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Women are racing ahead in all kinds of fields – finance, literature, broadcasting, art, IT, design, law, science, medicine, education – and are a huge powerhouse in today’s India. And yet, reflects IMTIAZ DHARKER, this is sadly a powerhouse with 90 per cent of the power switched off…
 You could call it half a truth, or half a lie.
We could sit around congratulating ourselves on being strong independent women, or we could take responsibility for the other 90 per cent who don't have the luxury of pride.
Women are a huge powerhouse in today’s India. Look around you. There are women racing ahead in all kinds of fields: finance, literature, broadcasting, art, IT, design, law, science, medicine, education.You name it, we've got it. Women I meet have a confidence, a sense of themselves that I have never seen before. We don’t need to compare ourselves to anyone. We’re free-standing, self-powered sources of energy.
A powerhouse, true.
And yet this is a powerhouse with over 90 per cent of the power switched off. For every heroine and role-model, how many are ground down day by day, by the long walk to the well and back, by the corrosive social structures that wear them away, by the daily struggle to live?
These are women who don’t even know they have choices.
In the beginning of 2004, 16 years after Roop Kanwar burned to death on a funeral pyre, all the accused in four sati trials were acquitted by a judge in Rajasthan.
Half of India’s children are malnourished or stunted. Of course, the majority is girls. Nine out ten pregnant women between the ages of 15 and 49 suffer from malnutrition and anaemia. And even then they are lucky to be alive at all. A study of 2,000 abortions showed that against only one male foetus, 1,999 female foetuses were aborted.
And when they are born? The cases are in our newspapers every day, young girls abused within their own families.
So father’s day, mother’s day, women’s day… All these days are used to buy and sell us.
And it’s like any commodity, if it serves our purpose, we’ll use it.
I am proud of taking charge of my own life, of being in control. But it’s a fine line from there to the bottomless pit of smugness.
Let’s use today to remind ourselves not to be too self-congratulatory.
I do see all the bright young girls and the self-confident women around me. I admire their guts, and their determination to take on the world, from New York to Beijing. Of course, they are shining. Nothing can make them less than they are, and what I am saying is not meant to take the shine off them. It’s just that I want all the others to shine too, to have the same opportunities. I see the same spark in the girl with the amazing smile, selling flowers on the street.
When she is struggling to breathe, can we hope to see her shine?
Red ribbons
by Imtiaz Dharker |
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One girl haunts me,
the one I meet
coming out of the makeshift hut
at the end of every dusty street.
It must be
the red ribbons that she wears,
shining against the careful hair,
nylon formed into a perfect bow,
plumped out and backlit by the sun.
The one
who emerges out of chaos,
poised. Just so.
How many of her are there?
How many, hidden under
the layer of lies?
The ones who stride down dirt tracks,
The ones who have filled an ocean,
bucket by bucket, all their power
concentrated in the hip-bone.
The arm at work,
pulling in the socket.
How many steps have they taken
to how many wells?
Draw that line.
Draw a line on all the footsteps
from home to water,
from water back to home.
Now draw those lines again
across my face.
Make a net of them
to catch me like a fish.
Pull me in.
Look hard at my face.
This is how faces look
after they have broken through
bricks walls, glass ceilings,
seductive cloth, cages
of gold, curtains of fire.
Wired hard to light,
the kind that whips away
the darkness in the soul,
unties the knotted heart
ties bright ribbons in my hair
and makes my body whole.
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