I was carrying my lunch in the cafeteria of my university and looking for a place to sit down. On a bench nearby, I saw a familiar face -- it was one of my friends from my International Relations class! I waved hello to him and he gestured to me, indicating that I could sit with him. I sat down and we started to talk.
I was enjoying the conversation and found myself talking about future plans. But then, my friend said something that has stayed with me to this day:
Kanan, whatever your plans in life may be, it is certain that the amount of impact you can create is always going to be lesser than the impact that I can create in my life as a white male from a developed country. For someone like you, making an impact will only take place after fighting three degrees of discrimination: first of all, you are a female, then you are non-white and on top of all this, you are in a developing country. Technically, for you, it's much harder, isn't it?
At the time, I laughed it off.
"Come on," I said. "With the fast-changing world, I am sure we will soon be at a level playing field."
Frankly, I had never viewed myself as a disadvantaged person in the world. But, as more time has gone by, I have had to look back at this incident and reflect on my "constraints." And times for such introspection are occurring more often than I had ever imagined. As incidents of torture, rape and violence on women keep shaking my country, I find myself at a loss and wonder if indeed I am handicapped as a woman from a developing country. Are these constraints my reality?
Such questions leave me confused, for the quest to find my identity as an Indian woman present nothing but wide contradictions.
On one hand, I feel utmost joy when I see women from my "developing" country outperforming men in every walk of life. My bank is headed by a woman; the speaker of my national parliament is a woman; the novel that I am reading is written by a Booker prize-winning Indian woman; my tennis coach is a woman; many IAS officers I admire in my state are women; the movie I watched last night is produced and directed by a young woman; the school where I studied was founded by a woman activist. These women inspire me, they give me confidence that there are no limits to what I can achieve as a woman in India.
Yet, there are thousands of women who feel left out in the process of development, whose voices are snubbed even before they acquire the confidence to speak up, whose bodies are objectified and abused in the most shameless ways, whose talents never get the chance to spark, whose potential gets curbed even before it could change the world.
I come home to a reality where a female domestic I know is beaten every day by her drunk husband; where a few miles away, daughters get sold for a few thousand rupees; where acid gets thrown on faces of young girls in the adjoining neighborhood just because they want to create their own identity in the world; where female fetuses are killed even before they take the full shape of a healthy and loving human being; and where opening a newspaper brings with it cases and cases of women being raped and mutilated -- in the most horrific and gruesome ways.
I don't know which one of the above is the true representation of an "Indian Woman." Where do I search for my identity in such contrasting realities? How can I dare to dream when I feel insecure every time I have to step out of my house? Perhaps my friend at the University canteen was right. Perhaps not much has changed -- even in this highly globalized world. Perhaps creating a level playing field is a tall order when survival itself is a question. Perhaps my society is still evolving. It is still seeking answers and until it finds its answers, my confused identity is a fact I will have to live with.
However, something within me is not ready to accept that we have to wait in silence till things change. If the dichotomy of women's role in India has to change, it will be through their own energy and dynamism. There is great strength in the power of a woman. In every woman who is not so privileged, there is a confident and ambitious woman waiting to be recognized, appreciated and encouraged. It is the duty and responsibility of every society and every individual to make women feel secured and comfortable. This is our collective battle as a society, a society going through such defining moments. This is also a battle for each individual. This is a battle where every woman has to speak up for her rights and every man has to support a woman that does so. And this battle will continue until a white man and a woman of color can sit across from one another at a table, knowing they are meeting on a level playing field.