#auntydevelopment

aunties can be smart as fuck

not as gormless as u think

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Wednesday's picture arrived with a rather anodyne caption saying "staff from the Indian Space Research Organisation (Isro) celebrate after the Mars Orbiter Spacecraft (Mom) successfully entered the Mars orbit".

But in reality, the picture was about much more than that - a bunch of smiling Indian women resplendent in gorgeous saris greeting each other as their male colleagues look on admiringly at mission control in Bangalore.

"The women were leading the applause when the good news arrived. They were celebrating more than men. Who said men are from Mars and women are from Venus?" says senior science journalist Pallava Bagla, who was present in the control room.

The picture - which brightened up my manic morning writing up the Mars mission story - went viral and became the event's image of the day.

People in their thousands tweeted that they loved it. One said "when was the last time you saw women scientists celebrate a space mission?"; another that the women showed "we don't need to wear labcoats". Others said the scientists in saris had "redefined mission control" and called them "true role models".

The chatter even veered into the contentious Indian debate about tradition and modernity.

Look at our rocket scientists, said one tweet, when women working in call centres think that wearing jeans "makes them modern and scientific". Somebody wondered why "no matter how much women succeed/achieve, the focus ultimately is on what they are wearing?"

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if everything you knew was a lie hashtag construct

and you went on a psychic spree of your interior world

what would that look like who would you find

what lies beneath the sari... :S :S

AIYA.

Kumars at no. 42

This is not what I’m doing - but it’s an important image in that it exists in our minds a bit already. We recognise this woman across cultures (bubba!).

So I rely on it to then fuck with it.

Aunty/Aunties are increasingly being dealt with by diaspora kids - often through this lens of broad comedy. 

Think ‘The Kumars at No. 42′ or like hundreds of youtube videos.    

Maria Qamar’s amazing pop-art inspired book ‘Trust No Aunty’ replicates some of that. Here’s the blurb:

Aunty is a term of endearment (and sometimes, insult) used to describe an older woman. The Aunty is a cross-cultural phenomenon that isn't limited to family members; she could be a neighbour, a family friend, or just some lady on the bus who wants throw some casual black magic your way. Most commonly featured in Indian soap operas, an Aunty is a feisty and dramatic powerhouse of a woman who enters your house and plans to take over your life. They are at family parties or friendly get-togethers with your mother, finding ways to make your life difficult, trying to get you married to their sons and telling you to lose weight while simultaneously trying to feed you a second dinner.

We've all experienced 'Aunty interference' which has hindered our social growth and embarrassed us in front of our friends and cool cousins. If you thought you were alone in dealing with the meddling, oddly comforting and overwhelming attention of the Aunties in your life, then this book is for you.

But what I love about it is her playing up of the sexualised vampy side of Aunty. Like these are Mean Girls. Beautiful sirens. Vampirey villains. Though it uses the usual broad ideas about Aunties there’s a fun subversion here too.