GenQ

Walk through the airport doors (or look around your airplane) into the assault that is India and you’d be forgiven for thinking that women don’t exist, walk down the street, catch a bus, eat dinner, meander around and the situation is much the same. To every ten men you’d be lucky to spot more than one woman, and even then she’ll rarely be alone, occasionally with other women and nearly always attached to her husband’s hip (well two steps BEHIND him).

Get in a rickshaw (local taxi), or on a motorbike and women drivers are even more scare, perhaps one in fifty. Welcome to a real patriarchal arrangement where women exist to bear children, cook, clean and stay at home, the way god intended. Though check out the multitude of billboards and you’d think women all over India were free to get a University education, pursue a brilliant career, travel and shop to their rupee hearted content…if only advertising didn’t lie!

Don’t get me wrong, women lucky enough to be born into money do have all the above opportunities depending on the family religious/personal beliefs about women’s roles in society and women without such luck do work bloody hard! Try carrying a 10 k.g. fish balanced precariously on your head for 17 k.m a day in the scorching heat, or trying to provide for your 4 children, husband and extended family while living in a slum (if you’re lucky) and having no education, no access to skills training and being branded an untouchable by virtue of being borne into a caste system that states your family name is your cage.

And the clothes; long heavy sari’s that restrict your ability to walk more than two 2cm’s each step, always making sure that your legs don’t show- and if they do, you’ll be sure to be told! Add to that the fact that you’ll be married into a family as part of a bingo game where you’re merely a number, to a man you’ve never met, handed over for a sum of money like a piece of property and expected to play house and sex slave with a smile on your chained face for the rest of your days; forget divorce you’ll be shunned and hang out to dry like the relentless washing you do.  Although admittedly some women do find love and are able to choose their husbands, though they are the minority and more often than not, the wealthy.

Female travelers don’t fare well either. My three (female) mates and I are walking tourist attractions for throngs of men who blatantly stare right at you for hours (yes..I’m not kidding; try waiting at a bus terminal) on end without a single blink. You really do get reminded that you’re a single, white, female in a country where men reign supreme and you’re an exotic delicacy (or sex object; depending on your perspective).

Just taking a walk becomes an unnerving experience, let alone actually catching a bus where hands find their way into your pack, men try to sit on top of you and if you’re an Indian woman you’re denied even a seat. Our train experience wasn’t much better; the women blocked the door so we couldn’t get in the carriage and we were relegated to the disabled carriage and stuck outside the toilet in a pool of other people’s piss…thank god we know how to laugh and always carry incense!

Where are the lesbians you ask? Who knows?! Men however, frequently roam the streets holding hands, hugging and being openly affectionate so they need not worry about the controversial PDA (Public Displays of Affection), though don’t assume they’re gay, it’s customary here.

I’m sure there is an underground lesbian scene, but lesbians aren’t even recognized in this land; legally they do not exist, homosexuality on the other hand is illegal under section 77 of the Indian penal code. If you’re caught in the throes of sodomy you’re liable for extensive jail time.

Recently a film called Girlfriend was launched that explored a lesbian relationship, predictably it was met with outrage and swiftly banned from theatres around the country with the statement that “lesbianism is against Indian culture”.

However, there is one great Indian film that I know of that has been met with critical acclaim and of course, controversy ; Fire by Geeta Mehta. Books on the other hand, are harder to come by, I have been scouring bookshops all over south India for Facing the Mirror: Lesbian Writing from India edited by Ashwini Sukthankar and have come up with absolutely nothing, but I haven’t lost hope…yet…

What else can I say but here’s to a future where the women of India (lesbian and straight) have autonomous lives of their own and us Western women can drink chai with the ladies on the side of road, rather than four generations of men and we can all move about uninhibited by the expectations of patriarchy’s penitentiary.

Tags: equal rights, India, patriarchy