[Leica] cut women / old fart

["Robert Appleby" <laintal@hotmail.com>]

I have no comments about Kyle's pics, except I'll look at them more closely 
when I have a fast enough connection back home in a week's time, but here's 
one thing they remind me of:
A lot of women, especially lower class/caste, in India use wrist slashing as 
a weapon to exert moral pressure on someone near to them. For instance, my 
friend Bochcha cut herself about fifteen times up the inside of her left arm 
to protest against her brother going away to delhi from their hutment. She 
was quite proud of the damage she'd inflicted on herself. It's quite common 
to see women here with multiple scars on their arms. Again, these are lower 
class or tribal women, not Bombay supermodels or Miss World.
Remember the story about Ghandi's dad punching himself on the forehead to 
protest his displeasure at some transgression of his son's? Again, 
self-punishment to exert moral pressure on someone over whom you have a 
moral lever. It made an indelible impression on Ghandi - you could argue 
that his whole satyagraha method basically goes along the same lines, it 
seems to be quite a feature of indian culture.

BTW, Ted, as for being an old fart of 94, that's exactly what i was last 
week when the dysentery was at its worst...

Ciao
Rob.

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