My Story Page 70: Private Property

“No, there was another thing called private property that came before marriage did, I think.” – she tried to fill up the gap I supposedly had overlooked.

“How that? And why so?” – I went curious.

She gave me a piercing look and then smiled at me.

“Why should it have pinched a male if he didn’t know who his kid was? Why did he feel at a loss owing to this suspense that was such a natural phenomenon of tribal life?” – she was now exciting my wits too, along with my body.

“Missing my-ness!” – I hypothesized.

“Why, the whole tribe was HIS!” – she redirected my arrow back toward me.

“Searching for a cozy, personal, private corner of his!” – I further hypothesized.

“But why should he have needed that? It could only have been so if and when the tribal strings might have gone weak enough to hold its members tight. Don’t you think so?” – she held my hand tight and then loosened her grip to break the same with a blow of her other hand onto it, sending a chill through my spine… I don’t know whether up or down!

“O yes, we were in tribes because we worked in groups with tools that were a tribal property, for hunting and gathering food, together. But then we invented growing seeds and started farming in the fields turning ourselves into individual farmers.” – I somehow held my composure. I was finding it was easier for her to hold hers than it was for me to hold mine. Was it because I was a male?

“So my tools must have become my private property…a male’s his and a female’s hers!” – she naughtily pointed toward my clothes on my body and hers lying at a side – “Like these ones are yours – your private property; and those ones, mine – my private property.” – she had a naughty smile in her eyes.

“So we started owning things like land and a hut and a few tools to work with as individuals and not as a community. Right?” – I brought her back to the point, or she could have swayed me with her mischief.

“Right. And we must have needed handing them over to someone at the time of our death; which, for us, there WAS though it wasn’t there for the community as a whole and so it must never have needed handing them over to anyone anytime.” – the logic was building up irrefutably.

“Things are going crystal clear now. The female COULD hand them over to her kids but the male COULD NOT do so to anyone whom he could call HIS OWN.” – I built mine over hers.

“And therefore he forced the female to be a part of what he designed as the thing called marriage, dictating a woman not to spontaneously sleep with any man she felt like doing. Rather she would select one for life and stick to him only, all through her life. If she broke this rule, she would be committing adultery. Adultery would be punishable by the tribe as well as by God!” – she again laughed to the point of getting tears in her eyes.

“So it was the personal ownership of private property that gave birth to all the emotions that we dignify as love for the spouse, family ties, family tree, clanship, racism and even nationalism for that matter!” – I was feeling a rush of adrenalin more in my mind than in my body now.

“It created walls between man and man in the names of family trees, clans, races, religions and countries on earth!” – her eyes were into mine without any wall between the two.

“We could break Berlin’s, but when shall we do China’s…even if proverbially?” – I was feeling as if I was coming OUT of myself!

“Money is keeping it intact, in our minds – money…the civilized world’s avatar of private property!” – she pointed toward the wallet in my pocket.

“Money!” – I murmured to myself.