Oedipus Complex, Electra Complex, and Sundry Cerebral Aberrations

It is unfortunate that the Oedipus is associated with a certain kind of obsession with one’s mother: poor Oedipus did not know that it was his biological mother whom he married. However, it would not have happened if he considered the age of the woman he was marrying: in India, given that the woman is older, such a situation would not have arisen. Then there is the misnomer: Electra complex.

It is more likely that Agamemnon had a thing for his daughter Electra; that is the way of the world. Does a young girl have ‘feelings’ for an old man? I doubt it. Even if she has, she would learn to sublimate those feelings over time and free herself of the force of attraction for a father or a fatherly figure. It is more likely to call a ‘thing’ between the father and his little girl of a complex the Agamemnon complex.

Harold Robbins: Are you afraid of the dark?

“Are you afraid of the dark” is a simple story of a girl who gets molested by her father as a child, and becomes a serial killer. She has a multiple personality disorder – schizophrenia in conventional lingo. However, she is extremely skillful. Once she commits a murder, she covers her tracks and moves on to the other coast for another escapade. She is kind to her victims in that she lets them have ‘fun’ one last time before finishing them off. Ironically, at the end the novel, she goes on to another adventure, with a song on her lips.

There are many fathers in India too, who ‘misbehave’ with their daughters, but go scot free. The daughters don’t turn out to be serial killers, though. Indeed there are no serial killers in India. There seems to be a hell of lot of difference between U.S. and us. And thank God for that!

Akashamanta: Trisha and Prakash Raj…

There is a Telugu movie, “Akashamanta” (as big as the sky) in which Prakash Raj (Prakash Rai for those in Karnataka) has a beautiful daughter (Trisha). She goes to Delhi for studies and returns with a Sikh boy whom she loves. Now, Raj has some reservations about giving his daughter away to someone outside the community; to someone so far away from the town where he lives. And mainly, although it is not made explicit in the movie – it is about giving away his daughter in marriage at all. Does it mean he has a thing for her? No, not according to the script and screenplay.

But the kind of discomfiture he displays when she is hugging and kissing young Jogi (the boy she brings from Delhi) makes one wonder what exactly his feelings are towards his daughter. It is a superb performance from Prakash Raj-Rai: hats off to him. He brings something to the table which was not scripted. He leaves a lot to our imagination (and goes beyond the ‘script’). He cannot digest the idea of his ‘little girl’ in another man’s embrace. Fathers who cannot digest such thoughts should shun all such thoughts. It is not impossible; meditation can help, if not medication.
I should have been a pair of ragged claws

One of my uncles (the husband of an aunt) used to work in the medals section of the Electrical and Mechanical Engineering division of Indian Army. Some times I wish I had become a typist in some government organization, like the army, or in a bank. I once in fact appeared for an interview for the position of a clerk-cum-typist but failed in the typing test. Be that as it may, my point is that intellectual work doesn’t interest me any more; if it did, I would have been ungainfully employed in some university teaching uninspiring literary works to disinterested students.

This obsession with ‘manual’ work took shape (root) in me over the years as a technical writer. There is nothing exciting about the job of a software manual writer – it is as tedious as manual labor. In fact, my friends in software development and quality assurance used to complain about the lack of creativity in their jobs: they used to feel that they have prostituted their skills (that they acquired during their days in the engineering colleges). Then consider how I should feel, having studied literature, writing instructions like: “press this, or that, or both”.

In call centers too, there are people doing tedious jobs, assuming ‘Christian’ names and personas – answering angry, rude callers from around the world. But somehow there is a kind of aura associated with those jobs. They seem to throng the pubs, and are driven around in fast ‘jeeps’ (Toyota Qualis or Tata Sumo). Some of them ride fancy bikes. The boys and girls mix freely, the girls smoke and drink, and it is assumed that they rock and roll a good deal.