Two gamchhas, a little debt and a few other tools.

I have never been able to exactly explain to people why I do not call myself a feminist. Actually I have not been able to do that to myself very well either. Inspite of considerable and consistent temptation, there’s always been that little voice that says, “Maybe….”

Having done much soul searching, I have my own theories on this and one of them is this:

Feminism left out the nitty gritty. And since I have a practical rather than intellectual bent of mind, I remained skeptical about being told what to do, but not how to do it.

Dont get me wrong, I am a great supporter of feminism, and deeply respect this ideology and its accompanying struggle. I am part of it and it is a part of me. I have lived my life by its thinking. My first encounter with de Beauvoir produced in me the same excitement and fascination as my first reading of Marx. (Like a good Bengali, I had read the latter before the former)

However, while it did radicalize my life, it did not answer all my questions. There were words that set fire to your soul, - ““Those of us who stand outside the circle of this society's definition of acceptable women; those of us who have been forged in the crucibles of difference - know that survival is not an academic skill...For the master's tools will not dismantle the master's house. They will never allow us to bring about genuine change.” 

But where were our tools? Here I was, in strength, support and solidarity with a million other women and a spattering of men, ready to break down things, but our hands were empty. And with empty hands, ladies and gentlemen, the struggle naught availeth. Unless you are a karate expert, of course.
 

Give my practical bent of mind, I shall now discuss two tools as examples of how this impacted feminism and my own classification/non classification as a feminist. These are explained below with real life examples:

Example 1:

For once, they asked before I asked.  Since I always struggled to find a vernacular for this, and since that gave rise to a manner of anxieties and misunderstandings,  I was greatly relieved. My two escorts, with a great air of importance, walked me along purposefully. And  they kept telling everyone they met, where I was being taken. Everyone nodded and smiled and I smiled back uncertainly. I reached the house to find all the ladies of the house gathered to welcome me. Quite nonplussed, I hummed and hawed but everyone else chattered away till someone said, “Orey! Give Didi the gamchhas!”

Before I could recover from this welcome scene, two ‘gamchhas’ were pressed into my hand. And I was  hustled along till I reached the building. The toilets were surrounded by a discreet wall and the chattering women stood aside as  I walked to the toilets.

To my great relief, the group had dispersed by the time I emerged. Not knowing what to do with the gamchhas I left them behind on a shelf in the toilets. I stayed I the same house that night to find that this was the only pucca toilet I the village and was used by no one. But since it was a status symbol for the family, it was kept incredibly clean. Over the next few moths, I stayed over at this village often, or dropped by en route to and fro the interiors. As a development professional in a dairy cooperative project, I spent two thirds of my time in these villages of South Bengal. More often than not, it was the luxury of a clean and private toilet that brought me here. (And I did, eventually figure out what the two gamchhas were for.)

These were my pre-feminist days, and I took the absence of toilets as an infrastructural one rather than a patriarchal one. Rural India, I thought and left it at that. But it was one of the biggest challenges of field work, multiplied a million times during menstruation.   And one of the first things that I thought of when I started reading feminism was “Oh my God, they left out the toilets!”

And over the years I felt a thousand times and more, as to how different life would have been for the women in these villages if there were more toilets and bathing spaces for women. How many more women would be at the markets to sell as well as buy.  Look at the inequality – we can buy in the markets, but are limited from selling. Hundreds of women have told me that they cannot sit regularly at the mandis and aarhats (local markets) as there are no toilets. And bathing? An experiment for anyone of you who, reading this is thinking to himself or herself – too far fetched, this is taking feminism too far, linking markets to bathrooms. I suggest that all such skeptics spend one week in summer having or trying to have a bath in an open space accessible by public.

And when I think of the billion dollar cosmetics industry, and now the fitness epidemic, because that is what it is, I cannot think of the lack of sanitation for women as an infrastructural problem any more. 

And so to my next example –

Like ABBA sang, it’s a rich man’s world. Not a rich woman’s.  In one of her talks that I had attended, Kamla Bhasin had said that in all her questioning of the aspirations of women, no women told her they wanted to be rich. And she rued the fact that there were still so few rich women. As do I, as I rue the fact that if I had learnt to treat money like men do, I myself might have been a rich woman. Money still remains a male bastion. If you don’t believe me, go look at the statistics of female bankers and stock brokers. (Just because I am writing a blog doesn’t mean I will do all the hard work)

While I agree that more and more women are earning better and better salaries, I am not sure how may of them manage their money well.Those who have moey are usure or ucomfortable i handling money. I am myself always unsure of what to do with the little I have. Beyond of the fixed deposit ad a few LICs, I’ve shot my bolt. I do not have a single female friend who gives me advice on money. They give me advice on happiness and self esteem. Only my male friends give me advice on money. And I have always had a sneaking suspicion that the latter is a significant contributor to the former.   

And besides, the world runs on money. The challenge is for us to find a way to understand this running, or to find an alternative to it. As feminists, I believe we have failed to do either. Our arguments and politics around money tends to be moralistic and judgemental, which makes us sound shrill and shallow. This tone does not qualify as a very efficient tool.

And this brings me back to where I started – why not call myself a feminist. I now realize that I shrink from calling myself a feminist because I have failed to be a good feminist. An ideology is just about that – an ideology. Every person who believes in the ideology will have to take it into her soul and interpret it to change her life. I have taken it into my soul, but my interpretation of it in my life is incomplete. The day this is complete, when there are enough toilets for rural women and my financial portfolio is satisfactorily diversified between debt and equity, I shall accept, with great pride, the label of a feminist.