Christmas and a Middle-Class Mother

 

Christmas and a Middle-Class Mother

 

I have long held the belief that the celebration of Christmas among the non-Christians in India, very much like Diwali and Holi among the non-Hindus here, is to do with finding an excuse for being joyful and participating in a culture of celebration with our fellow Indians. Of Course it also lights-up (literally) a day exactly one week before the new-year’s eve, in the dreary and harsh winters of Delhi.  The year 2020 has been horrendous, more for some than others, and as we tread towards its end, this Christmas becomes even more special than just the secular kind of way in which it was celebrated till now. And by celebration I merely mean a sense of happiness and empathy towards each other, a prayer towards a better future for all, not necessarily attending the mid-night mass or putting up a Christmas tree (though these are also rituals as endearing as any other festival’s, to me). Living in Dwarka, an upper (ish)-middle-class area of Delhi, means that our local-global markets swell up with related merchandise and paraphernalia ahead of any major (or even minor for that matter festival), reminding us to shop, evoking our duty to our economy as a middle class consumers, lest we forget! This year was no different. I observed however, that instead of uniformly and totally putting me off with its crass excesses and in your face grotesqueness, this year, the decorated markets, bursting at their seams, tickled a strand of joy in my heart. Christmas popularly means kindness, forgiveness and love for the fellow humans and this year it is also a reminder of how close we are to the end of this terrible year. Hope glimmered off the reds, greens and whites of the marketplace.

 

As I took a break from assisting my zealous and undefatigable nine year old daughter, preoccupied with preparing for a Christmas party she was to attend that evening, for which the planning and organising among the kids had started many weeks ago, I was rather scandalised by a wats app forward on the group of residents of my housing society. It was a video where a good looking, congenial, young woman, who looked like one of us (many of my neighbours may look like her, I mean, you know slim, straight hair, sweet smiles). She smiled, said ‘namaste’ and went on to ask a question: “As Hindus, should we be celebrating Christmas?” ofcourse, in Hindi. She then went on to, very calmly narrate (still smiling, always smiling) the many atrocities that hindus were subjected to in the past, brought in vegetarianism, love for the environment etc and emphasised that Hindus are made to celebrate this festival in the name of secularism and asked again, “how justified is it, when our religion is in such perils today?” and ended with a ‘jai shri ram’, her hands folded in a namaste. She sat against a backdrop of fairy light, unlit ones, which kept stealing my attention as I waited for them to light up at some point in the video, like the ones in my balcony, which light up at Diwali and are taken down only after new-year; they remained unlit. The scandal in my heart gave way to surprise as I read one of the comments on the video. “Very true!” commented a neighbor, the one whose daughter was hosting the Christmas party that my daughter was shortly going to attend and in front of whose house a Christmas tree has been sitting all decked up since a week now. Was this her moment of enlightenment? Has an epiphany just struck her, courtesy the smiling angel? Or was it something that showed up and eased her sense of unsettlement with a very capitalistic festival, her kids must have (like mine) insisted on celebrating materially. I couldn't stop myself from responding to the video and attempting to disrupt the sense of question and critique it had introduced in an obvious and seamless sense of joy Christmas brought for me. I simply wrote a redeeming message about India being what it is because of all the religions it held together historically and being a unity in diversity - stuff that cannot offend anybody, not retaliating words, just a gesture saying - hey, stop it already, not the place and time! I receive many such messages with communal overtones, everyday on wat app in various groups I am a part of, I seldom respond to them, never ever forward them and usually just take them in my stride as a symptom of our changing times, conforming with the sterility and hopelessness of our class. I was anxious after I responded, trying to gauge if I had invited unpeace and disharmony pointlessly from people who will never see my point of view, in a bid to save my peace and harmony. I shortly received a private message from the group admin, a woman in her thirties, like me. Our conversation went on thus:

 

Her: Cool yaar..kya ho gaya ..itna gussa..its just a forwarded joke. He is elderly so..be little calm..luv

 

Me: Nai nai gussa kahan. Bilkul bhi nahi.

Her: Ab jara kuch pyara likh do

Me: Joke to nahi tha wo. Kya ye joke hai?

Me: No disrespect meant to him per se. Being elderly there's more responsibility on him to fwd messages with caution.

 

(Pause of 10 minutes)

 

Her: Chill sona..

Me: Hahaha

Me: I think u need to chill more than me

Her: Ya

Me: Why r u feeling so bad

Her: I am….Actually i know him personally so.. Feeling bad

Me: Abt?

Her: That's ok

Me: Chill

Her: Yo

Me:

 

We have several socially complex vanguards of soft- nationalism manifested in our daily mundane lives. Here in this case was this woman, a single parent, who lives in a rented flat in our society, jumped in defense of an elderly man, who is the RWA president, a retired Army officer and obviously a staunch Hindu. This is one response I was not expecting from an otherwise bold, independent business woman, who wore her devil-may-care attitude on her sleeve. I wondered about the many layers of this familiarity, the one she claimed with him, the one that provoked her to take offence on his behalf, even with an old time friendish acquaintance. A familiarity which would never make her speak back to him, even most politely or express a different point of view. I wondered at this fused emotionality with inseparable elements of class, patriarchy, paternalism, gender, region and religion. This complex yet common-place opacity which affords and sustains an informed silence and comfortable indifference to the Hindu middle classes of Delhi vis a vis their religious and class counterparts .