THE BAG THAT CAME BACK

It is an unassuming black net bag, the kind we call 'tholee' in Bengali. That's the bag you carry to the local vegetable (and/or fish) market.

It's weightless, although it can carry enormous amounts of weight. Kilos of apples, bhindis, cauliflower, beets, gourds, pumpkins, cabbages, dozens of bananas, bunches of palak, methi and kothmir, quantities of fish and fowl, have all nestled in happy weekly harmony in the confines of the bag, with a not-so-happy effect on my shoulder and wrist.

It's rather tatty and holey - precisely because of the above-mentioned weekly habit for working with heavy-weights.

It's got a heavy drinking habit, too - my husband often uses it for bringing home dozens of cans of Budweiser or bottles of Tuborg or...you get the drift?

It's recycled - in fact, it has been recycled ad infinitum, in all kinds of environments. It is as comfortable in grubby street-side markets as it is in air-conditioned restaurants where you have to pay through your nose. Because we always take it out of my much-more-expensive shoulder-bag if we have take any leftovers home.

It owes it's arrival in our household to an environmental crisis - after the humongous and horrendous rains of July, 2005, when drains blocked with plastic bags contributed greatly to the tragedy that ensued and prompted the Government to declare a ban on use of paper-thin plastic bags (isn't that contradictory?). I went to Big Bazaar and bought this net bag for Rs. 65/-

The ban was soon flouted, but the bag has stayed with us, loyal for nearly six years.

Until two weeks back. It had been carelessly pushed into my shoulder-bag (which is its usual resting place until it is called out for action). And it fell out while the spouse and I were on the way to, where else, the vegetable market. Its disappearance caused us a lot of grief and regret.

And then, like a miracle, it came back. My maid called me at work to say that another maid had found it hanging on a hook above the security-guard's desk in another wing of the building. It had apparently been lying there, unclaimed and unloved for a fortnight. I returned home with a happy spring in my step, the cheerfulness bubbling over in my voice when I called up the spuse with the good news.

And the very next day, my faithful bag-that-came-back was back in action.

For some reason, a tatty old 65-rupee bag has taught me a lesson in values beyond money.

WOMEN'S DAY: A PRIZED POSSESSION

Here's the essay I wrote that won the First Prize at the Essay Competition for Lecturers by Hinduja College. It's rather long (they had a word limit of 1500) and rather dry and pontificating at places (academics are notorious for their incomprehensibility and verbosity), so feel free to skip as much or all of it if you want.

WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT: MYTH OR REALITY?

Miles to Go

“The race must be saved, and it can only be saved through the emancipation of women.”

(Emmeline Pankhurst, British suffragette, in her Freedom or Death speech at Connecticut, USA, 1913. Source: Wikipedia)

‘Empowerment’ means ‘to vest with authority, to authorize’. As men have been the ‘authors’ of most texts since time immemorial, it’s not surprising that women have always got a bad deal in the division of power.

Look at The Holy Bible. Naomi Wolf explains in The Beauty Myth (1991, Vintage, London, pp.93), “Though God made Adam from clay, in his own image, Eve is an expendable rib.”

Look at the etymology of the word ‘woman’. This Old English word is a compound of wif + man. A part of man, and not much apart from man – that was the woman’s lot. Till the first glimmers of change in the 18^th century, notwithstanding a few Cleopatras and Catherine the Greats and Joans of Arc dotting the intervening centuries.

And then there came the three waves of the Women’s Liberation Movement, from the 18^th century to the present day. The movement varied in its aims and achievements in different nations and distinct cultures, from opposing female genital mutilation in Sudan to breaking the glass-ceiling in Western countries to abolishing the practice of Satidaha (burning of widows) in pre-Independence India.

And, no, female empowerment is not a mythical struggle like the symbolically-laden fight between Judith and Holofernes (where Judith cut off her assailant’s head). The achievements are very much real and hard-won – one of the most noteworthy being women’s suffrage. From New Zealand in 1893, Great Britain in 1918, the USA in 1920, and India since its tryst with destiny in 1947, women today have the right to vote. Such a long journey from the ideal state of Aristotle’s Politics, where women, infants and lunatics were denied citizenship rights.

Beyond politics, other struggles have been played out across the globe, on issues such as reproductive rights, domestic violence, equal pay, sexual violence and gendered language. The manifestations of male power are so insidious and entrenched, that we have a long way to go before women’s empowerment becomes as much of a ‘given’ as men’s empowerment has always been.

Protest through Silence

“Silence can be a plan

rigorously executed

the blueprint to a life

It is a presence

it has a history a form

do not confuse it

with any kind of absence”

(from Adrienne Rich, Cartographies of Silence, 1975)

To know the real status of women’s empowerment in India, we can do a number of things.

We can look at the figures. India has always performed poorly in gender-related indices. www.nasscomm.in informs us that The Human development report of the UNDP ranks India 98 in its Gender related Development Index. While 85% of the total girl children attend primary school, less than 12% still carry on to the tertiary level. These women who drop out, as well as those who go on to have a job, do not sit idle at home. Indian women typically spend 35 hours per week on household tasks and caring for family-members, as against 4 hours per week for men.

We can look at the faces. Women in India have had their poster-girls and role models. From Indira Gandhi (“the only man in her Cabinet”) to today’s Mayawati-Mamata-Jayalalitha in politics, from Indra Nooyi abroad to Naina Lal Kidwai and Chandra Kochhar here in the corporate jungle, from Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar in the jungles of injustice, from Sonia Gandhi, the de facto leader of the nation, to Pratibha Patil, the de jure head of the state, famous Indian women achievers make a long list.

Or we can look at the total picture. In a country of 496.4 million women (2001 census figures, source: www.merinews.com), pulling out a few hundred names from the conjuror’s hat is mere tokenism. Remember, India is also the land of Roop Kanwar, the 18-year old who committed sati on 4 September 1987 at Deorala in Rajasthan. We shall never know her real story, forever silenced on her husband’s pyre.

We can listen to the many silences around us – the silences of the women away from the limelight, away from our own educated, privileged world. Let me share with you my maid’s ‘herstory’. She is seventh-standard pass, abandoned by her husband even though she has two children, and she works from dawn to dusk washing-cleaning-sweeping-mopping to bring up her two children and to look after her mother and sister, who share her destiny of abandonment and subsequent self-sustenance through hard labour. She does not know about any charter of women’s rights, but her gut-instinct makes her refuse to take back her husband when he comes inebriated and wheedling to her door.

This is the power of silence, the real story of those who cannot voice their protest.

Power and Violence

“Girls never mean it when they say stop…

Was it rape, then?”

(from Rape, Joan Larkin, 1986)

Many a times, though, silence is at a disadvantage. Especially since violence is an inescapable ingredient in any struggle for power.

One of the most disturbing obstacles to women’s empowerment is the growing trend of violence against women. This violence takes many forms – dowry harassment, bride-burning, eve-teasing, sexual harassment at the workplace, honour-killing, marital violence and rape.

The Times of India, 27 November, 2010, reports that “statistics on rapes in the country shows how more than two women are raped every hour….The number of rapes across the country has increased manifold from only 2,487 in 1971 to 21,176 in 2008.” To each of these victims, women’s empowerment may just be an empty, broken promise.

Violence can take other forms, too. It can be self-inflicted, brought upon oneself by peer pressure and social expectations. The notion of ‘beauty’ can be fiercely competitive and mercilessly cruel. Isabelle Caro, the French actress and model who died on 1^st January, 2011, aged 28 and weighing under 30 kilograms, exemplifies the violence of beauty.

Naomi Wolf in The Beauty Myth (1990) analyses the ‘Walking Wounded’ – women who undergo cosmetic surgery, who become victims of anorexia and bulimia, to attain or maintain the ideal of ‘beauty’- beauty which always lies in the eyes of the observer, usually male.

The Bondage to Stereotypes

“The real trouble about women is that they must always go on trying to adapt themselves to men’s theories of women.”

(D H Lawrence, quoted in Erica Jong’s Fear of Flying, 1973)

Down centuries and across cultures, one of the most debilitating bondage that women have had to face is the bondage to stereotypes.

As Eve the eternal temptress, or as Mary, the selfless nurturer, as Durga, the ten-armed super-force, or as Savitri, the unquestioningly devoted wife, men have created the image of their perfect woman. In religion and literature, from the epics to the romantics, women have always been the ‘object’ – of possession (Draupadi and the game of dice in The Mahabharata), of adoration (read any romantic poem by Shelley), of suspicion (Sita in The Ramayana). Women have always been expected to conform to this straitjacketed stereotype constructed by men.

And they still do. Look at the popular television serials, with their docile/domineering saas-bahu (daughters and mothers in law) in aspirational finery and patriarchal set-ups. Most advertisements sell cars and deodorants through Eve-like femme fatales, or peddle noodles and spice powders with the help of supermoms and yummy mummies. Feminine cosmetic products glorify the most fantastic stereotype of them all – the ‘fair and lovely’ lady, impossibly beautiful, unattainably fair-skinned, dangerously slender centre of male attention.

As long as popular culture continues to endorse these stereotypes, women will continue to be enslaved by them. And women will liberate themselves financially and politically, only to be disempowered by subtler socio-psychological forces.

Break Free, Fly, Choose

“Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,

And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all.”

(from Hope, Emily Dickinson, 1861)However, there are encouraging signs. According to the Registrar General of India, the proportion of women in the workforce rose from 19.7% in 1981 to 25.7 % in 2001. Currently, in the Indian IT industry, women form 45% of the toal workforce. (source: www.nasscomm.in). More women are stepping out and speaking up, demanding and getting education and employment and some semblance of equality. Women earn outside and also slog inside their homes. But it is a choice many of us willingly make.

So, women’s empowerment is neither a myth, nor a fully-achieved reality, but a work in progress. A process that started long ago and far away, but carried forward each time any woman asserts her rights. My mother had to quit her job to bring up her children. I am managing to balance work and home. Maybe my daughters will have an easier choice, a smoother flight, a safer freedom, and a more equal empowerment. For the betterment of the entire human race – man, woman, transgender – we can all hope.

ANGEL IN THE BASEMENT

I am the optimistic sort, the type of person you can easily call foolish, because I believe that most people are either openly good or have a hidden store of goodness locked inside them. It may take a smile, or a listening ear, or sympathy, or praise, to unlock that store.

But I digress. Today I was lucky to encounter a really good person.

For a long time, I had been searching for a navy blue chiffon dupatta (stole worn over a salwar-kameez). Having done the rounds of all the shops and big departmental stores that I know of, I had encountered dozens of shades of blue (royal, ink, sky, powder, and that rather virulent shade called firoza). When I did meet navy blue, it was either in cotton or georgette (which get crushed too easily) or too expensive (BIBA had a gold-dotted navy chiffon at Rs 600 – which would have been way too heavy a burden for my shoulders).

I had gone down to the crowded basement of Gokul Market opposite the cacophonous Borivili Station to buy something else altogether, when a spirit in my feet led me (as the azure-blue loving poet, Shelley, would have put it) to a small hole-in-the-corner shop which sold only dupattas.

I saw navy-blue in cotton. I asked for it in chiffon. The man in the shop showed a brighter blue chiffon dupatta. I asked if a darker one was possibly there. The man said he’d try from some other shop of his, went up the winding, narrow stairs, and came down soon with the exact navy blue chiffon dupatta that my heart had desired for so long so longingly.

Absolutely delighted, I handed over the VERY reasonable sum of Rs 110 (did not even think of bargaining it down to, say, Rs 100). With a heart as light as the chiffon, I floated up to ground and went in search of the tailor the man had told me about to get the edges of the dupatta stitched (“beaded”, as we call it).

As I was waiting in the tailor’s shop, the dupatta-seller came hurrying. “Sister, here is your ten-rupee note. It was lying on the floor of my shop. It must have fallen out of your bag. I guessed you would have come here to stitch the dupatta, so I came hurrying to return the money.”

I was amazed and humbled. This man had come all the way from his shop (quite a long way, actually), jostling past festival-shopping-mad crowds, on the slim chance that I would be still there in the tailor’s shop, just to return a small amount of money! My smile got wider, my steps got lighter and the sun got brighter, all because of this one unselfish act of honesty.

Angels don’t always descend from the heavens, they also emerge from basements. This unlikely angel just made my day.

LIKE A FISH...

To find a Bengali, one just has to find the nearest fish-market. The fish-stalls, or the non-veg section of supermarkets selling fish, are converging points for Bengalis. You can identify them (the Bengalis, that is) by the over-loud debating voices, just like you can identify the fish-stall by the smell (so dear to us, so detested by non-fish-lovers).

A Bengali without fish is like a fish without water. It is essential to his innate sense of well-being. The intricate springs and coils of the fabled Bengali brain run smoothly only when they are adquately fish-oiled (Omega 3 and all that are very good, but it has to be blended with pure mustard oil).

Bengalis will congregate over fish and debate endlessly on the virtues of rui over katla, peti (oilier portions from around the stomach) over gada (bonier portions from the back of the fish), galda over bagda (lobsters over tiger-prawns), anything over anything-else. The fish-sellers and their assistants (who are also, often, Bengali) chip in with their bits of advice, usually supporting the Bengali with the heavier wallet.

But there are two immutable, uncontestable truths :
1. The sweet Bengali river-fish is the only edible fish in whole wide world (a grudging exception is made for pomfret, because the less-bony easily-fry-able fish is an inexplicable favourite with children). Any Bengali worth his mustard oil will turn up his nose at the salty sea-fish like bangda (found in shiny silver abundance in Mumbai) as an inferior sub-genre, not fit to be called fish.
2. Hilsa is the KING (or to be politically-correct, the QUEEN) of fishes. And all bespectacled-Bengalis will glare you down if you dare to suggest otherwise.

Other people are unperturbed by their choice of fish. My maid (who is from Maharashtra) happily cooks surmai/halwa/anything else with the same onion-garlic-chilli-coconut-tomato-coriander masala combination. But we Bengalis are thrown into a tizzy by our choice of fish. The other day I was extremely amused to overhear a phone conversation where the hapless husband was getting severely scolded by his wife because he had purchased rui when she had apparently made a mustard-coconut paste ready to cook prawns. Of course, rui with this same paste would be a blasphemously-unBengali concoction. So the poor husband was summarily ordered to buy some degenerate frozen shrimps to salvage the masala, and a tub of yogurt to grace the rui-curry.

I am a shame on bona fide Bengalis, I guess. I love fish, but am completely undiscriminating when it comes to choosing between betki and rawas, bombil and pabda. I don't even care if the oil is mustard or sunflower. As long it is fish, I love it. More of a Piscean and less of a Bengali, I guess.