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Indian author Devdutt Pattanaik recently penned a short fictional exchange between a Hindu woman and a Muslim woman waiting in a government office queue. Bound by paperwork and impatience, the two strangers drift into a conversation about marriage, religion, patriarchy, symbols, and women’s freedom.
They question polygamy and monogamy, sindoor and hijab, obedience and choice. They acknowledge how queer people are brutalised by religious and social norms. They laugh about how morality is reduced to food rules - satvik (pure food), halal, haram - while corruption and cruelty go unchecked.
By the end, the women walk out together, no longer defined as Hindu or Muslim, but as two women who have briefly “glimpsed the machinery of power shaping their lives.”
It is, on the surface, an intelligent piece. Familiar, even comforting, in its critique. And that familiarity is precisely where the problem lies.
Because everything in this story is already obvious to women.
We already know patriarchy cuts across religions. We already know symbols are imposed and then rebranded as “choice.” We already know women are trained to police each other while men write the rules.
So when a man writes a story about women recognising these truths, the question is not what is being said, but what happens after it is said.
And in this story, nothing happens.
The women realise. They reflect. They laugh. They bond. And then the page ends.
The more honest ending - one the text politely avoids - might read something like this: And both women went back to their homes to prepare chapatis for their husbands.
Not because they are foolish or weak, but because awareness alone does not dismantle systems. It merely makes living inside them more articulate.
What is also striking is how much of the dialogue is spent on the women finding fault in each other.
‘Your jewellery is patriarchy.’
‘Your veil is oppression.’
‘Your God is control.’
‘Your culture is backward.’
This is painfully familiar. Patriarchy survives not just through male dominance, but through lateral scrutiny - women auditing women, ranking whose oppression is worse, whose submission is more authentic, whose “choice” is more suspect.
It is a clever trick: keep women busy debating symbols while the structure remains intact.
In that sense, the story mirrors real life all too accurately. Women are encouraged to talk endlessly - at panels, in essays, in queues - while very little is asked of men beyond observation. Insight becomes performance. Recognition becomes resolution.
And perhaps that is the most telling thing about the piece: it ends at awareness because awareness is safe. Especially for men. It costs nothing. It demands no refusal, no rupture, no inconvenience.
There is no moment where either woman does something that risks social consequence. No small act of disobedience. No discomfort carried forward. Just a fleeting sense of solidarity before life resumes as usual.
This does not make the piece wrong. But it does make it limited.
Women do not need more stories where they discover patriarchy. We have been living inside it long enough to map it blindfolded. What we are starved of are stories - especially written by men - where that discovery leads to conflict, to change, or at the very least, to refusal.
Until then, such pieces remain what they are: well-meaning mirrors that reflect women’s realities back to us, while leaving the machinery humming exactly as it was.
And yes, after the queue dissolves and the laughter fades, dinner still has to be made.
Fa Abdul (fa.abdul.penang@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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