Today is rakhi. I didn't know, naturally. The marketplaces have been strung up with rakhis of all sorts for days, of course, but that didn't tell me when the occasion actually was. So, when, throughout this evening, I witnessed, overdressed and over-stressed women (and girls) of all ages, sizes, and socio-economic strata rushing around, I thought something must be up. And yes, it is rakhi.

I (we, my family) don't celebrate rakhi, or bhai phonta, or any such festival. I have very vague memories of our parents literally dragging my brother and me out of bed at some unearthly time of the night because that was the auspicious moment when I was expected to smear some mixture of stuff on my brother's forehead. I don't remember whether we actually completed the farce (we might well have fallen back asleep in the middle of it), but I do remember our parents muttering that if my brother and I didn't care at all for it, why should they. That was the last time they tried to go through with it. Very wise decision.

Apart from my brother's utter lack of interest in rituals of any sort (genetically inherited, I am sure), there was also the minor issue of me demanding that my brother do all the rituals that I (as a girl) was expected to perform. If I gave my brother a dab of holy stuff on his forehead and muttered incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo, he better be dabbing similarly holy stuff on my forehead and mutter mumbo-jumbo as well. (The mumbo-jumbo, it seemed, was addressable only to brothers; there was no version for sisters.)

When I was older, my mother tried to get me to do the occasional Lokkhi pujo on Thursdays. Initially it was fun--I read the Lokkhi-r Panchali, thinking it was a cute folklore, set up the pujo paraphernalia, etc--but soon I got bored. And then, once again, I realized that my brother has been left out of this. Heated arguments with my mother soon followed.
"Why should only I do it? Dada has to do it too."
"But only girls do Lokkhi pujo."
"Says who? All pujaris are male. Dada should do pujo also."
"Look at X (some cousin sister). She also does Lokkhi pujo."
"I don't care what she does, or anyone else does. I will not do it, if dada is also not doing it."
When things got serious, my father pulled me aside one day and said, "Why don't you just go and light the dhoop and get it over with? Don't have to do anything else. Nothing else."
Hm. Once I realized that even he really couldn't care less about whether the pujo was done or not, or how it was done, I did what he said. And my mother didn't ask me again.

No, I didn't know what feminism was. All I knew was my brother should not be allowed to go scot free while I had to do something I had no interest in.

We (my family, again) have never celebrated (or worshipped) men, like millions of families in India do. I have never understood why the women do it. One of my theories is that womenfolk--deprived of most forms of activities and entertainment that men enjoyed--came up with these rituals to fill their time with. It is similar to the reason why womenfolk also came up with such elaborate and complicated recipes for cooking food; it just kept them occupied for hours on end, giving them a sense of purpose.

Coming to think of it, I wonder how my brother and I would have reacted if we saw our parents go through the motions of something like karwa chauth. I am sure we would have been in splits, holding our sides, laughing, till tears streamed down our faces. And knowing our parents, my mother would refuse to skip even a single meal, while my father would probably crack the wildest of jokes at the mere idea of having some flour-sieve thrust in his face. Bless them both.

No, I don't have much respect for rituals. Some of them can be fun. But definitely not when the whole thing is about only one half of the population fawning on the other half, repeatedly.