A drink called freedom

What is it in this culture that makes my body a victim of all things evil, of desire, of shame, of pollution, of corruptibility, asks Meera Baindur

What is it in this culture that makes my body a victim of all things evil, of desire, of shame, of pollution, of corruptibility, asks Meera Baindur

I am a woman in Indian culture. As a small girl in a very pretty langa-jacket I stood aside as my younger brothers climbed the guava tree and dropped some guavas down to me. What if I had traded the pretty langa (my favourite dress) for the tree climbing? I will not know.

Later when older, in school uniform, I knew that if I climbed trees, people below could catch sight of my legs and shorts. That was indecent. Even the shorts were no good. As I saw my seniors play hockey, I noticed that there were always more spectators hooting at the shorts-wearing sports-girls. What is to be born in a world where my body is not a liability? I don't know. I chose the safe world of yoga, meditation, academics. I let my mind free to break barriers; after all thinking had no limits.

In college, during a rathotsava (car festival) of a Krishna temple I was in jeans and a tee shirt, a light young person with agility was needed to tie flowers on the gopuram. As the rest of the male volunteers in regular panche (dhoti) tried to manage their flowing vestments, I skimmed up gracefully and tied the crown of flowers they handed me. I was too happy to "serve the lord" and didn't even think of freedom. What was it to be a woman and climb the ratha-gopura? I cannot remember now.

I was walking down to return books to the library down our road. An aunty stopped me and neatly covered my front with the duppata and said, "Be careful, you are a big girl now!" What is it to be born without breasts real or imagined? I don't know. In my first co-ed field trip we dried our bras and panties carefully in the sun and covered them with towels. The boys wandered around topless letting their skin take in the warm sun. I don't want to do that. But I will never know what it is to feel the warm sun on my back until I build myself a courtyard with walls so high that only the sun can come in.

Everyday I make choices, not to go out alone after dark, not to hug strangers, not to travel alone in a compartment full of only men, not to say "chaddi", or confront an eve teaser alone. What is it to make choices that are not already made for you before you were born a woman? I don't know.

What is it in this culture that makes my body a victim of all things evil, of desire, of shame, of pollution, of corruptibility? Is it religion? Culture? Society? Or it is you the other half of my world, who never know what it is to be me, a woman in an Indian culture?

You are not my brother, father, husband or friend. You are a male stranger who will not give me my freedom.

You are someone's brother, father, husband or friend. But to me you are my prison wall. Because of you I wear my body like a fragile glass chandelier. You are the guy at the bus stop who gazes at me. You are the bus co-passenger who brushes past. You are the mob who takes on my kindu2014thirty of you to two of mine to "correct" me. You are the one with the heroine's poster in your cupboard. You are the colleague who bothers me every day. You are the majority who will not hear my voice. As I recognise you as my walls, I get a distant glimpse of freedom. Not the freedom to drink, that's your kind of freedom, but to have the freedom to choose. To make a real choice that is not already made for me. To carry my body with pride and dignity, to talk to whom I will and sometimes throw away my dupatta, to dry my underclothes easily on the public clothesline under the light of the direct sun. Without having to defend myself for what I feel, cover myself or enter a fire to prove my chastity in this world. I still may never be completely free. But at least I can taste that drink sometimes. It is called freedom.