With Independence Day around the corner, are India women marching merrily towards the date or tiptoeing gingerly with brows furrowed? How far have we come since 1947?
A simple flashback reveals that marriage used to be a must all over the country back then, compared to urban areas currently, where single women live with or without cats. No one’s bragging about a grandaunt being sati mata and honour killing is no longer fashionable. Boys and girls even in the most rural terrain have access to schools. Education is getting its slogans. Mother-in-law jokes are passé, the number of children is down to zero or one, science is tackling infertility, gender equality gets lip service and pay parity is on everyone’s lips.
Women are suing senior colleagues for sexual harassment, if necessary. The #MeToo movement has percolated from city to small towns, with many cases taking down even men in high positions. The onus now being on the man rather than the woman in such cases to prove their innocence has been a major shift in attitudes.
Stats on domestic violence, courtesy the National Family Health Survey, indicate that 29.3 percent of married women from 18 to 49 years of age in India have experienced domestic or sexual violence, in the period between 2019 and 2021. At the recently held Bengaluru Poetry Festival, lyricist Javed Akhtar said that, as a child, he had not known domestic violence existed; his only brush when he once saw their domestic help beating up her husband with her footwear. Memorable anecdote, with roles reversed atypically.
Ambition in women could be considered a curse in some parts, and stalking is still a synonym for wooing, jaise filmon main hota hei. More and more young women are seeing the merits of freezing their eggs, so that their fertile years no longer blackmail them into a hasty tragic marriage. Women as breadwinners sometimes support entire households, along with an unemployed husband to boot. Men taking time out to find themselves is a new trend, with working wives picking up the slack.
Sexually speaking, just like their global brethren, Indian men don’t hesitate to send their explicit pictures with a view to boosting their love life. They DM their deepest desires to women they do not know. Men are slowly but steadily catching on to their grooming deficiencies too. Unisex beauty parlours and spas cater to masculine vanity. The metrosexual male is now ready to discuss moisturizers. But a female superstar still eludes us. There is no ‘she’ equivalent yet to Amitabh Bachchan, Rajinikanth or SRK.
Toon character Savita Bhabhi, who thrives in her porn pursuits despite censorship, perhaps is the face of a neoliberal post-modern India that is caught between its traditional past and western examples of liberty. Bhabhis synonymous with round rotis began to gather nuance. Indian women, like women everywhere, are tugging for more freedom. As Rosie (played by actress Waheeda Rehman) in Guide sings once the aanchal has been pulled out of thorns: aaj phir jeene ki tamanna hai.
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