Verbalizing

In a nutshell, week six was quite nice.  We spent it in Kerala, along India’s most southwestern coast.  We enjoyed a few beach days at the European ex-pat and yogi enclave Varkala, a day cruising the Keralan backwaters, and several days wandering the streets of Kochi, a refreshingly artsy city that offered some excellent coffee experiences.

But I am more compelled to write about my reflections on women in Indian (and to a lesser extent Sri Lankan) society.  As I mentioned in my last post, being a woman in India and Sri Lanka is VERY different from being a woman in the “developed countries” of the west.  Yes, I’m stating the obvious here. But I think even having this awareness does not preclude one from taking many, many freedoms for granted.  It’s usually the people with the most privilege who don’t see their own privilege, right?   The very fact that I can sit here and blog about my travel experiences in India speaks of a privilege beyond what most Indian or Sri Lankan women would ever have.  That I am 35 years old, single, and childless is almost unbelievable to most of the women here with whom I’ve  shared my personal details.  Actually, they can’t believe I’m 35.  The typical story here, for women from the working class, is that by the age of 35, after 15, or even 20, years of being a wife and having children, and doing incredibly difficult work every day, their bodies and their faces show their wear.  Just today, I was talking with a woman named Gita who told me of her 6 children (aged 10 years to 2 months), her abusive husband that is not around anymore (she left him?  he died?), her regret at never being able to attend school or learn to read, her emigration from her home village in Rajasthan due a lack of potable water, and all the while I’m thinking she is 40-ish, maybe 45 years old.  She is 28.  She is 7 years younger than me.   And I don’t think that Gita’s story is particularly unusual.  From the age of 18 (and sometimes many years younger), women are expected to become wives and subsequently mothers – and thus, serve their husbands and children, and often their husband’s extended family.  They are expected to keep a house, gather and prepare food, and sometimes work some sort of additional job outside of those immediate duties.  They are not expected to be literate.  They are not expected to go to college.  They are not expected to build careers.  I’m speaking in broad, general terms, and the literacy rate and education level varies wildly between states/provinces and rural vs. urban (the literacy rate  for women in Sri Lanka is significantly higher than in India).  I’ve no doubt there are multitudes of families that hold their women getting an education as a high priority.  And the growing middle class – the “New India” – is also challenging these societal norms.  But the “New India” is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of millions of Indians still living in conditions, and with traditional ideas about gender, that seem (from a westerner’s perspective) to be from an era long, long ago.  It was one of India’s own, Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, who said that the most powerful way to lift a society out of poverty (and in turn change that society for the better) is to educate the women and girls.  There are many grassroots movements here to help women (mostly from rural areas) learn job skills that give them opportunities to financially support their families.  But for now, there is a long road ahead.  For now, one does not see many women out and about unless they are with their husbands.  I have gotten into a habit of surveying how many other women are in the establishments that Iggy and I patronize (sometimes 2, sometimes 1, sometimes 0).

On a practical level,  what does this mean for me when I leave this place and go back to my life in San Francisco – where I come and go as I please, where I have a great career, where I have a circle of bodacious and beautiful and boldly independent women friends whom are all forging their own paths, where I have a partner who encourages me learn more, to grow, to use my voice?  The last time I left India, it was with an awareness of how privileged my life was.  But that awareness was heavy with guilt and light with action.  Sure, I cut back on my consumption and tried to “only take what I needed”.  But I felt in many ways that I could do more.  With this second visit, my awareness is recharged for sure.  This time, I don’t feel guilty for the things I have.  On the contrary, I want to translate my privilege into action.  I’m just not sure what action…