Let’s begin with an imaginary situation — only that such a situation often turns out to be very real in India. Imagine that you are a 32-year-old woman who works in Mumbai — say, as a copywriter — and have come home to Delhi on vacation. As your stay comes to an end, you realise that it’s been ages since you travelled in a train, so you cancel the flight ticket and book yourself in Rajdhani Express.
In the train, your neighbour happens to be Mrs. Mehta, ‘F 62’, as you could gather from the reservation chart. No matter how busy you are staring at your phone during the journey, there will come a time when your eyes will meet hers and this conversation will follow:
“Are you from Delhi?” she’ll ask.
“That’s right,” you’ll reply.
“So what’s taking you to Mumbai?”
“I work there.”
“Good. How old are you?”
“I am thirty-two.”
“Married?”
“No.”
“Why?”
You are trapped. Any attempt to brush aside the ‘why’ will be countered with a dozen more — and more determined — whys. Before long, everyone within hearing range in the coach will know your story. Don’t expect to be let off easily if you happen to be married, in which case the conversation will extend in this fashion:
“How old are you?”
“I am thirty-two.”
“Married?”
“Yes.”
“Good. How many kids?”
“I don’t have kids.”
“Why? How many years since you got married?”
“Five years.”
“Five years, no kids — why?”
You are trapped again, under a pile of concerns and advices: “Don’t wait before it’s too late”; “Career is not everything”; “At least one kid is a must”; “Have you seen a good gynaecologist?”; “Don’t your parents say anything?” Mind you, Mrs. Mehta is not a bad sort: you may find her nosey, but she is really well-meaning. In the short time that takes to cover the distance between New Delhi and Mumbai, she has become your mother. She is the typical Indian woman — well, let me modify that before I have stones thrown at me — she is the typical Indian, who considers even a stranger as family and expects him or her to follow the family norms.
I am friends with a couple living in Bangalore — I will call them Mr. and Mrs. X — who recently moved from one corner of the city to another, only because in the flat that they lived in, almost everybody, from the maid to the watchman’s wife to the neighbours, would constantly ask them, particularly the woman, why they didn’t have a child even after six years of marriage.
Mrs. X told me, “Each time they saw me coming home late from work, or both of us frequently going on a holiday, they would say, ‘Yeah, yeah, you guys can afford to do that, you don’t have kids. By the way, why haven’t you had kids yet?’ I would mumble a reply and then they would start asking personal questions, like, ‘So who has the problem, you or your husband? Have you been to a doctor?’”
“We lived on the fourth floor and the flat had no lift,” Mrs. X said, “so on the day we were leaving, people even asked us whether we were moving because I was expecting and was not supposed to climb the stairs.” Oh, this national obsession about a married woman having to have a child!
Why, then, blame Rajdeep Sardesai, the popular TV journalist, for asking tennis star Sania Mirza when she intended ‘settling down’ — as in giving up her career and having kids? Online citizens of the nation seem to be outraged by his question — rightfully so. But then, what’s so surprising: Rajdeep’s thoughts merely reflect the thinking of the Indian society.
Just because you own a smartphone — and therefore are able to access news and express your views — does not make you any special: you are still Indian.
