BOOKS
Visions ... part two
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In a sequel to a book that gave a name and a voice to countless women, Anees Jung shows us the younger female face of the country.
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IN Unveiling India, Anees Jung gave a name and voice to the countless women she met in remote villages and deprived urban spaces as she journeyed across the country. Commissioned by the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), the book became a best seller. Describing the conditions in which Indian women live and the attitudes they face, she came up with poignant pictures and profiles of courage.
Nineteen years later, writer-journalist Jung returns to these spaces in Beyond the Courtyard. And shows us the younger female face of the country, the daughters of those whom she met on her previous journey. Without being judgmental she talks of the young women who are caught between their dreams and struggles. Jung uses the metaphor of the courtyard to bind the stories together — "The spaces beyond the cramped courtyards of the young hold undeciphered visions ... " She also weaves in her own story and her emergence from the courtyard of a mansion in Hyderabad, discarding her veil as a Muslim women to find her own identity. But this is not without its moments of introspection, "I remember my mother's sense of security and serenity. Have I lost something in gaining my freedom? Yes. My centre. I don't have my own inner courtyard. I lost it in my effort to reach a space beyond."
Jung finds paradoxes everywhere: of young women educated but not knowing how to forge ahead and worse, not having the will to. Caught between traditional ways and the nascent modernism of a globalised society, young women often seem trapped, the benefits of education and progress being frittered away or grounded in convention and patriarchy.
The enigmas are painful and the "whys" resonate through the book. Where is Ameena, the child bride rescued by an Indian Airlines airhostess from her elderly Arab groom, today? Married to a widower with three children, her position is not much better than it was 16 years ago. Why has she squandered away the enormous good will and generosity she encountered and settled for such a life when she could have changed her destiny?
When elderly and illiterate Lallan Bai in Maharashtra, hailing from the oppressed caste, has managed to change the contours of her life with grit and determination, why does 15-year-old Vimal from the same village wallow in listlessness and self-defeating anger?
Why does Mary, a victim of domestic violence, in Kerala, still feel that marriage offers the best future for her two daughters?
Almost everywhere, the painful echoes of silence reverberate, either self-imposed or imposed by family and environment. "A bahu is good when she does not speak," says a mother-in-law. Strangely and sadly, there is silence between mother and daughter. It is the price exacted by change as they begin to feel they inhabit different time zones. "There is nobody I can talk to, nobody understands," is the cry heard repeatedly. That this silence can be fatal is seen when Laila, a talented, educated young woman in a Mumbai slum, takes her life with nobody to understand her dreams and feelings. The inability to dream and the death of dreams is another recurring motif.
Often, the mothers, illiterate and faced with a more hostile environment, exhibit a cheer and strength of character the writer misses in their daughters.
If there are signs of progress, there are worsening attitudes as well. "Earlier, a family had five or six daughters and they accepted it," says a matriarch in a village. Now girl children are killed. Why have we become so bestial now? she mourns
Haryana, where foetal destruction is carried on brazenly, says it all with its chilling statistics on the sex ratio. In a village in Rajasthan, little girls bear names that show how unwanted they are — Dukhi (grief), Naraaz (anger) ...
Jung meets religious heads too and writes about their attitude to women.
But the sun peeps though the clouds here and there. A grandmother in Jaipur says she will allow her granddaughter to marry the man she loves if the girl brings him home for her approval. Jayanti, a health worker in rural Bengal declares that despite everything she will be happy to be born a woman again.
There are community stories of hope as well. In Tilonia, unread women become solar engineers through the help of the Social Research Centre of the Barefoot College. In Gujarat, Kutchi women thrive though an embroidery cooperative. Sex workers in West Bengal band themselves together to better their lot.
Men are shadowy figures in the periphery who actively or passively aid the feeling of alienation and suppression. Marriage is a bond that means work and hardly any communication or joy for the many women spoken to.
The writer's sense of uneasiness and disappointment is palpable throughout the book at she surveys the scene. But even if one women in exploited circumstances dreams, it is to be celebrated.
The metaphor of the courtyard is used very often and seems a trifle forced. The Chand Bibi portion is rather trite and the one or two rather laudatory references to the previous work could have been avoided.
The slim sequel is not only valuable for those engaged in gender studies but for all those who eagerly watch the barometer of change and development. If novelists make fictional characters seem real, Jung with her easy, empathetic style makes real life women as interesting as those in fiction.
Beyond the Courtyard: A Sequel to Unveiling India, Anees Jung, Penguin Books India 2003, p.159, Rs. 250.
KAUSALYA SANTHANAM
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