Ho Chi Minh City

12/6/09

We spent yesterday making our way from Delhi via Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh City. While waiting in the airport in Delhi, I got 8 posts ready, so you’ll be seeing them soon.

In my Jaipur post I noted that I didn’t see a lot of gender equality in India. On the plane I read an op-ed piece in the Times of India by Sudhir Kakar (a man who is a psychoanalyst and novelist) that seems to confirm that. He comments at length on what he sees as a good trend for India: middle income women insisting on what he calls “intimacy” in marriage—moving away from the idea that the wife simply supplements the husband in his major role as son and brother in the extended family. He cites real dangers in the isolation of what we usually call the “nuclear family,” but thinks the trend is positive.

Of course, we didn’t meet too many middle class Indians in our visit to tourist hotspots. I think we chatted with 3 male hotel owners; none really at length or in depth. Clearly, a two-week sightseeing tour cannot substitute for real study of a society.

Paul