If you are baffled by these rapid changes in values, remember the saying of a Zen master: You never step into the same river twice….Just as water flows all the time, nothing remains constant about life too. So why should family or any values remain static, asks Sreelatha Menon in her III and last writeup on changing family values?

Sreelatha Menon

Sex was a word that was never to be spoken when I was growing up…And as a 60s person, I do wince when I write the word. But as a writer, my job is not to wince but to write why I wince.

As a journalist writing on education and health, I recall a time when there was a big controversy about sex education being included in the school curriculum. At the height of the HIV/AIDS campaign by the USAID and Health Ministry, there were suggestions to make condoms available in schools and colleges …The critics (including me) had a great problem

with it saying that it would open the gates to uninhibited teen sex and would corrupt young minds and assail our value system…

But if we come to think of it, in the pre-1960s before I was born, boys and girls as young as 13 and 14 were married in all parts of the country and were having babies. My aunt was married when she was 13 and had seven children (including a few abortions) in the next five-six years. She is now a ripe and healthy 84-year-old mother with several grandchildren.

In more matriarchal societies like mine in Kerala, women were free to take multiple partners under the supervision of the family elders in my grandmother’s generation.

Men in the family usually had more than one wife. And one family never came to meet the other. So is there anything new in what is happening today?

Cut to the present: Virginity is not a big deal anymore even though it was held as sacrosanct earlier. We find echoes of that traditional attitude towards it in popular movies like Pushpa….Remember Rashmika coming to Allu Arjun (Pushpa) and asking him to rescue her from a villain who wants to abduct/buy her. She says she considers Pushpa as her husband and she wants to offer herself to him before anyone can taint her.

Actors Allu Arjun and Rashmikka showing their signate dance step in the movie Pushpa

Today the feminist antenna would be on high alert If they saw Rashmika worshipping the imprints of (Allu Arjun) Pushpa’s footsteps in the song Sami Sami…

Is husband even the Swami (Lord)? They might ask. The title of the famous movie Swami starring Girish Karnad and Shabana Azmi might not agree with modern youth and their views on the equation between husband and wife. The young do not want to take any chances and they prefer to change partners before marriage rather than be stuck with an unacceptable one for their whole life.

It is hardly fair to blame the youth as it is not a new thing. It is something their ancestors had found naturally feasible.

In Kerala’s matriarchal system, a girl was allowed to reject a partner and accept the Pudava (dress) from a new suitor of her choice. But this system of marriage called Sambandham is not practised anymore and what is seen in the modern youth is nothing but what is practised in many tribal communities and the olden matriarchies of Kerala. So those who are getting shocked by the changes, or getting judgy, hold your horses.

Dressing styles and PDA:

Women and girls today are not ashamed of their bodies and hence do not cover them in shame and fear. Women don’t feel awkward wearing shorts, body-hugging T-shirts, and pants…This is a sea change from the self-effacing attire worn in public in the 60s and 70s.

But cut to the 1930s and 40s, many cultures in India did not even wear clothes. Women in my community in Kerala had to fight to get the right to wear blouses to cover their breasts.

Poverty and tyrannical matriarchal elders forbade men from wearing shirts cutting their hair or even wearing footwear! So maybe modern dressing or underdressing is a return to the past.

Today men and women are not only uninhibited about their bodies but also like to wear their hearts on their sleeve much to the discomfort of onlookers (who might be criticized by the youth as prudish for this reason). They don’t mind flaunting their feelings in public as they enjoy their newfound freedom in new cities far away from their insular and oppressive small towns and villages. No one has looked into the reasons for this kind of public display of affection trend as they are more pre-occupied in criticizing the morality policing by saffron organizations.

Changing skirt lenght

This is in contrast with the modesty exercised in these matters by people even two decades ago. I still remember the media hype around actress Padmini Kolhapure kissing Prince Charles on his cheek when he visited India. Today if such a thing happened, no one would bother. And yet is it certain that it was always like that in the past? Going by the Khajuraho sculptures, sex, and display of affection were not something that was hidden, secretive and shameful.

So values were various and porous when there were no white-washing factors like media, social media, or English education which kind of leveled up all the differences in culture across the country.

Today children have defied the family hierarchy, gone back to instincts, and are going by natural selection of partners or technology for co-habitation and procreation.

So have the family values changed? And has the change been for better or worse? It seems good and bad are relative and opinions keep changing like fashions.

Values may have changed their appearance outwardly, but human beings, feelings and their needs remain the same.

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It would remain so even 1000 years from now unless people turn into robots or holograms.