and Monsoon Wedding sister

[Beth Simon]

The brother - sister relation is a particularly important bond. In exogamous areas, the daughters in a family marry outside the immediate locality, often miles, and in some cases, into families states away (e.g. a Hindu family of Gujerati background living in Banaras, in Uttar Pradesh, might well marry their daughters into families in Gujerat).

Ideally, the brother is the one who, in a sense, watches the sister's back. He is the one who is her immediate protector, the one who checks out the men in the prospective in-law family, the one who travels to the sister's new home, who brings her what she needs, who brings her back to her natal family at least for the birth of the first child.

Committing violence on one's sister, or any sexual act involving one's sister, is particularly egregious, and sister-f**ker is a particularly provocative label.

One the other hand, or, perhaps, because of that hand, sister-f**ker is sometimes the label of choice.

beth
>>> preston at PILOT.MSU.EDU 10/05/02 20:29 PM >>>
In Louisville in the 1940s and early 50s we never jabbed our
popsicles into the air, although we both said up your ass and had at
least the left hand on inner side of elbow with right lower arm
up-lifted which clearly had that meaning. I'm sure we would have
adopted the popsicle insult if only someone had introduced it. We
were precursors of iconicity.

dInIs