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!