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We live in a world where we evaluate a woman based on her private life and both men and women are taught to address certain women as sluts or bad characters.
Guest Blogger Rinzu Rajan describes herself as a single woman, struggling to shrug social compulsions and religious rigidity, who writes poetry and is a published poet. Helps women the society has loathed at, and is making an effort to put her wile and wrath on paper to untie the blindfolds of people who consider women a weaker sex. She writes at www.rinzurajan.blogspot.com.
A recent Facebook spat prompted me to write this. The guy in question thought he could get away easily with his one sided opinion about divorcees or single mothers or women as a whole. And then on a recent visit to a friend who calls herself a womanist, I got to know about a perception many Indian women had against people of their own race. Was she a womanist? I doubted it!
I don’t know why we are not so strongly opinionated against men who are two timing their wives or are incarnated forms of the devil. We were from childhood taught to form opinions only against woman, because in our great country a woman is a symbol of modesty! Dare she deviate from her model roles and choices in life, she becomes a slut and what not.
And the best thing is that other women, people from her own breed would be up in arms against her. Don’t know what should such women, trained in docile patriarchy be called. But then men have been given all the privilege to do anything in life. No questions against them! No opinions and more so no “character certificates” for them!
Oh, she is a woman! Yes, so? Prying eyes that almost dig into the crevasses of your cells to find out what kind of a woman you are. And then the next question might generally be revolving around your relationship status. If you have a Mrs. prefixed before your name, you become the eternally sinless Goody Two shoes. If you’re single you become a slut who is unmindful and undeterred by burdensome ideologies in life but must surely be sleeping around with three men at that time. And if she has issues befriending a man she becomes a lesbian with a big “L”.
If she is a woman who made a strong unfettered decision like annulling her marriage for whatever reasons, she suddenly becomes something else. As Indian women, we are expected to be the model of devotion, sacrifice and love. And yes, one must note that in most cases, she might not be asked to love herself. Oh, that is the right she was denied the moment the doctor at the hospital said, “It is a girl.”
Then there is the other breed of women who get into relationships trusting that she will finally end up with the man. She gives the man conjugal rights and toils to see if the union will work. Sometimes what she gets from the deal is a child, a love child that gives her the tag of being a bad woman. For her guillotine of guilt to not execute her, she must abort the child; if she decides to keep the child she becomes a pooch with puppies – not worthy of any respect.
Opinionated! We Indians are especially assessing a woman all the time and our imagination can run the wildest when we convict her to be anything, just anything under the sun.
The other day I went to meet a friend. While we were having a talk on former crushes she happened to talk of a Christian guy she liked. And how he had vindictively considered her to be vulnerable. One statement that resulted in the melting of my grey cells was that the guy ended up with a woman who was a “gone to bed types”. Suddenly the personal choices this other lady had made in her life became the only assault weapon my friend wanted to use against her. I have no words to describe such women who have so much conceit against people of their own sex.
Why? Because, we have been pathogenically infected by patriarchy and its venom has managed to adulterate every woman who has let her father or brother or her husband do the talking. By the way, this lady in question calls herself a feminist!
We live in a world where we can tirelessly evaluate a woman based on her private life and maybe we were both as men and women taught to address such women as sluts or bad characters. Okie, I have a doubt here! Do we still live in a free world or aren’t we in some way a docile Talibanized people who have christened a woman to be the mantle of modesty that can be looked upto? Aren’t a woman’s choices her own and shouldn’t those be respected? Just the way we choose to stay speechless about men who are two timing their wives well into their marriages or those who have made it a deed and discourse to rape their wives every night as an act of mutated masculinity.
Pic credit: Garry Knight (Image of a protestor at Slutwalk London, 2011; used under a Creative Commons license)
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Rajshri Deshpande, who played the fiery protagonist in Trial by Fire along with Abhay Deol speaks of her journey and her social work.
Rajshri Deshpande as the protagonist in ‘Trial by Fire’, the recent Netflix show has received raving reviews along with the show itself for its sensitive portrayal of the Uphaar Cinema Hall fire tragedy, 1997 and its aftermath.
The limited series is based on the book by the same name written by Neelam and Shekhar Krishnamoorthy, who lost both their children in the tragedy. We got an opportunity to interview Rajshri Deshpande who played Neelam Krishnamoorthy, the woman who has been relentlessly crusading in the court for holding the owners responsible for the sheer negligence.
Rajshri Deshpande is more than an actor. She is also a social warrior, the rare celebrity from the film industry who has also gone back to her roots to give to poverty struck farming villages in her native Marathwada, with her NGO Nabhangan Foundation. Of course a chance to speak with her one on one was a must!
“What is a woman’s job, Ramesh? Taking care of parents-in-law, husband, children, home and things at work—all at the same time? She isn’t God or a superhuman."
The arrays of workstations were occupied by people peering into their computer screens. The clicks of keyboard keys were punctuated by the occasional footsteps moving around to brainstorm or collaborate with colleagues in their cubicles. Most employees went about their tasks without looking at the person seated on either side of their workstation. Meenakshi was one of them.
The thirty-one-year-old marketing manager in a leading eCommerce company in India sat straight in her seat, her eyes on the screen, her fingers punching furiously into the keys. She was in a flow and wanted to finish the report while the thoughts and words were coming effortlessly into her mind.
Natu-Natu. The mellifluous ringtone interrupted her thoughts. She frowned at her mobile phone with half a mind to keep it ringing until she noticed the caller’s name on the screen, making her pick up the phone immediately.
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