Malangba Bangormayum
I have known some wonderful women. One of them is clearly my grandmother who is no more. I saw in her something `“ a something that if a percentage of the human population follows would usher in unimagined peace and serenity. She used to tell me that one need not always try to prove that one is right. She used to tell me that let the other feel that they have won. If you throw stones at one another, there would never be dearth of stones. In the throwing you give ammunitions, you arm the other. Such is the nature of conflicts she told me. May be she had a point though one would suspect her to be naive. Whether she is right or wrong that is another thing, whether one accepts it or not is another thing but it was clear to me that she believed in this strategy of non-retaliation for the greater good. In the extended family situation, there are bound to be conflicts. When these happened she used to try persuasion, she used to reason and entreat. If she knew that these were not going to work, when she felt that temperatures were rising and heat was generated, she would remain silent and let the other feel good in the victory of words instead of letting the heat turn into a spark. I sometimes saw tear-glazed eyes in her smile of concession. She was hurt in such instances, for this unlettered grandmother of mine had a soul that was missed by icy rhetoric and logic.
In one of my cheeky moments, I remember asking my grandmother whether there were romance in her times. She narrated me then, how courting were done during her times. Any man, whether married or unmarried, would visit the house of the girl or woman he was interested in. This revelation came as shock to my system. She went on to say that the elders would welcome, albeit a guarded one, those who came for such visits. The girl in question would offer a smoke `“ and the way it was offered signalled whether she was interested in further visits from the one who was visiting. This story of courting which existed, before the Great War reached our land, was nothing short of a revelation in how it contradicted the censure against boys meeting girls in our times. It made me wonder how such a u-turn in our outlook towards the phenomena of courting happened. I remember asking my father for an answer. He was not very sure how it happened but he suspected that it had to do with the Great War.
During my teenage days I saw boys coming to court, banging the electric poles as signals for the girls to come out. I used to see girls peeping out when motorcycle passed by only to be chided by the elders for such show of indecency. But who can fight courting when nature is on its side. No matter the level and intensity of censure, courting somehow happened. Courting, nowadays, is helped by technology. The mobile phone and the internet seem to be on the side of courting. Long distance relations happened even before these technological marvels. We have heard about love across the salt desert, across the oceans and across the mountains. Who would contest that? What I contend here is that technological advances in communication and transport seem to have helped courtship across countries and nationalities a wee bit easier. It is now not unimaginable for someone from the other side of the globe, say Ireland, to come and court someone here or vice-versa to the chagrin of those who safeguards the modesty of their women.
At the end of the narration of how courting used to be in her times, I asked my grandmother whether she prepared smokes for suitors. She replied in a matter of fact tone that there were many suitors and she did prepare many a smoke but since she was already betrothed, in a sense, which I shall not go into the details here, she made it clear to them that she was not interested in further visitations.
How wonderful it all sounded to me, how civilized it all sounded. One could underscore `civil`™ in `civilized` in the previous sentence. My admiration was for those gentlemen who were not offended by the rejection. They were gentlemen if there ever were such a thing.
Grandmothers tell their grandchildren fairy tales and folk stories. I do not remember my grandmother telling me any bed-time stories or fairy tales. But this story of courting could very well pass off as a fairy tale because they sound too good to be true. And as all good things must come to an end, that magical time when people felt confident in their own skin did come to an end.
Read more / Original news source: http://kanglaonline.com/2014/12/grandmothers-tale/