A couple of evenings ago, I sat in the company of a couple
of kick-ass women and three brawny beef eating thug cats. We women in that room
were in our forties and each one of us led unusual lives in an Indian context. The
nibbles offered up with the absinthe were a study in geometric shapes and the
evening was memorable because of the subjects we discussed, predominantly: The
large amount of intuition, intelligence and mental fortitude constantly required
on our parts to break through the walls of cultural conditioning.
If I chose to write about some of the things we discussed
that evening, then there are women who articulate the complexities of what I
want to say so much better than I ever would. Therefore I’d like to take this
as a reason to link to an excellent interview given by Sharanya Manivannan on
what it means to think and live as an independent woman in today’s society.
I’ve deliberately chosen to place this particular interview for a reason. Over the years I’ve had one too many of my married friends, seemingly modern but conservative enough to constantly do what is expected of them,
tell me how independent they are: They drive alone to pick up their kid from
school, they return from French class by bus all alone, they visit a mall alone...Their definition of their independence surprises me. Independence isn’t about
doing something alone. It is a mindset you cultivate over time from questioning
the status quo over and over again and deciding not to confirm because you have your own agenda for
yourself and you know what you want, irrespective of whether you are within a
partnership or not.
Single women too come into my life and almost invariably set
up a competitive dynamic within the conversation. Their justification isn’t about
their independence however, theirs is a desperation to cover up the inadequacy
they feel about their solitary status by telling me how active, busy and social
their lives are compared to mine, in other words, how much they are a part of society and how
much they in turn are accepted by it. I wonder how much their need to justify
is due to an ingrained almost unconscious belief that if you live alone, then
something must be ‘wrong’ with you because presumably you don’t want to ‘grow up’ and accept
the responsibility of marriage and
motherhood.
And some extracts below:
Why should only one
kind of relationship be the most vital? There are so many kinds of
relationships you can have, as you pursue what society thinks of as solitude.
But before that, you need to sit with yourself and hone that relationship
first.
Personally, I’ve
always had some kind of allergy towards marriage. Even when I was a kid,
something about it, the way I saw it transform women, particularly in Tamil
cinema, intuitively made me understand that it was not good for women.
You make active
decisions to be better and kinder to yourself and more respectful. And what
that means in real terms, you accept. For instance, you may go long periods
without a partner, and that’s okay. Because why should the natural state of an
adult be partnership? The feeling of being inadequate is something one needs to
leave behind early on in this journey. You have the realisation that you’re not
inadequate because you’re not partnered: in many ways you’re much more capable.
So you build things for yourself in a way that you may not be able to if you
have a partner.
