Women's Web

The recent Park street case in Kolkata where a woman alleged that she was raped inside a car after being accompanied by some men from a nightclub, demonstrates once again what we’v always known: If you get raped, you’re likely to be blamed for it.

In this case, the woman went to a nightclub (GASP!), had alcohol (cue bigger GASP!) and had met the alleged rapists before she was attacked by them were all used as sticks to beat her with.

Anita Agnihotri’s Seventeen, a collection of short stories, many from India UnShining, delights with its insights into human nature. 

Review by Aparna V. Singh

Seventeen, a collection of seventeen short stories by bureaucrat-writer Anita Agnihotri (translated from the original Bengali by Arunava Sinha) is an illustration for any aspiring short story writer on how fiction can begin in fact and yet not be limited by it.

Agnihotri draws inspiration for many of her stories from the have-nots of this country – the landless peasants, the migrant workers, the abandoned wives, the unemployed. Yet, she does not fall into the trap of ‘reporting’ – this is fiction that serves better to illuminate India UnShining than most ‘factual’ pieces could.

Last week, I came across one of those all too common, ‘hot’ pictures of aspiring Bollywood actresses in a popular, mainstream newspaper. No doubt, said newspaper assumes that no one under the age of 13 reads newspapers, or even if they do, they are in any case bombarded by such hotness from every other medium, including the promotions for ‘item numbers’ on every television channel that there is no need to consider the age-appropriateness of any visuals used.

What really caught my eye was the caption this hot picture carried. It helpfully mentioned that the pic in question was from a shoot for a calendar that the actress was being featured in, and said calendar was a “collector’s item, just as she is.”

When does a woman become an item? And who is ‘collecting’ these women?

As a feminist who believes in women’s autonomy, including the right to wear what one wants, item [...]

Why does infidelity happen? Are Indians today more adulterous and less moral? Vijay Nagaswami’s 3’s A Crowd attempts to answer.

Review by Aparna V. Singh

There is a general perception that infidelity is on the rise today. There is also much hand-wringing one comes across in public discussions and private conversations that young Indians today are less “moral”, less committed to a once-sacrosanct institution.

In this context, well-known psychiatrist and counsellor Vijay Nagaswami’s 3’s A Crowd: Understanding and Surviving Infidelity is a welcome addition to the small selection of popular literature on relationships in India. Most work on relationships in India is either simplistic self-help manuals or research-based writing meant usually for an academic audience.

A few days ago, a Twitter user, @Nimisha_S, tweeted about the gross verbal harassment she suffered from a man walking past her on the road. A number of other users, (no doubt well-meaning people) immediately responded saying that she should have reacted in some manner – raised a crowd and got him collectively beaten up, shouted back, kicked him, punched him…

Somehow, this made me very uncomfortable. As Nimisha clarified later, she was returning late from work, after a tiring day when all she wanted to do was get home, on a rather lonely road with few pedestrians and little likelihood of help at hand. Even if she had been in a busy marketplace at daytime with plenty of folks around, is there a correct response to sexual harassment?

As women who face daily harassment on roads, in public transport, sometimes by auto or taxi drivers, sometimes in recreational spaces like parks, [...]

Travelling to exotic places and writing about them seems like a dream career; but what does it take to get going? 

Interview by Aparna V.Singh

A good travel writer’s words are like a magic carpet; they can transport us to new places and help us discover hidden delights or make us see well-known sights in an entirely new light. They serve as an extension to our senses and make us experience the flavours of destinations that we long to explore, someday.

Charukesi Ramadurai is a Bangalore-based travel blogger and freelance writer whose travel mantra is ‘anywhere but here’ – so when she is not actually travelling, she is busy planning her next trip. She blogs her travel stories on Itchy Feet. Charu talks to us about her passion and shares some pointers for anyone considering travel writing as a career option. More about her and her published work on her website. 

With 2011 coming to an end, we’ve completed 18 months of running Women’s Web, and what a fantastic, scary, exciting journey it has been! We had our ups and downs, we had our moments of doubt and others of exhilaration. The full-time team on the magazine expanded to a grand total of two, and we were joined by many new contributors as well.

At the end of 2011, I thought it would be fun to list down my favourite posts and articles of the year – the ones that I found most interesting, touching or involving in some way. Note, these are “my” picks from all the wonderful authors we published this year, so yeah, it is highly subjective. I was planning to pick 10, but I found that I just couldn’t – so, ultimately, I pruned down a much longer list to 12.

MY BEST OF WOMEN’S WEB 2011 (in random [...]

The Indian Homemaker is one of the blogs I follow closely, and while I find all her posts interesting, the reader interaction is especially interesting on posts where women write in to share their stories and ask for suggestions/perspectives. One such letter was from someone whose friend has been locked up by her parents for falling in love with a guy who was not Indian, and the letter-writer, while agreeing that this was extreme and wrong, still felt that they had justification since they were only trying to prevent her from making the wrong decision, in order to secure her happiness.

One of the things that struck me about us human beings was the assumptions we make, that certain things will guarantee happiness. In the Indian context, there is a broad assumption that marrying a girl/guy, identified by your parents, from the same caste-region-linguistic group guarantees a certain amount of happiness. [...]

A graphic novel written by Samhita Arni and illustrated by Moyna Chitrakar, Sita’s Ramayana retells the epic from a deeply ‘feminine’ perspective.

Review by Aparna.V.Singh

When I received my copy of Sita’s Ramayana, a graphic novel from Tara Books, five minutes of reading was all it took for me to experience a visceral sense of delight. There are books that appeal to you at an intellectual level, and there are books that do that, but also utterly captivate you with a certain something that is difficult to explain to a second person. Sita’s Ramayana is one such book and the reason I am mentioning this is that no one should mistake this piece for an objective review! It is the work of an unabashed fan who was touched to the core of her heart.

Sita’s Ramayana follows in the Indian tradition of innumerable retellings of the Ramayana, be it by accomplished poets or [...]

I admire Richard Branson’s spirit and his writing in general, but when I came across his piece today on The Healthy Entrepreneur, it really resonated with me. Of course, it is not the case that only entrepreneurs need to be healthy – everyone wants and needs to be healthy, whether one is a homemaker, a cubicle-dweller or a business owner. But, as an entrepreneur who has been down with a severe cold and feverishness for the last 2 weeks, (not to mention 3 such bouts in the last 6 months), Richard Branson’s words held special meaning for me. The thing about being the founder of a small business is that there are so few resources at hand – at the moment, we are a 2-member core team, and any illness leaves us seriously understaffed.

The curious bit about ill-health is that although we think of it largely as concerning the body, it [...]