Some years ago, I was in a taxi, driving through Cairo when, at a traffic light, a young girl of about 10 tried to sell me some keychains. When I refused, she pointed to my bindi – the mark on most Indian women’s forehead – and asked for it.
Since it was not the original vermillion powder version but a velvet sticker, I promptly peeled it off and stuck it to her forehead, delighting in her happiness. But the elderly taxi driver was not pleased. He scolded me that I should be more careful about casually sharing a symbol of my faith and was only mollified when I showed him that I always carried a spare sheet of bindi in my handbag.
Remember the scary stories of the Dotbuster attacks in New Jersey in the late ‘seventies and through the eighties’? When Indian women with the bindi were attacked as unwanted immigrants? Clearly, this dot on the forehead attracts a lot of attention – sometimes good, sometimes dangerous.
I wear a saree as my ‘official’ dress in Bahrain and that is invariably accompanied with a bindi on my forehead. I have faced many curious questions about its significance from people of other nationalities but never any hostility. Although the bindi does have sacred significance, the fact is that these days it is a cosmetic accessory. Most people use only the convenient velvet stickers which comes in peel-off sheets.
Imagine my surprise then, that in open-minded Bahrain, where people are encouraged to nurture their unique cultural identity, I came across a private school’s rule that its students should not wear a bindi. It has been classified as make-up and banned. Considering that most of the students in this institution are from the Indian sub-continent this attempt to dissociate them from their culture seems colonial!
To my mind, wearing a bindi is not the same as applying eyeliner or nail polish to school. And when we start nit-picking at the little cultural nuances that round out our lives, we are ‘othering’ people. Instead of walking the diversity talk, we are telling impressionable youth that it is better to eschew any cultural differentiators and that they need to blend into a faceless crowd. During festive times, does this same school ask its girl students not to apply henna, I wonder?
My husband and I often look around us and see that we are the last from our group of ‘eighties non-residents to still be staying in Bahrain. We go to get-togethers and the people are millennials of our children’s age. When they hear that we have stayed in Bahrain for more than 40 years, they are astonished. But this is a land where we can feel safe in our diversity and have all the resources to follow our dreams. So, the years have been weighed only with joy and fulfilment.
To keep our Bahrain this way, we need to root out petty discrimination. We must all participate willingly and joyfully in making the space for each other to bring our culture to the fore while respecting the overarching heart and compassion that marks Bahraini national identity.
meeraresponse@gmail.com
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