Colour me red

We claim to be modern and enlightened; so why do we continue to ghettoize widows?

You know what annoys me more than the insistence that women sport some sign – bindi, sindoor, mangalsutra – of their ‘married’ status? It is the insistence that widows should not be allowed to sport any of these signs. That they should put away their red saris and bangles, and restrict themselves to sober colours, which are in keeping with their new status. The subliminal message is clear: a woman’s life revolves around her husband; she derives all her status in society through him. She dresses up for him; she pretties herself for him. Once he passes, her life is over as well. So, what use can she possibly have for the ‘shringar’ that is the preserve of married women?

Well, I am happy to report that some women are now summoning up the courage to say no to this kind of obscurantist nonsense. Over the last month or so, I have had the pleasure of meeting many such women, who refuse to be defined by their widowhood. Some of them are old, others heartbreakingly young, while others are middle-aged. Some of them are careerwomen; others are housewives. Some of them are rich, others middle class, and some struggling to make ends meet.

But whatever their surface differences, all these ladies have two things in common. One, all of them loved their husbands immensely and miss them enormously. Two, they see no value in the ‘tokens of widowhood’ that the rest of the world sets so much store by.

Take Hema Deora, for instance, who lost her husband, the politician Murli Deora, a few months ago. When I met her recently, she was still wearing her trademark  red and white ‘shakha and paula’, traditionally worn by married women. She still had her bindi in place. This is the way her husband loved to see her, she said to me. And to change her appearance after his passing would be a discourtesy to his memory.

Meeting her put me in mind of Kavita Karkare, the widow of 26/11 martyr, Hemant Karkare, who recently passed away, six years after her husband. In all her appearances in the media after her husband’s death, Kavita always had her bindi and mangalsutra in place. Her personal bravery aside, with that single gesture, she sent out a message to every widow: her personal loss may be immense but a woman’s status should not change just because she no longer has a husband.

And yet, even modern, educated, enlightened folk seem to expect widows to withdraw from the world, to retreat into their private world of grief, and let others get on with the task of living. And such is the societal pressure that most women feel compelled to give up on all the small pleasures of life rather than be seen as transgressing the norm. It takes a special sort of courage to step up and reclaim the life that you had, and to ignore all those looking askance.

Namita Bhatia, a media professional who lost her husband a couple of years ago, told me of the time when she first put on a red sari and a bindi to attend a family function after being widowed. As she emerged from her room, her always-supportive mother asked if she was sure about going out like that. “What will people say? What will they think?” she asked her daughter. Namita’s reply was clear: it did not matter what anyone else thought or said. Her husband would have been happy to see her like that. And that’s all that mattered to her. Her mother, to her credit, immediately saw the point.

The good news is that more and more widows – both young and old – are beginning to think like Namita. The bad news is that not everyone is blessed with such a supportive environment.

And sadly, the conventional wisdom still remains that widows are not entitled to look attractive or even (God forbid!) sexy. Once their husbands have passed on, they should put away the ‘shringar’ that is the mark of the married woman, and remain in mourning for the rest of their lives.

We may pat ourselves on the back as to how modern and liberated we all are. But scratch the surface and the old obscurantism raises its ugly head. We may not send the widows of our families to Vrindavan – where it becomes a big story is they are even ‘allowed’ to play Holi with colours – to languish in ashrams, where they remain out of sight and out of mind. But we still ghettoize them in subtle but insidious ways: don’t wear bright colours; don’t wear a bindi; don’t laugh too loudly; don’t dance at weddings. Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t. The list just goes on and on.

It’s time to change that. It’s time to accept that a woman’s life does not end just because her husband’s has. She still has the right to look good and to feel happy. She can still rock a red sari and a big bindi. She can wear whatever jewellery she pleases. She can both look and feel sexy. And no one has the right to tell her any different.

Marking the day

We may well acknowledge the first International Day of the Girl Child in India – but let’s not dare assume that we have the right to celebrate it

On the 11^th of October the first International Day of the Girl Child was celebrated across the world. In India, too, we had the usual suspects releasing statements, attending functions, organising events to mark the day. But surely the irony of celebrating a day dedicated to the girl child could not have been lost on any of us. Not when more than 500 women have been raped since the beginning of the year in Haryana alone (and that’s just the cases that have been reported); when the figure for women being married off before they turned 18 stood at an astounding 60 per cent in Bihar; and when female foeticide is believed to have killed at least 10 million girls in the womb all across the country.

Yes, the girl child doesn’t really get much of a break in India. If she escapes being aborted, she arrives into a world that regards her as a burden. She is much less likely to finish her primary education than her brothers. She will probably be married off even before she attains majority. And when she gets pregnant, the likelihood of her dying in childbirth is astonishingly high (more than 65,000 women die giving birth in India every year – or, in other words, every 8-10 minutes a woman dies in childbirth), assuming of course that the pregnancy is not terminated because she is carrying a girl child who needs must die before she can born.

And thus the vicious circle continues, sucking each successive generation of women into its vortex of despair.

I know what you’re thinking. Why paint such a bleak portrait of Indian womanhood? After all, there are plenty of women among us who are valued and cherished by their families, who are brought up as valuable members of society, who are educated, who go on to have worthwhile careers, and are both financially independent and socially secure.

Yes, of course, there are. And I number myself among them. But we are the lucky ones, the minuscule minority who were fortunate enough to be born into the right families and the right social class. If it wasn’t for an accident of birth, we could just as easily be among the 35 per cent of women who are not literate, the 47 per cent of women who are married off as minors, the 212 women in every lakh who die in childbirth because they don’t have access to medical facilities, the 7,00,000 girls aborted every year because they are simply the wrong sex.

When you think of the sheer numbers involved – considering that our population stands at 1 billion and counting – it’s clear just how bad things are for women in India.

It doesn’t really matter that we’ve had a woman President in Pratibha Patil or that the UPA is headed by Sonia Gandhi or that the leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha is Sushma Swaraj. It is of no consequence that five states of the Indian Union – Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh – have (or have had) women chief ministers (in Jayalalitha, Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, Vasundhara Raje and Uma Bharati). Or that the world of finance has seen such power women as Chanda Kochhar and Naina Lal Kidwai running large institutions with aplomb. Or even that we have produced such world-class sportswomen as Mary Kom, Saina Nehwal and Sania Mirza.

All of these are achievements that must be celebrated – as indeed they are – but there is no ignoring the fact that these are exceptions that provide a stark contrast to the trials and tribulations that ordinary Indian women have to suffer every day of their lives. And that they mean nothing to the mother living in a remote village who has to trek for miles every day to get drinking water for her family; to the women who have no access to sanitary napkins let alone comprehensive health care; to the new bride who is harassed to death by the dowry demands of her husband and in-laws; to the young girl who is first raped and then told that she ‘asked’ for it; to the widow who is forced out of her family home and sent off to Vrindavan to await death.

And it is particularly ironic that the UN is marking the first International Day of the Girl Child by drawing attention to the problem of child marriages at a time when the khap panchayats in Haryana have announced that girls should be married off at a young age so that they do not get raped (apparently, a mangalsutra also serves as a rapist-repellent in their strange, convoluted minds), a position that was rapidly adopted by such obscurantist political leaders as Om Prakash Chautala.

So, let’s not celebrate the International Day of the Girl Child just yet. Not until we have ensured that every girl in the womb gets a chance at life. Not until we have made the education of every young girl possible. Not until we have made provision for her health care through menstruation, pregnancy, child-rearing and menopause. Not until we have ensured that she gets paid the same wage for the same job as her male co-worker. And not until we have made sure that she has the liberty to make her own life decisions.

Until then, we can mark the International Day of the Girl Child in our calendars – but let’s not dare to assume that we have any right to celebrate it.