Even when a friend of an opposite gender comes to their room, the door is promptly closed, without an iota of self-inflicted guilt or overthinking. They close doors to read, to lie, to sit, to study, to talk on the phone, or most often to simply be. It’s almost like they seem to be making up for years of needless shame around the mere act of closing a damn door – these are people who remain behind closed doors all hours of the day, every single day.
They take their closed doors as a birthright just like RCB and its IPL losses. You know what could have prevented this mishap? A closed door.įortunately, millennials get it. In a fit of rage and embarrassment, Draupadi cursed the entire canine race and bound them to a destiny of public mating. All hell broke loose when the second husband walked into the hut in gleeful anticipation. Yet, it so happened that one afternoon, as Draupadi and one of her husbands were in the middle of their romp, a dog carried away the footwear kept outside the hut. Draupadi, wife to the five Pandava brothers had set an unwritten agreement: Whenever, one of her husbands wished to be with her, he had to leave his footwear at the entrance to the hut, to signify to the other four men that he and Draupadi were occupied and shouldn’t be disturbed. Perhaps, the best case for a closed door is in the Mahabharata. When joint families shrunk into their nuclear cells, the haunting question went from being “What will people say? to “What will the kids think?” Waiting for the the suddenly nocturnal children to go to sleep then, was like waiting for Godot.
Then came the next stage: As the couple started a family and grew in age, so did the taboo around closed doors. What’s especially ironic is that despite this hesitation around the idea of closed doors, Indian households also thronged with offsprings. “You do it,” the lady often instructed her man, absolving herself of an impending sin. On most occasions, the couple would even argue over who would close the door. Naturally, couples were coy about this for it was an uneasy, unspoken declaration to the entire family that the couple was “at it”. But closed doors came with strings attached it was a double-edged sword, for the act of closing the door ended up being a public spectacle. Picture a peppy – but prurient – Juhi Chawla in Darr, enthusiastically shimmying around requesting her fiance Sunny Deol to “Darwaza band kar lo”.īack in my time, closed doors were a luxury: Only married couples could relish the privacy of closed doors, solely for purposes of procreation. Think about the clever innuendos they have evoked, like the suggestive “Hum tum ek kamre mein band ho’n” from Bobby, which might just be one of the greatest thirst songs in Hindi cinema. Closed doors is where sinful acts take place. In Indian homes, doors – especially closed doors – hold dark secrets, considering they play such an integral role in a couple ’s ecology. The best symbol of this narrative of interference is the culture of the closed door. For example, a girl may have a personal mobile phone, however it is her family or even the community that decides how she can use it.” Community practices and diktats take over personal choices and ownership. Whenever I read this quote, I can’t help but wonder that the great author had obviously not had a brush with Indians for whom “privacy” barely exists.Īs this Mint Lounge piece on “Privacy and Indian culture ” argues, interfering Indians have no idea about what constitutes a breach of privacy: “There is also little understanding of private life in India where almost every part of one’s life is open to family, community, village, or society.
“All human beings have three lives: public, private, and secret,” said Gabriel García Márquez.
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