Women's liberation

I first saw Lakshmi in December 2007, at the school in which I volunteered as a teacher. While she had a demeanour of shyness and quiet – all that is expected of a 15-year-old girl in the tenth grade, she had all the inquisitiveness and curiosity to learn once the class began. If I were to tell you how irregular she was with homework and how often she walked in late and dozed off during lessons, I will be taking away from the point I wish to make. She was not one of my best students by any stretch of imagination but the sincerity with which she said that she did not have time to do homework or that she had to wash clothes before coming to school was real. I paid her as much attention as I could while handling the rowdy class of 17 but it never seemed enough. 

Three months went by and soon the final exams approached. Lakshmi did not turn up to school for the last week. I asked around and discovered that it was because she could not pay the exam fees – a measly Rs. 200. I decided to investigate further and found that she came from a family where her mother was the single earning member. Her father had run away many years back and the family of five (she had three younger sisters) had to manage expenses with her mother’s salary as household help. This explained her behaviour somewhat, as she had to do a lot of the housework herself. However, the fact that she could not afford Rs. 200 was unfathomable. I even offered to pay the fees myself but Lakshmi steadfastly refused to come to class. The real reason turned out to be not poverty, but that her mother wanted to get her married as soon as possible and be relieved of at least one burden.

After having spent seven years in the United States and taking gender equality and women’s rights for granted, this incident was a shocking reminder of the lack of status and opportunities for women in India. While we tout our rise as a nation of opportunities and growth, our girl child is still neglected. While we toast to the new Indian woman who is now a CEO, award winning writer or sports champion, it can be easy to forget that less than half of Indian women are even literate. The number of women in India is approximately equal to the entire population of the European Union, but the average Indian woman lives in a web of ignorance, poverty, and backward social customs.

This incident prompted me to look for statistics relating the status women enjoy in a nation to the overall development of the nation. Could it be mere coincidence that women in the greatest nations of the world enjoy gender equality in all aspects of life? I could even say that women’s empowerment was a good indicator of how developed the nation is. Nowadays, four US women graduate from university for every three US men and this trend holds true for fifteen out of the seventeen rich countries in the world! Even a country steeped in tradition, Iran, is now trending towards having more women graduates. This is clearly an indication of the upward mobility women are seeking and nations are enjoying.

I have been fortunate, having had a lot of support from my family to choose my way of life and make the most of the opportunities that have come my way. I have always enjoyed being a path-breaker having been an active sports player at school and being the first from my extended family to study and work abroad. From a veiled existence in my younger years, it was hard for me to look beyond my social circle to the millions of unfortunate women who did not enjoy the same luxury as I did. Living in the United States further distanced me from ground realities in India. I had always assumed that subjugation of women in India was because women chose not to fight for their rights; they chose not to break rules and traditions. Moving back to India changed these perceptions.

I have a neighbour who is “married” to an already-married man. The law does not recognize her marriage as valid but she refuses to accept the fact and still considers him her husband. It does not come as a surprise that she was not educated beyond 8^th grade. Had she been, she would have been aware of the law, of her choices and of the consequences. This kind of illiteracy regarding the law and the opportunities available is what has made women susceptible to the whims of men. We have cases of female infanticide, dowry deaths, and child marriages every day in our country, which can be prevented simply by educating not only women, but also men. Millions of Indian parents, particularly in rural areas, are averse to sending their daughters to school. They say,” Of what use is school? Will it teach her how to cook and clean the house?”

The general opinion is that gender equality refers to giving women access to education, health-care and employment opportunities but I believe that the status of women in society can be significantly improved when men start realizing that women are not inferior in any way and that they are equals in any endeavour. That women can be breadwinners, homemakers, or both, is an attitude that comes from within, either through family or peer influence.

You may wonder whether this topic has lost relevance in modern times. I can assure you that the welfare and well-being of a girl child is as much of an issue today in India as it used to be in the days of Rama Mohan Roy and Annie Besant. We may have uplifted the creamy layer of women from being a homemaker to an equal earning member of the family but the poorest and the most ignorant of them remain so.

The incident with Lakshmi moved me deeply and has given me even greater determination to do all I can to help women in India. This is an issue that I feel passionately about since I have seen first-hand some of the problems that women face within our society. I am also convinced that India can never achieve its potential as a nation until we empower our women. After analyzing the reasons for my success and that of several other friends, I believe that the first and most important step towards empowering women is through education. Empowering women will drive them to become the motor of development for the country.

Margaret Mead said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” I strongly believe that the power and the will to change things lie in the small, but firm hands of women.

Pearl drops

A face scrunched up,
A drop glistens,
A trice of frailty; an eon of solace,
I am the flooding that brings peace.

The fountains give me reason to continue
To fight my battles and win my wars.
They stand - a cataract -
Between an undoing so lethal
And a falling hope.

Steal my bravado, ephemeral tears,
Oh! I shed you in harmony and melancholy.
Fear not, for you are jewels of sentiment.
Stoic - I cannot be.

Tears mean no harm, they need no cause;
Tears are my strength, my relief, my belief.
Tears to wash away
Tears to let go.

Monsoon sunset

When I left the office today the sky was dark and overcast and the air held rainy promises. Dark grey clouds were rushing to cover every inch of the late evening sky. It would have been an ordinary performance were it not for the cosmological interruption of the setting sun. As the sun dipped in the western horizon, it lit up an arc of clouds in the western horizon in such an artistic manner that it would have looked unnatural on a painting. The blue grey clouds suddenly had specks of luminous orange on the sections nearer the sun. As the dazzling ball of solar flames nestled closer to its dwelling, it spread its vanishing glow generously among the middle clouds. I was watching clouds being rocketed into space in slow motion leaving glowing embers in their wake. There was a final burst of a pinkish orange flame from afar and the golden orange flecks disappeared slowly. I was left staring at heavy, dark monsoon clouds once again but this time there was a radiance in my heart.

I didn't want to take a picture since the sunset is more vivid in my mind. Photographs can blur memory sometimes, as a friend said. Yes, I love the monsoons, though they have been rather deceptive this time around.

I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.

The intended path or a detour?

Today was a day of khakee vardis and clashing ideologies, a day of increasing respect for the upright and righteous, while, at the same time a deepening sense of loss of faith and trust. Amitabh's the master of the screen, his acting skills only gaining ground as he ages. He is the undisputed Shahenshah of Indian cinema, the indubitable assayer of India's cultural roots and its constitution, albeit on-screen. With the power to reach the masses, to infuse in them faculties of nationalistic pride and duty, honour and religious tolerance, I say again, there can be no political campaign more searing and hard-hitting.


Of course, it is entirely because of braveheart directors like Raj Kumar Santoshi and Govind Nihalani that we get a glimpse of truth through these powerful movies. Movies, made with steely veins, gumption and raw blood from their hearts, notwithstanding box office predictions and sales, or the demand for crassness and skin. The few embellishments that each Dev and Khakee have, stay merely that, not interfering with the plot too much or leading the audience astray. Govind Nihalani's direction has been especially good in Dev, pitting two behemoths of Indian cinema, one a monolith of commercial cinema fare while the other a nationally and internationally acclaimed heavyweight of parallel cinema. While Raj Kumar Santoshi strengthens Amitabh's character and credibility with his supporting band of officers, Govind Nihalani has Amitabh and Om Puri as two charioteers attempting to rein in the Indian judicial system, wherein only one can survive, quite reflective of the current religious sentiment in India.

Ignoring all the frills, technical bloopers and incredulous stunts, the movies deliver the message they are intended to. No, the message does not ask you not to trust the police and politicians (who represent our first synonym for corruption since we were children) who are in cahoots, but urges you to take a more objective view of our duties and responsibilities, without hampering our vision with clouds of religious hatred. Dharm ka paalan karna hamara karm hai, says Dev, while Ananth promulgates that insaaf nyaayalay me milta hai, har naagrik aur kaum ke krodh se nahin.

For all the ideologies, verbosity and sermonizing that are the lowest common denominator in these movies, how much of it is really true? Are there real life character on which the movie is based, or are they just a figment of the writer's imagination that happened to be relevant to our times? Dev brings back memories of the Gujarat riots (from which I feel so far-removed because I was 10,000 miles away when they happened), and reminds us that we, as citizens, have a moral obligation to uphold our constitution and not let discrimination based on caste or religion veer us from our ordained path of virtue, dignity and rectitude. We are a nation that has to fight invaders, terrorists and traitors, not Muslims or Hindus. Do Amitabh or Govind Nihalani practice this open-mindedness, fair play and patriotism in their lives? If they do, then they are beacons for generations, but if they don't, is it fair to expect ordinary people to change their attitudes based on media projected view-points while the makers and creators of this propaganda ignore troth and treat this just as a means to fame?

On another related note, Saath Saath (made a few decades back) depicts two conflicting philosophies two, only this time, within the same person. Man is a piece of metal that can be forged into anything on the anvil of life's circumstances. An upright, honest individual who is unflinching in the harsh glare of reality is forced to change when life puts forth demands that he cannot keep up with. There is a constant tug-of-war with his conscience and he finally gives in to one of the two ways, the easier and compromising one of course. The rest of the movie is a close look at his increasing dissoluteness and dissolution into the world of demoralization, dishonesty and depravity before we have an abrupt end where his wife makes him realize, reform and revise to his old days.

All this teaches me one thing, it is excruciating to stand by your principles and sometimes even impossible but the truest measure of the grist in you is when you don't go astray. It is not about how high and out-of-reach-from ordinary-people my tenets are, but how I stick by even the easiest of them, how I follow my conscientious path even in the face of extreme hardship, torture and temptation.