Wanderings

When it comes to understanding life and living in India, I often find myself traversing two ends of the spectrum. At home, I am privileged: I’ve had a comfortable and secure family life; I attended a convent school in small-town Lucknow when we still had Irish nuns; and I live in South Delhi. Through my work on gender and HIV, I am constantly meeting those living on the edge -- women in sex work, drug users , HIV positive people – in remote villages, yes, but also in the metros. In fact, Mumbai’s underbelly beats everything else one has seen in terms of squalor.

Traversing different worlds is a privilege for someone exploring human behaviour. And I’m amazed at what I find. The devadasi woman, dedicated by her parents, exploited by the family is not bitter. The resilience and spirit of survival of the poor is daunting. On the other hand, a friend from school, whom we have envied all these years for being the biggest, richest achiever says – ‘life hasn’t been kind to me’.

Truly, life is stranger than fiction. Backpacking some years ago, a strange thought crossed my mind: Is single motherhood an option. I send an sms to Khush, a buddy from our convent school days in Lucknow. Intensely feminine as any woman can be, Khush replies back promptly: No, at least not in India in the present context. When we continue our discussion at D's place in Mumbai some days later, D says single motherhood only seems to work for Neena Gupta and Sushmita Sen. She says in reality, many women are single mothers, but you need the man – ‘he may be drunkard, convict, whatever – but in our social context the man is necessary.’ She adds that we can’t just think about ourselves – not having a father isn’t fair on the child either, given the social context.

D is a banker – brilliant, industrious, logical, gifted with sharp insight; Khush works in the hospitality industry. I thought that was interesting, coming from our trio of well-heeled, privileged, educated women, all of us well into our 30s and dreaming motherhood.

When I travel to research lives of poor and marginalized women across the country, over and over again, I hear the same story of desertion and destitution. Women speak of husbands remarrying, or driven to destitution when they themselves were second or third wife. Where family has broken down, many women, specially among the poor, are single mothers.

Where the great Indian family is apparently going strong, it has its share of charades. In Naihati, a small town off Kolkata, a middle-aged saleswoman said her in-laws threatened to throw her out of home when her husband remarried. She begged her mother-in-law to ‘let her stay as a maid.’ Clearly, leaving is not an option she has. Going back to natal family ‘brings shame to them’, she isn’t sure either how they will receive her. Living independently is not an option as nobody wants to rent space to a single woman. At least this way her 8-year-old son gets to stay in his rightful home, she reasons.

She reminds me of a discussion I had with colleague Ambika some months ago. A Malayali social worker who has worked a lot in the southern States, Ambika says when it comes to women, safe shelter is more basic a need than food. ‘Women can starve a day or two but they cannot survive even for a night without shelter,’ she says.

Legal literacy is poor, legal redressal a cumbersome long-drawn process. Women are forced to beg and plead, cow down to pressure. I think of D who lives in Mumbai in one of its most expensive real estate – a place she has earned for herself. Khush lives in a company flat. Single or married, it is no small blessing then, when women know safe shelter is not an issue.

Across class, we hear women tell stories of violence – sometimes stark, sometimes subdued. In Lucknow, I overhear a fairly well-off educated young woman tell my aunt that her husband 'loves' her so much he doesn’t let her go out for the usual things – shopping, meeting friends, whatever. ‘He will get me whatever I ask for, he takes me and the children out on holidays, but he doesn’t let me go out by myself,’ she says.

She made it sound as though she wasn’t sure this is what she had bargained for in the ‘love marriage’. She wasn’t complaining either. What did she truly want to express? Like the middle-aged friend who will start off by saying how much her husband cares for her – and then, a bit slowly, that she has no access over the money she earns, she must give her husband an account for everything. When she travels on work sparingly, her husband calls to tell her she can order a non vegetarian dish for herself.

Freedom is not having anybody tell us what to eat and what not to, what to wear and what not to. Whom to speak to, where to go, what to buy… the list is endless. Freedom is to have spending power – right over the money we earn at least.

Stories of exploitation from family abound but the traditional devadasi system of prostitution in Bagalkot, north Karnataka, stumps the most hardened soul. The family ‘dedicates’ pre-puberty daughters to the Goddess; they end up selling sex to support the family who lives off her earnings. She cannot get married, because she is ‘already married’, her children will not have any right over father’s name or property. Now a banned practice, the devadasi tradition also reflects a society that not only acknowledges ‘men’s needs’ but has even devised a system to ensure they are fulfilled.

It strikes me, then, if ‘men’s needs’ is as widespread a phenomenon as is made out to be, in modern society the men who consider themselves lady-killers – rich, powerful, suave – whom are they seeking out. Buying sex they will scoff at so who will be easy game but single women. The younger – the easier and better – naturally. No wonder then that women don’t like us single women – we are seen as a constant threat to the ‘moral fabric’. And because we are so ‘free’ men don’t like us either. Why can’t you have friends like so-and-so (proper, polite, married, dutiful), a friend’s husband tells her. Clearly, he doesn’t fancy me filling her brain with notions about gender rights.

Fulfillment eludes. Maybe it’s a mirage but that doesn’t stop the search.