The session ‘Her Story: The Woman in 2020’ at the Kolkata Literature Festival is association with The Telegraph, saw Mumbai-based author Annie Zaidi, vlogger, model and anti-acid activist Reshma Qureshi, and UK-based author Mariam Khan, in conversation with author and chief editor of Seagull books, Anjum Katyal. The vibrant discussion turned in a triad of concise anecdotes on essays by women, women’s writings and personal accounts, offering a kaleidoscopic view of both the universality and difference of women’s experiences across national borders and cultures.
On women’s experiences and battling social atrocities through the might of the pen
In the context of her book It’s Not About the Burqa: Muslim Women on Faith, Feminism, Sexuality and Race, Mariam Khan raised the question of identity in the West, upholding the diversity of cultural backgrounds and heritage among Muslim women. “The book essentially covers race, ideology, sexuality. But we don’t talk about them outside their hijabs and their bodies, not about their personality, identity, not seeing them as beings outside their flesh,” she rued, describing her book as a “collection of contradictions”, as the women in her book disagree with each other on several aspects despite being Muslims.
Annie Zaidi heightened the thrust of the talk to the homogenising attitudes imposed on women for ascribing monolithic identities on them. Zeroing on her anthology Unbound: 2,000 Years of Indian Women’s Writing that holds “across time, language”, she recounted her experience of reading up translated texts on the lives of Indian women. “A lot of my work builds from K. Lalita and Susie Tharu,” she said. Reading opened up both the inward-looking and outward-looking perspectives on the world for her, as she transitioned from the stance of being a “fence-sitter of women’s writing” to championing against the label of women’s literature itself per se, that discounts their universal experience as social beings. “It is just that when men write about the domestic sphere, it becomes a novel for everyone, and when women write a novel about the domestic sphere, it becomes a novel about women, by women, for women,” she said.
Reshma Qureshi plunged in to bring her story by talking about her book Being Reshma: The Extraordinary Story of an Acid-Attack Survivor Who Took the World by Storm. Her sense of urgency to write the book came from a larger concern for the objective value attached to the beauty of a woman and the need, therefore, to inspire positive social change. “We have been fed this perception that as women, our beauty lies in our faces, but I want to break away from it because a good heart is all that you need to achieve great heights in life. The social stigma faced by the acid attack survivors or survivors of any crime against women should transform into social acceptance.” Reshma reminisced on her personal struggle, starting with the campaign Beauty Tips by Reshma, she talked about her awe-inspiring journey that culminated into the ramp walk for New York Fashion week, garnering wide recognition for her.
Women from centuries ago speaking to women in 2020
Annie Zaidi traced the astounding relevance of what women aspired for centuries ago to the ‘here and now’ of our lives. The excellent quality of women’s writing even back then was noteworthy. Reflecting on the languages that the women wrote in centuries ago and the echoes of their needs in today’s times, she said,“I start with Pali because Buddhist nuns were writing back then and those texts have survived. A lot of the themes will resonate with the women in 2020; attachment to the body, the fading of the body, the need to preserve and transcend the material world and domestic responsibilities, the freedom in being single and hanging out with other women.”
Gendering was one of the prerequisites to shaping a woman’s sense of self and Zaidi tied her thought to the larger context of what makes women’s writing, while also mentioning powerful women writers who catalysed the social and political flux for the women in their times that has simmered all the way since then to the state of women today.
“Women’s writing is about women, not the community. It’s about self-identifying as women before everything else. Things change, but not for women. Continents drift apart, but look at the freedoms women are fighting for, they remain the same. It’s their personal freedom, and freedom of their children and communities as well. Begum Rokeya (Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain) who was from a century-and-half ago, talked about purdah and how she had to first struggle to get girls admitted into school. She was an upper-caste woman, but as a married woman, she was not allowed to look at texts. She had to steal Chaitanya Bhagawat, looking at the letter until it made sense to her. Sarojini Naidu’s collection of speeches, to me are her most powerful writings as they are fiercely political. Women have always fought, in every movement. We’ve managed to get here just 150 years ago,” said Zaidi.
Message for women from 2020 onwards
At the end of the session, Khan called upon the need for men and women to stand by the rights of each other in a “hand-in-hand exchange, acknowledging that we are equal in ways and different in ways”. Zaidi put the spotlight on the sisterhood of women while also sharing her concern for the rights of women in India in the context of the NRC furore in the country, wrapping her message into a political call for women’s rights. It was Qureshi’s tweaking of her message into an inspirational mould that we took as the mantra for women in the new decade.
So, between then and now, what would a woman from centuries ago say to a woman of today? What we would interpose, particularly along the lines of Reshma’s concluding remark, would be this epiphanic statement, ‘You have it in you to achieve anything that you set your mind to’, over and over again.
