What is a strong woman?
I found the answer in a Delhi slum
This post is dedicated to my parents, who amongst starting lives in a new country, taught me my root culture and the language of Hindi, without which it would have been nearly impossible to make my new Delhi friend.
The first thing that surprised me about her was how well she spoke English. As I stepped out of my safe Uber and into the street where my jeans and general demeanor easily distinguished me, she greeted me in a blue kurti with the NGO logo “Reality tours.” She began the private tour with an introduction, where she said that she herself was born and raised in this Delhi slum known as Sanjay Colony and that we would be viewing an industrial recycling area, a primary school, and other facets the slum offered for 45,000 residents.
The first thing that surprised her about me was how well I spoke Hindi. Within a few minutes of conversation, since the tour ended up being a private one, I naturally said a few sentences in Hindi. Her shock made her temporarily lose her place in her rehearsed tour-guide spiel, because she said local people never did these tours, only foreigners. I told her I was a little bit of both.
While we proceeded to walk through areas where women would separate recycled fabric into different colors, earning 105 rupees (about $1.50) for 10 hours of work per day, she started conversing with me in a more casual way, asking me about what brought me to India and telling me that I could ask any questions I had for her about the slum or about her life. Brilliant I thought, I was curious about how women led their lives in a large percentage of the world, and I was excited to make a female friend so different from me.
I told her I came to India to attend a wedding (obvious from the henna on my hands), and we somehow launched into a conversation about money, and fashion, and of course boys. We cursed at unrequited love and she told me she would point out the laborers who had abs along the way. Some human behaviors are the same no matter the socioeconomic status.
As we walked through extremely narrow alleys with open drains where motorcyclists skillfully rode by, unofficially she told me more about her childhood. We passed a small bamboo enclosure where she was born via natural delivery and a midwife. Since they didn’t have stable electricity or a roof to protect from heat in her early years, in the very hot days, her family would spend time by the trucks that left a large breeze as they passed. Over the first 10 years of her life while her family slowly became less in debt to landlords and relatives, she remembered running through the slum saying “we have a cylinder!” (for cooking) or “we have a toilet.” (Only 60% of homes have a toilet; people use open drains, difficult for women at nighttime, or they use the new public toilet established in the colony 1 year ago.)
In her words, she cooked and cleaned all adolescence and faced dark times when people she loved told her she wasn’t capable of more. She never felt she could dream; her current aspiration of getting her own apartment with her own money was too ridiculous to conceive, but now she was proud and a bit surprised to dream it. She trusted God more now, who brought her the opportunity to be a tour guide for the slum, to speak in English with different types of people, and to make 8000 rupees (apx $105) per month — “now, everyone is jealous of me instead of the other way around,” she joked.
While we stood on top of a roof of a small 3-story concrete enclosure that housed a joint family of 25 people and we overlooked the power lines that had been installed by Reliance only 2 years ago (fifty years after the slum began being built from forested government land), we laughed about how Indian parents can be unreasonable sometimes, a relatable topic for both of us. Having moved away from home to Europe, I could easily imagine her parents’ mixed reaction when she said she was leaving Sanjay Colony to give some tours in Delhi too. I thought about how some of the men and women, who didn’t believe she was capable of being more than a housewife, must have changed their opinions over the years.
We finally reached the NGO headquarters where I saw how children were educated in sex — my friend said that until this course, there was so much she had no idea about her body since sex wasn’t talked about. She and her 8 siblings didn’t know about condoms or protection before the course. Males and females being friends were rare, but if 2 friends who wanted to be more than that asked their parents to arrange the marriage, it usually worked out, only if they were the same caste. If not the same caste, it almost never worked, and they married different people even if in love with each other.
Curious about one of the seminal moments a woman goes through, I asked her what getting her period was like. She said it was a difficult time because hers came early, in 6th grade, and women getting their period early is frowned upon, and often leads to more child marriages to older men. (Her mom was married at 13 though, before she even got her period). She said that in order to avoid women getting their periods early, parents would stop young girls from eating eggs and only give those to young boys, because the consensus was that warm foods caused periods to come early. In my mind, I thought about how access to science and knowledge might change the social fabric of society and inequalities. I was saddened that so many girls lacked protein during their growth. She continued saying she could afford pads now, but many people in the slum used clothes that they washed and hung to dry.
My other questions at the NGO headquarters led her to reference how it wasn’t unusual for parents to often pay less attention to girls; she said the disabled girl we saw earlier on our walk was her cousin, who had a high fever at the age of 2 that led to fits and eventual paralysis of certain body parts, which the parents didn’t focus on because they had several boys in the house. Her sister had the same fits due to the open drains (the highest cause of disease in the slums due to urination and defecation without toilets), but her father made sure to take the sister to the doctor and bind her arms and legs in the correct way so they didn’t grow in the wrong direction leading to disablement.
At this point, I felt like I wanted to pause and take notes on all I’d learned that day. (This blog post being a personally cathartic version of those notes.) Though I knew quite a lot about these environments from my previous trips to India and from my 15-page college honors thesis on the topic, seeing a girl my age with my sense of humor and ferocity in a completely different set of opportunities made me want to drop my London life and start a business to help female employment and education within Sanjay Colony. As I vented to my taxi driver later — there is so much unlocked potential in India. How can a country thrive when half its population doesn’t have support to support its country?
My new friend has big changes coming up for her. Her arranged marriage has been fixed for February, to a man who lives 2 hours away without a job in a small village. She plans to commute 2 hours everyday to maintain her job. Her rage within to prove herself is obvious in her bold statements: she still plans to get her own house for the both of them in the city away from the village joint family with her own savings. She’s met him once, and she trusts her dad’s judgment on the family — “at least he’s not a drunk who beats his wife in public like my uncle did,” she said. And her to-be mother-in-law even encouraged her to wear jeans! So she thinks her future family is modern enough to accept her willpower to work and remain economically independent from her husband. Ironically, being married and having that “stamp” on her forehead that married people wear means more freedom according to her — she can hang out with more boys and girls, since they would know she was already married.
After the tour, I waited a bit for the office to close with her, and then she, her sister, and I went shopping in one of the best markets (after I talked to their dad on the phone in Hindi who made sure to screen me #classicindianparentthings). She insisted to pay the autorikshaw fare to go to the market, because I was her guest and her new friend, and she helped me bargain the best prices for the gifts I wanted to take back to my friends in London. She said she loved bargaining, and her newfound confidence in talking to the market people, being able to purchase with her own income, and the resulting self-respect made her genuinely happy. Up until a year ago, she had never traveled outside of Sanjay Colony or had a phone or seen more than a 2-mile radius of Delhi.
***
The slums changed my perspective on who I immediately envision a strong woman to be. Strong women are not just the female C-level execs who have broken glass ceilings and written incredible books, the world I have spent a lot of time in in the past 2 years since I began understanding feminism and identifying as a feminist. Strong women are also the females who are rebelling to make $100 a month, changing the perspective of men and women around them in significant ripples. Every rage moment that creates a confident woman contributes to perceptions changing and equality becoming a more tangible reality for the women of the following generation.
My friend and I are keeping in touch. On my way out of the slums and back to my hotel with a private bathroom and filtered water, I wondered what all she could do if she had access to the opportunities I have. The analogy that played in my mind all weekend was that — every woman plays with the cards she is dealt, and a strong woman finds the best combination in her hands. Strong women are not few and far between like I once modeled in my mind; they are numerous and common. I have a new inspiration of a strong woman when I think about how I can be one myself. My friend and I have been dealt different cards, but both of us are raging for the same feeling.
“Whatever each individual woman is facing — only she knows her biggest challenge.” — Gloria Steinem
Rage on,
Niki
