I remember going to watch Ram Teri Ganga Maili as a young adolescent. There is a scene where the doe-eyed Mandakini is breastfeeding her infant son in a train. And while I’m not exactly sure of the exact sequence of events in the film, I recall my grandmother covering my eyes with her hands, muttering to my mother – “This Raj Kapoor also, na, always exposing women. We shouldn’t have brought Piu along, it’s an adult movie.”
Having watched the film many times now as an adult on television, I have come to realise that Raj Kapoor was far ahead of his times. He was, I believe, one of the few in sexist early-80s Bollywood who understood the sensitivity of a woman’s psyche. Who was utterly unabashed in showing a woman’s partial nudeness – including something as natural and yet as unnaturally taboo as a mother breastfeeding her newborn.
Why Women are Embarrassed to Breastfeed in Public
The World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months. And yet women are anxious about doing so in a public place, says an article in The Guardian.
A survey by Public Health England claims six out of ten women who breastfeed take steps to hide it in public and a third feel embarrassed or uncomfortable nursing outside the home. In England, three fourths of women start breastfeeding their children from birth, but just half are still doing so six to eight weeks post. The poll of 2,393 people further added that 7 per cent support public breastfeeding but a lower proportion felt it was acceptable in restaurants (57 per cent) or on public transport (51 per cent).
“Maa Ka Doodh Nahi Piya?”
Closer home, just yesterday afternoon, at a South Kolkata crossing, a host of people, stuck at a traffic light, stared wide-mouthed at a woman breastfeeding her child in the backseat of her car. Her top unbuttoned, the infant suckled at her left nipple. A few men on bikes deliberately tried to inch closer – till the woman covered herself with a stole to escape the pervasive, lustful curiosity and lack of privacy that hounds a nursing mother.
Why are a woman’s breasts always looked at as a symbol of titillation and male sexual arousal? Why do so few “new-age” Bollywood flicks – despite showcasing the most explicit of sex scenes – still shy away from showing a mother’s tenderness in that one act of breastfeeding? “Maa ka doodh nahi piya kya?” is probably one of the most done-to-death insults in Bollywood, when challenging the hero’s machismo – and yet, the act itself is seen as indecent and out-of-bounds.
The Woman’s Right to Breastfeed at Work
Why isn’t it mandatory for our so-called smart cities, plush malls, swish multiplexes and state-of-the-art airports to have nursing rooms as a compulsory part of its public facilities?
World Breastfeeding Week, celebrated between August 1-7, 2015, was based on the theme ‘Breastfeeding and Work’. Whether a woman is working in a formal/corporate, non-formal or home environment, it’s necessary that she be empowered enough to claim her and her baby’s right to breastfeeding.
The week also called for the ratification and implementation of maternity protection laws and regulations by governments – in sync with the ILO Maternity Protection Convention. While many countries have achieved these global standards, India lags behind with hardly any offices that have dedicated nursing rooms.
I resumed work five months after delivery, so I had no choice but to express the milk. But I still got gawky stares, even from women – which shows how we persecute and belittle our own sex. Also, there was no fridge to store the milk which would keep it fresh and healthy for longer. Maybe, the assumption is that childbirth means a woman’s seclusion and eventual disappearance… a loss of identity…
– Purnina Singhal, 34-year-old radio executive, Mumbai
The Battle With Our Bodies
While events like the ‘Big Latch On’ challenge women across the world to set records in “the most children breastfeeding simultaneously, the most breastfeeding women gathering in public and the most people supporting breastfeeding families,” such drives are few and far between.
- We don’t see women breastfeeding in public places – it’s like it’s banned. Even when you do, people either gape at your boobs or pass derogatory remarks or say – why can’t she stay at home?
– Purnina Singhal, 34-year-old radio executive, Mumbai
Breastfeeding isn’t just about new mothers, or women with children – it’s also about our battle with our bodies. When will we stop drawing this lakshman rekha around one body part? When will we finally reclaim our breasts as just one part of our sexual identity crisis and stop staring, smirking, sniggering away...
(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.)
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