Sisters look out for each other

The United Nations International Day of Women is just a few days away and predictably the debate is divided into two distinct factions. While the first faction asks women to stop treating themselves as a special interest group, the second says feminism is not only relevant but also necessary even in this day and age. One cannot deny that rights of women are violated with impunity across the world every day. Therefore, even as empowered and educated women climb out of gender-defined silos, there are millions of women whose self esteem has been crushed by either cultural conditioning or outright persecution.

This is why feminists today find themselves grappling with questions that threaten to divide them along race, colour, sexuality and caste lines. These distinctions add newer layers to an already complicated debate. Often women who are privileged on account of skin colour, wealth or caste feel alienated by those less privileged. It is true that black, dalit, lesbian and poor women face the brunt of sexual discrimination in more extreme ways. But if the underprivileged lot bands together and blocks out the so-called privileged lot, feminism loses. This is because privileged and empowered women are more likely to help their less fortunate sisters.

Take the case of 51 year old Rathi* who works as a domestic help. She was born into a land owning family of middle-income agriculturists in a village in Andhra Pradesh. She had to stop schooling after 5^th standard as the school in her village did not offer education beyond that grade. Some village boys would cycle almost two hours each way to go to another school, but Rathi’s parents were vary of sending their daughter that far away. “Mere bhai log ko iskool nahi jaane ka tha. Abhi main akele kaise jaun?”, she explained. She took to agriculture and later started a day care facility for children of agricultural labourers in her village. A few years later she entered into an arranged marriage with a man who claimed to drive cars for rich people and even had a flat in Mumbai.

When Rathi came to Mumbai after marriage nearly three decades ago, she realized her husband was a taxi driver and did not own either his vehicle or his home, a shabby shanty in a smelly slum. Rathi started working as a domestic help. Gradually she started taking up jobs as a baby sitter or care giver to old people. She learnt how to give body massages to women. She started turning the family’s financial health around. She encouraged her husband to move out of the slum and into a pucca house with its own toilet. They bought a TV, a fridge and even started eating out once a month. And then Rathi got pregnant. She had to cut back on work hours.

Her husband started blaming her for mounting expenses. He took to alcohol and gambling. Rathi hoped the baby would change everything. But fatherhood did not make her husband more responsible. By the time Rathi had delivered her second child her husband had sold of most of her share of her ancestral property in the village. He had falsified her thumb impression.

That shook her. She grabbed what remained of her savings, sold off her meager jewellery, took her little sons and moved to Thane where accommodation was cheaper than Mumbai. She once again started juggling jobs as a domestic help, baby sitter and masseur. When her sons were old enough she got them enrolled at the local school. She spent carefully and saved well.

A few years later she purchased some land in her village. She hired daily wagers to work her fields, hiring only women. She did not discriminate against women from castes lower than hers. She ran an informal aangan wadi for the children of not just her labourers, but also all other working women in the village. She personally took charge of the financial accounts of her agricultural business and made sure all her employees were paid on time.

And then one day, out of the blue, her husband returned and begged Rathi to take him back. “Usne sorry bola, roya bhi,” she explains. Rathi sold a part of her land and moved back to Thane where she comfortably slipped back into her role as the principal breadwinner for the family even as her husband struggled to hold on to odd jobs.

A few years later, Rathi brought her 12 year old niece Archana* from the village and enrolled the girl in school. But Archana dropped out after three years. But luckily by then she had picked up enough English to be able to work in the homes of expats. She started as her aunt’s assistant and today at 19, she works as a housekeeper and baby sitter. “Foreigner log jyada paise dete hain toh 6-7 jagah ki bajaaye, 2-3 kaam pakad sakte hain,” she shares. Archana contributes to household expenses, sends some of her income to her parents and is also saving money to buy agricultural land just like her aunt.

Rathi helped change the lives of other women because she was empowered and to an extent more privileged than them. Now imagine, would this success story be possible had Rathi been alienated on account of her privilege? We sisters have to stick together and help each other.  We cannot fight amongst ourselves. We cannot find a problem for each solution. It works the other way round. Modern feminists must strive for unity even as we understand and accept greater diversity.

**((Names changed on request. Both Rathi and Archana refused to be photographed for this story))

Fifty shades of aunty

Neelam was twenty three when she got married to her childhood sweetheart and moved in to our housing society. A year later she was blessed with a bouncing baby and everyone under the age of eighteen in the neighbourhood dutifully started referring to her as Neelam aunty. I’m 33 and unmarried. My children are cats. Yet everyone from toddlers to the building watchman, call me didi. Baffled, I asked the most talkative kid in the building to explain to me why he called someone a decade younger “aunty” and me “didi”. His mother, who was riding the elevator with us offered the explanation, “It is not about age, but about marriage” she said. “When you get married everybody will have to call you aunty out of respect,” she continued.

I wondered if “didi” was therefore to be construed as disrespectful. Also, was a woman’s respect linked to her marital status even in this day and age in a posh neighbourhood such as mine?

This wasn’t a one off thing. I teach a journalism course to post graduate students and some of the girls in my class are married. As many of us live within walking distance of each other’s homes, we often carpool or take the same bus. Whenever we alight at the bus stop and the girls introduce me to their children, their first instinct is to call me aunty. Given how I’m often a decade older than their moms, it makes sense. But often someone’s mother-in-law would ask me what my husband did and when I said I didn’t have one, they would dutifully ask the children, “Didi ko hello bolo”.

Back when I was in school there was this hair dye advertisement where a woman feels traumatized after being called aunty by a young man in her neighbourhood, even as her husband is called “Bhaiyya”. She gets herself some hair dye and proceeds to colour her premature grays. When she steps out with jet black locks, the same man calls her by her first name! This somehow heals her shattered self esteem.

My client, a friend’s mother and veteran theater actress, recently made her movie debut. I went to the premier and hugged and congratulated her, “You made it aunty”, I said. A film maker standing next to us looked at me in disbelief, unable to utter anything more than, “Aunty???” My client, one of the most confident and secure women I’ve ever met replied, “What else do you expect her to call me? She is my daughter’s colleague!” The film maker countered, “But you don’t look that old,” now establishing the link between age and the word “aunty”. Interestingly, her daughter who is five years younger than I, magically went from didi to aunty overnight as she got married, while I am still didi.

I reckoned I needed some alcohol in my system to process this. A cameraman friend joined me at the bar. I decided it was time to get a man’s perspective on the subject. He threw me a sly smile, men reserve for locker room conversations with other men and said, “Deborah madam, I’m surprised you don’t know what aunty really means.” An almost evil glint appeared in his eye at the end of the sentence suggesting a strong sexual dimension to my aunty conundrum. He explained how it was not polite to call someone aunty in public because that word was reserved for “Bhabhi type” women. I distinctly remember being reprimanded by my male friends when I called their wives Bhabhi. I did it to assure these women that I had no designs on their husbands and thought of them as brothers. This would prevent them from suspecting anything inappropriate when I met their husbands even if the wives were not around. But a friend had told me that the word Bhabhi was a throwback to Savita Bhabhi and was therefore inappropriate. I asked my cameraman friend if that was the case. He gave me an evil wink and disappeared into the crowd with his drink. My head ready to explode with the multiple layers of sexism I had just discovered, I ordered my second dirty martini for the evening.

This was odd. I grew up in a generation where all of us kids called each other’s mothers aunty. My mom was an exception because she taught at our school. She was always Rita Miss. At 59, she is still a “Miss”. Somehow, despite being a teacher, I never got to be “Miss”. I have always been Deborah Ma’am. Sometimes when a faculty member doesn’t know me and comes across my name in the schedule, they ask for Mr. Grey. This is probably because Deborah is not a very common name in India. As someone who doesn’t give a rat’s left testicle about the gender binary, I don’t mind being called Grey Sir as an office boy called me just last week when he came to the staff room to deliver a message from another faculty member. My three year old niece still calls me Uncle or Bhaiyya as do all her friends. It might have something to do with my short hair. My dream is to be knighted by the Queen of England as Sir Deborah, Knight of the Rainbows! And don’t tell me I can’t be Sir or Lord Deborah because I have a baby bar, a baby bag and a baby door (breasts, uterus and vagina respectively). I don’t have a single maternal bone in my body and have no desire to procreate (unless is it an alien, meta-human or a ninja-turtle).

I read The Telegraph’s headline and while it was a play on the word Anti-National, you’ve got to admit… it backfired and how! Calling Smriti Irani “aunty” is unacceptable for the same reasons as calling Hillary Clinton a “witch”. You want to take down somebody, use facts, reason and logic to blow holes into their arguments. Taking potshots at one’s age and gender just go one to show how your artillery is ineffective and that you are basically a sexist douchebag! Meanwhile, we in India, need to start calling women something more appropriate like “ji” or “madam”. Also, please stop diluting my brand value by calling me didi. I’m way too cool and sexy for didi. My last name’s Grey (Thanks to EL James, that sentence is now a pick-up line). Call me Grey, just Grey.

Angel Deborah

Doesn’t life seem a little incomplete without an impossible dream? Ever since I was a little girl, I was fascinated with the women who modeled lingerie; the more daring and risqué the piece, the more powerful and confident the model looked. The internet introduced me to Victoria’s Secret and its Angels. 

These women looked nothing like other models who came across as nutrition deprived teenagers with a perpetually constipated look. Victoria’s Secret Angels were healthy, powerful, confident and happy! These women flaunted superhero abs and muscular thighs. These women looked strong.

I longed to join their ranks and even practiced Mirnada Kerr's signature slow blink in front of the mirror.

At 157 cms, I’m vertically challenged. And while I have the exact same measurements as some of the highest paid ramp scorchers, I look curvier due to my short height. But, I’m not just into impossible dreams; I’m also shamelessly determined about making them come true. 

So my resolution for 2016 is to get myself the body of an angel proportional to my height. If this means losing a few pounds I’ll do it the healthy way. I’ve been researching the workout regime of models like Giselle Bundchen, Miranda Kerr, Adriana Lima and Candice Swanpoel and I intend to follow in their footsteps this year. I won’t crash diet and I won’t lift weights. I will achieve my dream body with free-style workouts. I know many of these models workout for as long as four hours everyday. I’ll try to clock at least two hours a day. I’ve always been a careful eater, but I will try to divide my food intake into smaller and more frequent meals to increase my metabolism.

If all goes well, I will reward myself by getting my own Victoria’s Secret lingerie for Christmas. I’ll wear and walk down the entire length of my house with happy music playing and my cat cheering for me. Yup, I got big plans for 2016!

Leftover Women

Sheng Nu is Chinese for Leftover Women, a derisive term used to describe unmarried women over a certain age. They are frowned upon for missing out on marital bliss on account of being ‘too ambitious’ and ‘career oriented’. It is almost like saying a woman's self esteem is a cock-blocker!

I first came across the term in Leta Hong Fincher's brilliant account of the dramatic roleback of women's rights in post-socialist China in her critically acclaimed 2014 bestseller Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China. I wondered if this could happen in a country where none other that Chairman Mao had once proclaimed "women hold up half the sky" what hope was there for the rest of us?

As someone who does not believe in organized relationships or bureaucratic exercises designed to create and perpetuate property rights, I have zero interest in getting married. But I do want to find love. Good old fashioned love. I want dinner and a movie on Saturday night and pancakes for breakfast on Sunday morning. I want to make him coffee. I want him to buy me flowers. I want to read newspapers as he plays the guitar. I want sweet kisses and epic sex. I want us to support each other’s professional goals and personal dreams. But I want all of this with a guy who respects me and stays faithful. Am I asking for too much?

According to author Jon Birger’s new book Date-onomics: How Dating Became a Lopsided Numbers Game, educated women outnumber educated men in several US cities. This demand supply imbalance is leading to a ‘hook up’ culture and many highly educated women, looking for traditional long term committed relationships and marriage, are left single. As a 33 year old communications professional studying for my second post graduate degree, this scares me a little.

The author's findings suggest that the men know that there are plenty of fish in the sea and that they can just move on to another woman if the present one becomes ‘demanding’. The proliferation of dating apps has led to what could possibly be the beginning of the end of romance and wooing. Conversations are becoming optional in a world where an exchange of emoticons on messaging platforms leads to easy, baggage free, no strings attached sex. 

The book appears to suggest that if highly educated women were looking for their happily ever after with a man who was their intellectual and financial match, they were deluding themselves.  Their only option is a mixed collar relationship.  But in what universe can you see a lawyer marrying a daily wage earning construction worker? Would a bio-technologist be satisfied by the musings of a gas station attendant? What would a communications professional and a security guard talk about at the dinner table? Don’t get me wrong. I believe in the dignity of labour, but I can’t date the milk man!

I know friends who have been through the whole 'meet-the-parents' charade that precedes arranged marriages in India. Even the most progressive families insist that family and children take priority over the woman's career. Nothing wrong in that, except the implication, that if a choice were to be made between home and career, the husband would remain the bread-winner as the wife tended to home and hearth.

And it's not just home and family. I've been to job interviews where the coversation went something like this:

"So, are you married?"

"Why do you ask?"

"Why? What's wrong with the question?"

"Well, my personal life is private."

"You mean you are hiding something?"

"No. I just don't see how my marital status plays a role in determining my productivity."

"Priorities change after marriage."

"Of course they do. But they do for men too. Do you ask male candidates about their marital status?"

"Of course we do. We need to know how many people he is providing for and if he is the sole bread winner."

"Would you pay a married man more that an equally qualified single woman if he is the sole bread winner with multiple mouths to feed?"

This question usually catches them off guard and their bewildered looks are my cue to make a graceful exit from a job interview at a possibly toxic workplace.

But the challenges for unmarried women are greater. Look at how easy it is to get insurance or loans if you are married as opposed to single. Sport some sindoor or a wedding band and you are less likely to get unwanted attention from the opposite sex. You are presumed to be mature and intelligent if married and childish and carefree if unmarried. Married women also get preference over unmarried women when trying to adopt a child. It is almost as if women are penalised for staying unmarried.

I'm not saying life is a cakewalk for married women. The Sindoor Sisterhood has to deal with expectations of the extended family as well as the immediate neighbourhood. You will be judged for small decisions regarding the choice of your child's hobby classes, or letting your child come back home on the school bus instead of pickingthem up from school.

This is not a married vs unmarried thing. We sisters are all in this together. I only wonder if I'd find love, respect and loyalty in a world were relationships are designations and sex is as easily available as a pint of beer.

Resting Bitch Face

I came across the term Resting Bitch Face less than half an hour ago. It is what you call a woman's facial expression when she doesn't really have any expression on her face, and is therefore presumed to be angry, upset, mean or bitchy.

The term is usually used for women, because for some odd reason, it is a woman's sacred duty to smile. We are expected to smile, irrespective of whether we feel like it. I'm not against smiling. I smile when I'm happy. I smile when I want to. I smile when something good happens. A smile is an expression of happiness and peace. It shouldn't be a social obligation.

Men take it as a personal failure when your eyes don't light up at their sight. I've lost count of how many times my dates have asked me to smile. When I ask them what's funny, they wondered if they are making me feel uncomfortable. The only thing it tells me, is that these men suffer from low self esteem and need constant validation by way of a smile. Needless to say I've been labled a 'bitch' more times than I'd care to remember.

Ever since I was a little girl, I was asked to smile more. I was expected to smile at my neighbour when she prepared breakfast (our kitchen windows overlooked each other). I was expected to smile at friends of my parents. I was expected to smile at my friends' parents. Basically I was expected to smile all the time... for no reason.

As I grew older, my smile was 'corrected'. I was advised to not show my gums. I was forced to wear braces because I had 'ugly' teeth (basically, I just have an extra canine tooth). Even today when I smile for pictures, my mother chides me for not smiling 'properly'. A 'proper' smile being one where I look like I'm smelling fart while trying hard not to pee!

When I started working, well meaning colleagues often asked me why I looked disinterested. Some wondered if I was happy with my job. Some questioned my committment, simple because I didn't smile beatifically as I walked into my office every morning. Some thought I genuinely didn't care about things, while others advised me to purge negativity from my life. That was weird, because as any of my friends would tell you, I'm a happy person. I'm as happy as a bunny in a carrot garden! But that doesn't mean I have to look like I'm on an acid trip.

I've now mastered the Bitch Smile, a fake smile that surprisingly puts people at ease. I flash that smile when people talk about their babies, husband, dog or parents, their dreams, their travel plans, their car or their new clothes. It makes people think I care, when I genuinely don't give a shit. Here, take a look:

I don't know... you call that a smile, I think THAT'S a resting bitch face.

When Love is a Crime

The Indian Supreme Court's ruling that overturned the landmark Delhi High Court verdict is a re-iteration of India's age old cultural stand against freedom of choice when it comes to one's personal life, more specifically... sex life. Interfering in other people's sex lives is a national pass time. We love to decide who other people should marry/have sex with. So in most Indian marriages, instead of Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi, it is a case of Sab Ne Bana Di Jodi!

Sab Ne Bana Di Jodi

This is probably a cycle of abuse. Somebody else forced us into loveless sex, so lets do the same with others. Why should sex be a source of joy for somebody else, when it is a source of discomfort, boredom or pain for us? As a social collective, we are all survivors of passive sexual abuse and therefore perpetuate the cycle by punishing others.

We can't feel happy for others, especially when the source of their joy is a fulfilling sex life! We hate happy couples, straight or gay! Khap Panchayats, political goons, religious communities routinely bump off straight couples for the exact same reason they oppose homosexuality... They find it immoral for two consenting adults to discover joy in exploring each other's bodies. They equate love with lust and label all relationships that have not been designed/permitted by families/communities as immoral.

Equality?

So straight or gay, we are in this together! We have to fight for the Right To Love and this right has to be for everyone, irrespective of their gender. The current government is unlikely to take any bold legislative steps in an election year. Moreover, sexual minorities are not an important vote bank.

I'll go to bed with a heavy heart tonight, knowing that in my country, marital rape is legal, but sex between two consenting adults of the same gender is not. Since, when is love against the order or nature? In the land of the Kamasutra, why is love a crime?

He, She or Just Me

There was always something reassuring about Rituparna Ghosh’s movies. No matter how they ended, they always seemed to say, “It’s OK to be different.” His movies were a reflection of him and were therefore all about finding the courage to fight for what you believe in, regardless of the consequences.  

Many of his characters took on the challenge that Ghosh had made his life’s mission… to question the stereotypes perpetuated by the gender binary. These characters did it with such dignity and grace that after a point you looked at them just as people, not men or women, just human beings with dreams and extraordinary strength.

Meanwhile speculation is ripe that Sujoy Ghosh could step into Rituda’s shoes to finish Satyanweshi, a film based on one of Bengal’s favourite detectives, Byomkesh Bakshi. This is his last film, but that shouldn’t stop you from revisiting some of his best work.

Our pick is Ar Ekti Premer Golpo where Rituda plays two characters, a jatra actor who has spent a lifetime playing female characters and a gay filmmaker who is making a film based on the actor’s life. The film is a rare treat where you also get to see the legendary Chapal Bhaduri play himself. Rituparno plays the younger Chapal and the director Abhiroop. The film is a discovery of every element of one’s identity personal, social and sexual.

Ar Ekti Premer Golpo shines like a tiny flame atop a fast melting candle in a dark old crumbling house braving against a crushing storm. It is bright as a beacon of hope, yet vulnerable to its life being snuffed out by one strong gust of wind.

Rituparno Ghosh, you will be missed.