I have written a number of blog posts on feminism and am on
a path of self-realization, slowly beginning to understand, that I feel
strongly about my fellow sisters. Today, when I went to see the movie “Pink”
and could identify with so many situations shown in the movie, I felt that it
is the right time to share some of my own life experiences…
I started out life as a very protected only child of two
middle-aged parents, who doted on me. Being slightly ahead of their times, they
brought me up to believe in myself and never was I made to feel inferior to any
boy. My parents wanted to bring me up well, and they did their utmost towards
that end. Whether they were successful or not, is a different matter altogether.
Anyway, life took a different turn for me, when Babi passed
away in my first year of college. My mother was a strong woman who took charge
of my destiny and made sure that I never strayed too far from what is right.
But how much can a mother protect her 20 year old daughter? Newly discovering
boys, I met some who took advantage of my naiveté. I was of course, equally to
blame, as I threw all caution to the winds, and thought that I knew how to handle
everything.
Anyway, I did escape with nothing but minor scars, though at
the time, I felt my life was over, just because the boy I had a crush on,
showed no interest in me. During that phase, I remember arguing with my mother about my curfew time, asking her why she thought that character and the time of day had anything to
do with each other. “Pink” had a similar dialog by Mr. Bachchan. Of course,
my mother brushed aside all my logic and insisted that I do not stay out late.
The years passed, and our lives started to mend from the tear
left behind by my father’s passing. I graduated from a pig-tailed college
kid to a young nervous lady starting her first job. I was so very green and so
very humiliated when my boss got a fellow colleague to give me the message to
dress more “smartly”. Almost in tears, I came home from office, and Ma bought
me two dresses she could ill-afford – all for me to look the part of the corporate
lady. I think I still do not look that part.
During my years of trying to find a better paying stable
job, I attended many weird interviews. Notable among those is one, where I
landed up for an interview to a place, I thought was an office, but was
actually someone’s home. This Mr. BusinessMan then proceeded to ask me to work
for him without remuneration, and then kept calling my home, when I did not
take him up on his offer. Looking back, I feel I had a narrow escape from that
shabby, dim apartment, where he could have murdered me without anyone finding
my body for days, had he been so inclined.
Another incident was when my new boss at another job, put
his feet up on the handle of the chair I was sitting on and told me how my
predecessor had never minded him doing so. His eyes made me so uncomfortable by
the way he looked at me, that I quit that job within a week.
The subsequent years saw me living my life like a man. As I
gained confidence, my way of dressing and talking and interacting began a slow process
of change. I was not answerable to anyone at home. My mother allowed me a little
more liberty than during my college years, and I chose to use that to flatly
refuse to be the “good Bengali girl” who got married at 22, and have two kids.
I worked for the most part, but I found time to have fun
too. My curfew times had been lifted and Ma no longer said anything much if I
got late. All she expected was for me to inform her where I was and whom I was
with.
Then came my stint of onsite trips to US, where again I
found a different flavor of life. My way of dressing and presentation
changed and became a little bolder. When I returned after two years, my project
manager got a team mate to tell me to dress differently. All because I had worn
a deep necked top, to which I had fastened a safety pin. However, she still felt
that it was inappropriate.
So now, I was quite a scarlet woman – a woman in her early
thirties without the “respectability” of a husband. A woman who dressed in
fitting westerns and drove her own car – people stared at me all the while.
Speculation about my finances was rife in my neighborhood and in my social
circle.
Today, at 40, I am a wife and daughter-in-law and am very
much a part of a traditional family. Now in all my wisdom, when I retrospect
and remember the mistakes and the high points, I feel I have experienced life
through all the good and bad situations I went through. Watching “Pink” I felt
that the three girls, in the movie, were reflections of all modern women, who
are misunderstood and whose actions are misconstrued for the worst by the
so-called “respectable” people.
Wake up people! We are living in the twenty-first century.
Women are not objects and you have no right to judge their dress sense or
lifestyle choices! Fellow women, we must stand up for each other and show the
world that without “pink” in the colors of dawn and dusk, no sunrise or sunset
is complete..
