The Thing About Indian Women

I need to tell you about India's Daughters. And her mothers, sisters, girlfriends, bosses, wives, coworkers and every other small or huge role the women of this country play in their families and in their offices and on the streets that aren't always paved for them as they walk miles without stopping.

I need to tell you about my grandmothers. Neither of them cleared five feet tall, but they were nothing less than pillars. My akkaji, in a white cotton sari, raised seven kids, lost her husband too early, and asking for nothing but the solace of her quiet, routine and the lit diyas of her pooja room. And my grandma, on my dad's side, who withstood freezing Massachusetts winters of poverty and a volatile spouse. She worked in factories and banks where everybody loved and knew her, and made meatloaf even though she was a strict vegetarian because she wanted her kids to fit in a weird new country called America.

I need to tell you about Karuna Nundy, the Supreme Court attorney who answers all my texts, calls and e-mails even though she's leading the fight for free speech on the internet, for fair health in Bhopal, for safe workplaces for women who actually make it past the first few glass ceilings. And Chandramani Jani, a village leader who convinced government officials to do their job in a village in Orissa. About Deepika Padukone, a Bollywood actress who spoke up about therapy and depression so we know the green grass needs to be watered, too. And I'll show you a picture of Pali, the woman on the Punjabi border town, who let me make lopsided rotis while she told me, without even a tiny bit of self-pity, what it was like losing her parents as a child and being forced to marry her own cousin and run their household.

If I could convince you this country was secretly run by women -- that they oiled the gears that kept it turning, brought home the water that kept it quenched, balanced the checkbooks, and painfully opened doors, one-by-one, would you believe me? Because after days of walking through those doors, India has taught me more about the strength of being a woman than any school, college, therapy session, bedroom or comfy cubicle has been able to do. And I'm pretty sure that if more of India's Daughters were allowed to grow up, they would shake the world.

I mean, could you play cricket in a sari?

Bindaas and Barelegged in Bombay

I was crossing the road to get to an ATM in Hyderabad the other day (a feat in itself given the traffic) when I felt the familiar onslaught of leering eyes on my body. I looked into the oncoming cars and suddenly they were everywhere -- men on bikes and in cars and crossing from the opposite side. I felt so vulnerable, as if the pressure of their gaze would cause my button-down shirt to literally pop right open.

But I also realized why it hit me so hard: I had spent the last few months in Bombay, wandering through the cobblestone streets of Bandra totally bindaas in dresses and shorts, and experienced only a fraction of this kind of thing. That city had proved a haven and those days were some of the most liberated I experienced anywhere in the world. Unlike other places in India, I could wear what I wanted, drink when I wanted, and come home at a decent party-time hour. And unlike cities in the U.S., there was so little focus on time and schedule, or even image, despite the beautiful and highly fashionable 20-somethings around me.

And there's more. The autos run on meter so you don't have to fight with the wonderful rickshawvalas. And the people I met -- through concerts, meditation circles, parties, whatever -- were some of the most creative, lively and coolly ambitious folks I've encountered in one place. I had long conversations about how zombies were actually, symbolically, immigrants, and what it was like to walk through the red light district at 4 a.m. I learned which train station had the best weed (and no, I had no plans to buy it), and which music festivals in India were worth my time. Novelists, screenplay writers, musicians -- I was surrounded, making it easier for me to understand why I came back in the first place.

Bombay also revealed the striking power of what happens when women are actually visible on the streets (and in offices and buses and trains). A couple of months ago I got a text from a particular family member telling me to come back home because "India was a rape waiting to happen." I felt nervous, but also defiant. India has become a second home to me, at least as much as any place I've lived for the past ten years, and leaving it in fear would mean being one more supposedly empowered woman hidden away and held back. Not that I'm interested in being a martyr, but being able to walk down the street at night to buy milk (or let's be realistic -- Old Monk) is a right that can't be taken away from me.

Not to be too rosy -- Bombay's got it's issues for sure (read Maximum City while standing in a flooded street during the monsoons if you need proof, or look at the sleeping line of homeless people around every corner). And every Indian city has incredible treasures, charms and kindness. But in a lot of ways, I got to see the best of this country during my summer in Bombay, and fall in love with the motherland all over again.

Eyes On My Body, Rage In My Head

Today there are celebrations across India -- the four rapists that brutally attacked a woman and her partner on a bus last year have been sentenced to death.

My friends are cheering. They post stuff and send me texts that justice is being served. But that euphoria seems more like tiger balm -- satisfying in a strange, tingly way, but only until it rubs off. Then you're just left with the ache.

There are some things that don't wash away. I resonate in part with this widely circulated essay from a an American student in India -- the constant feeling of eyes on your body is a silent, pervasive trauma. It's the kind of thing that turns your wonderment into dull, passive rage, your aimless saunter into a hurried walk.

It's not just an India problem. It's in my backyard and every country I've visited.

The worst moments for me were actually in Italy, where American study abroad kids can be like a drunken scar on the face of a beautiful city. But I wasn't drunk when I was followed for blocks down cobblestone streets, or when some guy pinned me against a wall in a club and stuck his hands down the waistline of my jeans.

I was told these weren't Italians. They were undocumented workers preying on American girls. But paperwork means nothing when you feel unwanted eyes and hands on your body.

In India, the frustration was paired with an experiment. I lived for a short while in the kind of community described in these context pieces about the Delhi rape. But it quickly became home, the stares become curiosity, and I had enough guardians in the families I knew that uneasiness became a thing of the past.

I became human there, in a slow and deliberate way. But only within that one square mile -- there were, of course, other times that shook me to the core.

This is not about  my story, though, it's a collective narrative. We don't get to write the plot through our single blogs and Facebook posts -- it's in the way boys are raised, and what girls see in the mirror. The way they sit together in school, and what it means to hold hands. The true meaning of consent.

Because until that happens, these stirring moments are not tipping points, they are just headlines. And I can safely say that's not justice.

Kash

When I think of Shruti I see her on the terrace. There’s a waist-high wall there, built of cinder blocks with rough edges. You can see the entire colony --from the chipped buildings of Phase I to the small huts of Phase III, where families crowd around the shared taps to fill their buckets with water. In the summer we watched kids fly kites on their roofs, running so fast to catch wind that my heart would race, trying to get to the edge before they did.

That’s where Shruti was standing that day, in a white t-shirt that skimmed her tall, slender frame, and a pair of 200-rupee skinny jeans. You could see what she was dreaming about: getting out, escaping the heat of the family’s stuffy kitchen where she prepared roti and sabji for ten people with her older sister. Where it seemed like as soon as her family had run their fingers along the rim of the steel plates to get the last bits of lunch, it was time to start chopping again.

All of her sentences started with kash – if only. 

Kash, my mother would let me work. I was offered a job, you know, where they paid 4000 rupees a month to make calls in an office. I could save the money and pay for flight hostess school. They said they would teach us English, the British kind, and I could fly around the country, sending money home and seeing something different.

Kash, they wouldn’t talk about my wedding so quickly. They took Kanta didi back to our village in Bihar, but somehow she convinced them to wait. I told them that I wouldn’t get married before going to college, I told them it was my only request. You can tell them didi, but they won’t listen.

I looked at Shruti's face then– a startling collection of delicate features – found anger instead of tears and didn’t know what to say. Her dreams were clear and big and I wanted to be part of them. I wanted to follow her to flight school, and deflect the leering eyes, and quiz her on English words that she practiced in a crisp accent, filtered from TV shows instead of the neighborhood chatter. 

Her mother, a sharp, sweet woman perpetually wrapped in synthetic saris, called from downstairs and Shruti took a breath before running down to answer. I followed a few steps behind.

Between the thawing of a north Indian winter and the robust bloom of spring, Shruti and I had many talks on that terrace. I would clumsily cut potatoes, applying pressure to a rusty knife until there was a groove in my palm, as she told me stories about school and what she thought about the band of young, reckless boys that I worked with every day. She was so much more confident than I was at her age – in touch with her strength, yet unsure of where to direct her power. 

As we grew closer, she would join me at the library, helping to wrangle the students or greet visitors. I would take deep breaths to stay calm, reviewing a to-do list and checking my agenda, whereas she gracefully managed a crowded room with a few words, without raising her voice. Later, we would laugh at the visitors -- local politicians or donors -- who tried to hide their shock when they found out a girl so well spoken was raised in a place the city would have liked to forget.

When I moved back to the U.S., setting down my bags on the Upper West Side,I called Shruti  on Saturday mornings, inexplicably nervous every time the phone rang, to receive a detailed account on the neighborhood frisbee team, Sunny's love life and meeting a local minister to demand public sanitation. I would run through my older-sister checklist -- asking about her younger sister’s frail health, making sure college came first, and willing her to keep updating her dreams.

Now I’m headed back to Shruti's house, having already promised her a sleep over, wedged between her four sisters, just like before. And my mind is doing what it does before any significant moment -- giving in to trivialities, scouring over what gifts to bring, wondering if my body is still immune to freezing bucket shower during the secretly chilling Chandigarh winters. 

But the closer I come to stepping back onto her terrace, I know that Shruti has become more to me than a younger sister. She is an unexpected mentor -- embodying a reference point for the life I want to lead, one that is waiting for me to step up to the plate, to act on the thoughts and ideas that I’ve kept limited to pen and paper. Because whatever happens to Shruti's future as she tries to navigate her suffocating family love has become an integral part of how I view my own.

Kanya

Being a woman in India comes with a lot of warnings -- don't even tap a guy on the shoulder, wear your dupatta in a modest and precise way, don't make eye contact.

Most of this advice comes from scary stories, and some from experience. But as my friend Kam mentioned in a piece she wrote, a lot of it comes from Fear.

Fear is the reason that almost every conversation I have with my aunts has nothing to do with my work, and everything to do with my safety. Fear is the driving force behind Indian newspapers -- effectively making this country sound overrun with lawless gangsters.

I was thinking of this the other day on a long bus ride from the hills. As soon as I climbed on, the conductor pointed me to the front two seats which were reserved for women. Not only was I protected from wandering eyes, I had a big screen view of the foothills of the Himalayas.

I know there are huge women's rights violations happening all the time. In fact many of them -- prostitution, child marriages and lack of education -- exist openly in my community. But my own experiences in India have been empowering and comforting, giving me hope that there is room for tremendous growth.

I continue to get in heated discussions, but my delivery has changed. I live and travel independently, but usually surrounded by women. I support girls who want to be educated and strong, but no longer discount their desire for a family life.

Here, aunties (yes, they are a genre) have been my guardian angels. Women who sit outside of my community center have pointed out wardrobe malfunctions and sensed my need for chai and chatting. Others have taught me to add tadka to my daal, and dress for freezing weather. One of my host mothers even got rid of a guy who was calling me too much.

Spending more time in the house translates to deep relationships with families, including fathers and sons. The societal idea that I am innately peaceful and nurturing has served me well with my students who have no problem wrapping their arms around my waist in the middle of an English class.

In another country, in another mental state, I might have been frustrated at the rules and stereotypes of being a girl. But at this moment I am almost relieved to be a woman. Not because I've stopped pushing the limits, but because I feel that India, or at least Chandigarh, has become the mother that knows just when her daughter is about to touch the stove, and pulls her hand away.