Purush : Anubhavatla Aakalanatala

What forms of the larger, wider social structures did I observe in a society called ‘men’? I gradually began to realise that a woman encounters men in different relationships—as grandfathers, fathers, uncles, maternal uncles, husbands of aunts, brothers, colleagues, or even complete strangers. Yet, regardless of the relationship, a man's attitude towards her is shaped primarily by the fact that she is a ‘woman’. In his eyes, her position is invariably inferior to his own.

He is conditioned from childhood to keep her under his control, to consider her inferior to men, and to believe that she has less knowledge of the world and its practical affairs, and a limited understanding of things in general. In particular, among the middle-class milieu in which I grew up, I found very little difference in the attitudes of the middle-class men around me towards women.

Power politics exists throughout society, and men too experience and negotiate power in the world outside their homes. Consequently, the need to believe that they hold authority within the household—and to make the women in the family believe the same—becomes an important psychological need for them.