her.

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Rauniyar says women are responsible for all the chores men consider mundane. “If there is a family function or a gathering at home, the women are expected to take a day off from work. The men come home just in time to party,” she says. Most things women do—laundry, dusting, grocery shopping—are considered her duties. She receives no appreciation for it because ‘she is supposed to do it’ and ‘how hard can it be’. Rauniyar narrates an incident she witnessed where the father-in-law berated the daughter-in-law for allowing her husband to work in the kitchen. He said seeing his son cook was humiliating and asked her to handle kitchen work entirely on her own.

Usha Shah, retired as SSP, Police Hospital and currently serving as chief dietician at Grande International Hospital in Kathmandu, says women are dominated everywhere in the world and it’s not something that’s specific to our culture. What’s different is that in many other countries, women are pushing back. Here, we are still so entrenched in patriarchy that many women accept sexual discrimination as their fate, something they have to deal with because their mothers and grandmothers did and taught them to.

As bleak as it sounds, there is no light at the end of the tunnel in this case, says Counsellor Geeta Neupane of The Women’s Foundation Nepal. She says even those who harp about equality in public platforms have this narrow mindset about women and their position in society. Neupane blames years of conditioning for that. It’s not something that’s easy to shrug off, she says. Worse, even women believe they are second class citizens. “If you don’t, then you have to act like it,” she says.

Subservience is expected of women because they are women. No matter how educated men are it doesn’t stop them from exercising that socially- and culturally-granted right. Rauniyar says she has seen doctors and engineers—those we have placed in the highest rung of the social hierarchy—not treating their wives as partners and always imposing their decisions on them. Neupane adds men have a sense of authority that has been handed down through generations. However, that is not to say that there aren’t men who don’t rise above social norms. But they are rare, not to mention people constantly tease them for doing women’s work. “Only some men, the ideal ones, are able to let go of that inflated sense of self and treat women as equals,” says Neupane. 

Members of the Chandrakant (CK) Raut-led Janamat Party are resorting to hooliganism to make their presence felt in Madhes ahead of the impending elections.

The party, which renounced plans to continue agitating for ‘free Mades’ to join mainstream politics, has been taking action against people’s representatives and officials, and this has upset members of the bureaucracy.

“Raut’s cadres are acting like hooligans to create an environment of terror,” says Lal Kishore Shah, mayor of Janakpurdham sub-metropolitan city. “The so-called progressive political parties are carrying out such activities, which will make people question the very foundation of federalism.”

Members of the party recently physically abused Rajeshwor Kushwaha, acting chief of Department of Water Supply and Sewage Office, Janakpur. They accused Kushwaha of not doing enough to fill a manhole in front of Raut’s house at Balawa, Janakpurdham-8, forced him to take off his clothes and paraded him across the city.

The party cadres had earlier visited Kushwaha’s office with bamboo sticks to threaten him to follow their orders.

Various professional organizations have condemned the party’s actions. The engineers’ associations, the government trade union, Nepal Tarai engineers’ society, and Madhesi Democratic Society have raised concerns about the incident.

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Acts like these discourage public servants from doing their job, says Bandhu Prasad Banstola, chief district officer, Dhanusa. “The activities of the Janamat Party have made a mockery of the idea of rule of law,” he added. “These kinds of activities are carried out by underground and outlawed groups, not political parties.”

Raut’s men also manhandled another employee of the city. The cadres also vandalized the city’s office as they were denied an appointment with the mayor or his deputy. Armed with bamboo sticks, they had picketed the chief minister’s office on the same day.

“No political group should think that they are above the law,” says youth leader Saroj Mishra. “Raut himself is corrupt, he sold out his agenda. It doesn’t suit him to speak against corruption,” he says. “First, he should make the party’s finances public.”

Raut, meanwhile, says he doesn’t find anything abnormal about the party’s activities. “The people are fed up with corruption. None of the officials listens to the people’s voices. The executive is corrupt and so is the judiciary. The CIAA is also abeting the corrupt. What should the people do then?” he asks.  

“These kinds of incidents happen even in places where there is rule of law if people’s voices are not heard,” says Raut. He adds that his party plans to launch a campaign against corruption in the city.

The party has also demanded that police release the 17 cadres arrested following the incident involving Kushwaha. “The 17 were arrested as they resorted to hooliganism and assaulted an office chief,” says DSP Jitendra Basnet.

The party has announced plans to organize a series of protests, including motorcycle and torch rallies demanding their release.

Bollywood star Sunil Setty will star in the upcoming Nepali movie ‘X9’. Director Mukunda Bhatt, known for his film ‘Lappan Chappan’, announced the news through his Facebook.

Along with Shetty, Anmol KC, Pushpa Khadka, and Saugat Malla will also be a part of the film that is being marketed as ‘Nepal’s biggest action thriller’. It will be shot in Canada, Nepal, and some European countries. Produced by Golden Hills Picture, the film will be released sometime next year.

There’s some time to go for Tihar but she’s already looking up rangoli designs online. She is determined to craft a bigger and better Rangoli this year. But making a rangoli during Laxmi Puja gets mixed reactions from her family. While her mother and sister enjoy it as much as she does, her dad and aunt think it’s an ‘Indian’ thing—something they learnt from the many Hindi serials they watch. But Swati Thapa, who works for an NGO in Kathmandu, says making a rangoli fills her with a sense of calm. It also amps up the festive vibe at home, she says.

Many homes make rangoli in Tihar, and quite elaborate ones too, but views on whether this is imperative to the way we celebrate the festival are divided. Like Swati’s dad and aunt, many feel it’s a ‘borrowed’ ritual and that we are heavily influenced by the Indian way of doing things. Several years ago, a young boy vented his frustrations on social media. The post read: What is up with Nepalis making rangoli? Are we trying to be Indian?

However, ApEx spoke to over two dozen people who believed there is nothing wrong with emulating rituals and adding to our way of marking festivals. Creating a hullabaloo over such things shows our narrow-mindedness and unwillingness to change and adapt. Tihar, they agreed, is a fun festival and there’s no wrong or right way to celebrate it as long as what we do is safe and sparks joy.

Anjali Rai, diagnostic radiographer, says rangoli creates positive vibes and energy at home. She is all about embracing the good things, irrespective of culture or religion. Rangoli, she adds, is so pretty to look at. It perfectly encapsulates the spirit of Tihar. Dibya Karki, program development manager at CECI Nepal, says rangoli is very much a part of our Tihar decorations too. “When we say it isn’t a part of our culture, we are forgetting that it is an important tradition in the Tarai region of Nepal,” she says. “We celebrate festivals like Halloween and Christmas now, don’t we? There’s no harm in adding rituals to our own culture if we feel like it.”

Though making rangoli might be a relatively new practice in many households, to call it ‘Indian’ couldn’t be more wrong, argues Pratibha Rawal, mother of a five-year-old girl, who loves making rangolis because it’s interesting and engaging. It has long been practiced in the Tarai and even in hilly regions of Nepal, like Kathmandu, where there is a tradition of decorating areas set up for pujas and hawans with colors and flowers. In Tihar, we decorate our homes to welcome Goddess Laxmi. Rangoli is just one of the many ways in which we prep our spaces for that.

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And let’s for a minute assume we have been influenced by Indian culture, what’s the harm in that when it makes us happy? Some might argue that letting other cultures seep into ours will mar their essence but isn’t inclusiveness the need of the hour? Rather than letting cultures divide us, shouldn’t we use it as a tool to bring us together? Indeed, the undivided opinion was that cultures and their merging should be ties that bind rather than tools that create rifts. For Renu Halwai, who is from Siraha and has been working as a house help in Kathmandu for two years, watching her employers make rangoli in Tihar fosters a sense of connectedness and kinship. She feels good and included in the family rituals, she says.  

Bhairabi Ghimire, executive at Chaudhary Group, says rather than harping about what’s borrowed from where and why we could focus on the fact that every rangoli design has some significance or the other. The main purpose of rangoli is to beautify your space while creating positive energy and warding off bad luck. Bhairabi usually makes the swastika, which is a symbol of luck and well-being, or the satkon which is associated with Goddess Laxmi’s Shree Yantra that stands for power and money.

Traditionally made using colored chalk, rice powder, and crushed limestone, most rangolis had a symmetrical design to signify prosperity and good luck. Round designs supposedly have a calming effect. But today, with people experimenting with different patterns and forms, there are many variations of it—from flowers and idols to abstract art. Shreya Joshi, founder of Pinches Artcore Pvt. Ltd, says she makes rangoli primarily because it’s a form of art and she loves it. “Why make a fuss about where it comes from? Art is art,” she says.

On a similar note, Isha Upadhyay, founder of Homemade Flavors, says she finds it therapeutic. Making rangoli, after a day of backbreaking work getting everything ready for Laxmi Puja, helps her relax. “It’s an IRL coloring book, what’s there not to like about it?” she says. The healing effect of art aside, the vibrancy of rangoli lifts your mood too, adds Brinju Thapa, a computer engineer based in Denver, Colorado. For her, Tihar is more than a culture or religious festival—it’s a reminder of how life should be celebrated. Rangoli acts as a cue to appreciate and be grateful for the life she’s been blessed with, she says.

As Avinashi Paudel, mother of two boys and a working professional in Kathmandu, says, there isn’t any culture that is pristine and totally unique. Everything is borrowed and tweaked according to personal preferences. The ability to accept and embrace different rituals even when we can’t understand them—especially if we can’t understand them—is perhaps the first step to a more inclusive society.