Dear India, What Exactly Are we Celebrating This R-Day

Read what the disillusioned feminist daughter has to write to India.

The writer is an ex-lifestyle editor and PR vice president, and now a full-time novelist and columnist on sexuality and gender, based in Delhi. She is the author of Faraway Music and Sita’s Curse. Her third book You’ve Got The Wrong Girl is out next.

Dear India,
     
I am a 38-year-old single woman living in New Delhi.
 
I am asking you today what exactly we are celebrating with so much pomp and fanfare every Republic Day – when according to the National Crime Records Bureau 2013 annual report, there were as many as 24,923 cases of rape reported across India in 2012?

So, what’s changed in the past three years? A woman still gets stared at lewdly if she is alone on a deserted street, her privates rubbed against in a crowded public transport system, has trouble finding a flat if she’s single or divorced, her parents questioned routinely why she is single, past her 30s.

Women have broken the glass ceiling – claim many news reports. We celebrate women mountaineers and women air force officers – but allow ourselves to be stereotyped and made fun of in commercial advertisements and cinema. We pose with a tray of sherbet before a roomful of gawking relatives and agree to marry trees and dogs in a spider web of religion and superstition. We visit astrologers and godmen to know when the time is right – marriage and motherhood still the outer limit of our sexuality. We are ostracised when we bleed. We are called sluts when we choose to love freely. We masturbate in secret. Like it’s a cardinal sin.

We wait for men to call us after the first date. To cuddle after sex. To drop us home and be the Prince Charming we have all dreamt of in secret. We are shy of being sexual creatures – of crossing the forbidden lakshman rekha of our bodies – the boogie trap set by centuries of women who fasted for their warrior kings to return home safely. These women wore red vermillion and then changed overnight into asexual widows relegated to crowded places of religion like Vrindavan.

We are born as daughters and live in a cage, bound by duty and domesticity. We are reduced to our lowest common denominator – our wombs.

What freedom is this? What country owns my body? Which man defiles me? What flag is the colour of my soul? What if I am not fair? Pretty? If I’m Manglik? Or there’s too much Shani in me? What politics protect me? What am I preserving?

Answer me.

Your Disillusioned Feminist Daughter

Sreemoyee Piu Kundu  

Audi India is proud to be a part of India’s progressive growth and salutes the spirit of India.

(Do you ever feel like talking to India? Yes, perfect. This is your chance to write to her to tell her how you feel about her. You could be bitchy, angry, happy, emotional or spoofy. But if your answer is No – never mind, there is always a beginning. Let’s start here. Send us what you want to tell your India and we will publish it. Don’t be shy, just say it all. Mail us your letter at [e-mail]. We’ll ensure India gets your message.)