India and shopping

My trusty Far Side desktop calendar tells me that today is International Women’s Day. I wonder if the people in India know that. There was a documentary on TV the other night about Indian widows. They are considered ‘inauspicious’ and are sometimes kicked out of the family and shunned by society. I didn’t watch much of it because stuff like that upsets me, but my partner filled me in some of the details. He said that part of the problem is that when a woman gets married over there she moves to her husband’s family, so when the husband dies, she’s like a spare part and her lingering presence can be resented.

I do find it quite hard to believe that an arguably successful civilization should have such fundamental social problems. It wasn’t just a few widows who were being treated like this; it was quite a significant number. I mean, dreadful stuff might happen in a country like Afghanistan under the Taliban, but not many people would want to say it was in any way a successful country at that time. But India? It’s supposed to have an incredibly rich, ancient culture, and now they have an IT boom and all that. And they have fun Bollywood musicals!

For some reason I expect social sickness in society to hold everyone back, financially and culturally. For example, Saudi Arabia has problems in that they have fundamentalist Islam, corruption, a tradition of disrespecting women, and they’re just really ignorant and backward as a culture (feel free to attack me on this – I stand by my comments all the way!). Now sections of their society are trying hard to change for the better, but I think it’s a few centuries too early to call them successful. India is a different story. They may have terrible poverty, but they also have a reputation for spirituality and a culture that even the Victorians respected (they respected the aristocracy, at least). How do they manage that whilst having such problems with their attitudes towards women? And a caste system that punishes people so unfairly? It’s a nation of extremes. Maybe I’m overestimating how successful their culture is.

My boss is away my workload has suddenly lightened up. As you can probably tell from this latest contribution to Western thought achieved during office hours. I am enjoying it because I’ve been very busy at work for the past couple of weeks so I feel I’ve earned a little rest. I keep hearing people leave and it’s only 3:50. Maybe I could leave too. I’d have more fun doing nothing at home than doing nothing here.

Maybe I’ll pop back onto the Topshop website. Nowadays when I’m bored at work I cheer myself up by shopping on the internet. It’s good because I hate shopping in person. On the internet you can shop in the comfort of your own OH&S-approved swivel chair, and what’s more, you can create wish lists to give yourself time to mull over potential purchases before you commit. And it’s the antidote to buying things on credit – you buy before you receive. The best bit is finding the package on your doorstop when you get home from work and you can enjoy unpacking all your goodies with a cup of tea! It’s like somebody has sent you a present! It’s particularly nice when you’ve ordered things all the way from England, things that you can’t get here in Australia. It feels spooky and special.