I have been, for the past five years, regularly riding the BMTC local buses. I started using buses in consultation with my anorexic wallet, a disorder ensured by my sudden impulsive decision to join the development sector devoid of any skills or knowledge justifying my employment. That I started at the very bottom, earning a salary not enough to keep an ant in sugar, compelled me to exercise away those flabby classist notions of lifestyle appropriateness and make content with eating Rs.10 per plate of idlis and purchasing Rs.7 bus tickets, sitting outside the Cafe Coffee Day near my hostel room and sipping diluted brew from a white plastic cup, snacking on golden boiled corn and brimming cones of puffed rice, stitching back buttons on jeans, mending the soles on city-weary shoes, and walking, walking, walking almost everywhere I couldn't bus. At this time, my bus jamborees were undertaken with a certain amount of beginner reluctance. The BMTC buses are a kumbh mela of throbbing electrons, all aspiring to gain darshan of that large lapped God encased in a blue sort of leather plump with the promise of respite from the bickering of feet suffered by standing travellers. Once enthroned, the governor's reprieve from death row might not induce more relief on face. Because for those unfortunate enough to be standing, it is hot, sticky, body-clasping and suffocating, in short its like being trapped inside a melted Mars bar.
At every stop there is a frenetic worm of people pushing out and a new batch of pointed elbows pricking through to secure its ration of space. Thats probably the explanation for most of 'why Indians behave the way they do' - scramble for space, for resources in a country over-crowded by atleast a plutonian planet.
The first few times, I would trek up those steep bus steps with a fisted mind, ready to fight off all stimuli, all feelings generated by the bus. I would enter screen-saver mode. But as I started traveling during off-peak hours, possessing within my brackets of choice almost any seat in the bus, being able to enjoy the pleasant chilliness of untouched yellow steel holding poles, being able to arrest wayward winds in my hair, I grew endeared to the blue and white mammoths of the road. I started enjoying the superiority of height over the rest of the traffic that the bus offered and the austere comfort of its blue seats. More than anything I began to love the idea of traveling companions, people comprising as thick a slice of India as you could carve out. All ages, all religions, presumably all castes, assuredly all income levels barring the thin upper crust that aristocratically rises above all else, thinking it is beyond the yeast now. I have sat with engineering students cramming for the morning's examination. My feet have been shoved aside to accommodate the large cane basket of a tired flower lady. A saree draped woman will walk in clutching baby in arm and I will have vacated my seat in deference to young motherhood. A manual labourer, with cement-soaked feet and dirt-clung body has followed in my dry footprints out the bus door pushing up against my clean dress, just stitched yesterday. My people-watching habit sprang in part from these unsought snatches of everyday people in an everyday bus situation. I would watch graceful saree backs curve arch-like to descend from the bus. I would watch tiny school children balance bag against body in a fight to the bus-finish. I would watch burqa clad and stretch jeans clad college girls fuss over make-up and the unreasonable assignments of their faculty. I would watch, smile, admire, agree, cringe, grumble, ponder, fume in the theater of my mind. I then proceeded, after a sufficient amount of people-studying, to converse with the subjects of my delectation.
And this is where the title of my note begins to gain relevance. Asha is the girl I met a couple of weeks ago in a bus, on my way back home from a slumberous Sunday evening girls' session. Asha belongs to a category of girl I like to call the sticky dupattewalis. These girls, their hair reined into firm plaits of prudence, their eyes modestly kohl-lined, their bindis a busty black or red full stop, dressed in free-falling salwar khameez tend to, atleast once every minute, draw their arms to their chest to ensure said chest's complete censure from male view through spatial adjustments to the dupatta. In whichever social situation they are located, their hands cruise in to maintain a breast-minimum environment. The right hand at the left shoulder, then the left hand at the right shoulder. Even if the dupatta is in place, even if it hasn't dared move an inch, the hand it still meets, once a minute, sure as sea meeting shore. Asha, busy handed Asha, who accompanied me from Shivaji Nagar to Marathahalli and spoke to me for the duration of the 45-50 minutes it demands, is a salesgirl in a cloth-selling shop. She works 6 days a week, with a variable weekly off. She earns a salary of Rs.5000 in addition to a commission granted on every metre of cloth sold. She studied till the 10th standard. She is from Mangalore, and like many south Indians, can manage to converse in atleast 5 languages. Her husband works as a furniture salesman. Asha told me about how well her husband treats her, how he helps around the house when she's tired from work and how they had a love marriage and how she's waiting before she has children and how her in-laws can't accept her because of her different caste and how she hopes to buy a two-wheeler once she's saved more money and how she wants to visit Tirupathi soon and how she fasts every Thursday for her husband's welfare. She regarded the tattoo on my chest with much amusement. She was astonished to learn of my profession, especially after being told of the salary I had forsaken by choosing to work in the social sector. She agreed with my plans of adopting children. She unsurely nodded at my definition of happiness. She could loop many yards of time around her frisky tongue, much like a spindle. She offered me mithai, I offered her popcorn. Like neighboring nails living on toes that learnt how to turn on their sides, we turned to each other to discover more sameness than the strangeness that is purportedly the purpose of maintaining a safe distance from 'strangers'. Despite the significantly different values and life histories that flesh our bones, like an infant's hands, we felt our way into familiarity. The same way Indians have always done, through an honest exploration of difference, enjoying the curious chutneys of culture that spring from such associations.
I liked Asha. She is true to her name, hope, India's hope. The working woman who uses public transportation, who marries who she wants, who budgets for her house, who tries to exert control over her womb, who enlists her husband's hands in the housework, even if infrequently. Sure, she is fervently religious, she is conventionally feminine, she is subservient to her husband's wishes. She will not enter a temple during menstruation, she will not refuse her husband sex, she will not wear a tank top, she will not smoke a cigarette, she will not dance provocatively, she will not dine out alone, she will not let her dupatta slip down her shoulder. She is probably still conservative by western standards but the west ought not to be our standard. Asha is quintessentially Indian. She is brewing her own feminism, writing her own 'Female Eunuch', in five different languages. She is widening the roads but not chopping down all the trees of tradition that protect her from blistering. The trees will eventually wither away, slowly, and Asha will learn to protect herself. But by not axing them down, the soil has not been poisoned with the violence that such an act entails. There is a dharma, a Gandhian wisdom in this way. I know many women like Asha, ones who, not out of ideology, but out of a growing sense of self-awareness, are quietly challenging patriarchy. Not head on, not burning bras, not marching themselves swollen footed, not angering men but in small, accumulating steps they have started chewing on their milk-teeth. They are launching businesses, raising daughters, running Panchayats, digging wells, managing traffic, fighting wars, framing policies, plying buses. Through a combination of affirmative policies and the opportunities offered by full blown capitalism, they have entered almost every space. But they are nudging men for space, not seeking to displace them. Of course, they are still submissive, they are still oppressively female, the men still dominate, but I have a feeling that their quiet, nimble-footed way of moving forward will eventually win the race. The western feminists began the war with men, the Indian feminists will broker the peace.
So I said bye to Asha, promised her that I would visit her shop and purchase some salwar khameezes with dupattas that will cling to my chest, ensuring my modesty because, well, because that is what Asha promises me, the sticky dupatta feminist revolution.
Written in 2008
