India Uncut
This blog has moved to its own domain. Please visit IndiaUncut.com for the all-new India
Uncut and bookmark it. The new site has much more content and some new sections, and you can read about them here and here. You can subscribe to full RSS feeds of all the sections from here.
This blogspot site will no longer be updated, except in case of emergencies, if the main site suffers a prolonged outage. Thanks - Amit.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Of donkeys and housewives
Before you read any further, I urge you to consider the date of this post: it is not April Fool's Day. This is for real.
Now read these lines:
I can imagine little girls reading that in class and going,"Hee Haw, Hee Haw?"
"What're you doing, useless child?" their teacher will ask them.
They will reply: "Practising."
Update: Rahul Bhaskar and Sushruta Singh write in to say that they believe that the para I quoted was probably meant to be satire. I didn't get that sense from the news report and I've never seen satire in a school textbook, but well, I suppose that possibility exists.
In any case, I don't think donkeys would get the humour.
Now read these lines:
A donkey is like a housewife. It has to toil all day and, like her, may even have to give up food and water. In fact, the donkey is a shade better, for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents’ home, you’ll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master.Such a lovely parody of prevailing attitudes these lines would make if they weren't prevailing attitudes in the making themselves. According to this report in the Times of India, they appear in the Class IX Hindi textbook of the Rajasthan Education Board.
I can imagine little girls reading that in class and going,"Hee Haw, Hee Haw?"
"What're you doing, useless child?" their teacher will ask them.
They will reply: "Practising."
Update: Rahul Bhaskar and Sushruta Singh write in to say that they believe that the para I quoted was probably meant to be satire. I didn't get that sense from the news report and I've never seen satire in a school textbook, but well, I suppose that possibility exists.
In any case, I don't think donkeys would get the humour.
