A story from India that's like a more awesome version of two different Grimm fairy tales. A woman is promised in marriage to a stranger and we learn that, yeah, that's actually a pretty terrible idea.
The creature is the reason why you don't want pigeons to pity you.
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Disclaimer
A woman has a child who's a literal tiger cub (?) and she and her brothers cut the cub in half off camera and leave him suspended over a fire. It's not graphic, but it exists. Also we mention that a character is a rapist (he is).
This seemed like a very thinly veiled casteist story. The emphasis on the family being Brahmins and vegetarians, the other-ing (literal portrayal of the husband as a man eating beast) of the husband was not a critique of “patriarchy”. It seems like a scary story to narrate to kids to instill a sense of puritanism (because vegetarians = good and Brahmins = dominant caste = vegetarians therefore good) and associating meat-eating with “lower” castes to continue to opress through caste. Not just that, but this husband from a “lower” caste is depicted as a rapist, someone who stole a girl from a “good Brahmin family”, and anyone who faces him is attacked or killed. What the fuck kind of research did you actually do? What is the source for this story? If you’re going to narrate stories from cultures you’re not familiar with, at least hire someone to provide you more context andnnuance instead of making assumptions and being ignorant. I’m shocked nobody has called you out for this.
Love the show! Wondering why you gave the character a non-Indian name (Tyler)? I am 2nd generation Indian American and was excited to hear a story from my family’s culture. You tend to use original names in most other stories, even if they aren’t English, so this exception stuck out to me and took me out of the story. It would have been awesome to hear a story with characters whose names were like mine.
Excited to hear the rest of your stories and hope that this feedback is useful.