Malavika’s Mumbaistan: City of Women

Mumbai’s women; the ones who every morning catch the 7

Mumbai’s women; the ones who every morning catch the 7.31F from Virar to Churchgate, after preparing the family’s meals, getting the kids ready for school, tending to the needs and demands of the elderly and sick in their care, (along with the plants and pets and even a malingering neighbour or street stray or two) as if they were goddesses with eight arms, and not the everyday, ordinary creatures you encounter in cut price kurtas and sensible shoes; the same Mumbai women who later in the day, will sweetly put their heads down en masse on their hard office desks, during their lunch break, as if they were punished kids at a kindergarten, to catch up on some much needed shut- eye; and the same Mumbai women who will hold those heads erect and high, even while anxiously repeating a prayer under their breath as they negotiate the lengthening shadows and dank, unlit stretches of streets, that lie between the station and their homes, when they return late at night, after a long and hard day at work.

Those women. The ones who receive your annual Women’s Day greetings with bemused grace and the ones who set them aside with a cynical shrug and a weary sigh, knowing them for the tokenism however well-intentioned that they represent and the issues they blithely ignore. (HT)

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Mumbai’s women. The whippet- thin doughty grandmother with aching bones and calloused hands, who earns her keep and contributes to her family’s meagre income by daily changing two trains and a bus, to reach the homes of clients half her age, in order to knead and pummel another kind of ache out of their bones; and the senior citizen once a promising classical pianist with prospects of an international career, whose long artistic fingers found their métier on the keys of an electric typewriter, taking dictation at 120 word a minute, so that her parents could enjoy a better standard of healthcare and living.

Or the busy- as -a –bee, pleased as punch TV actress with her own make up van and growing blue tick influencer status, or the big -ticket, marque, Bollywood star, scanning and rescanning the faces of her fans, to trace the graph of her fading appeal; or the shop girl behind the counter with her practised insouciance, selling products that she could never afford, to the expensively dressed woman across the counter, who knows that there are some things that money can never buy; or the motor mouth news reporter with the famous gift of the gab caught night after night in prime time crossfire, who yearns for nothing more than the white noise of silence or the communication wiz who knows a hundred different ways to reach a million different audiences but finds herself too tired to communicate after hours with the ones she really loves.

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Mumbai’s women. The supermodel whose celebrated, high stepping skeletal runaway presence comes at a cost that only she knows; the leading beautician whose decades of experience has taught her that there are some wrinkles and frown lines which no amount of potions and lotions can erase; the nurse who at the height of the pandemic defied her building society’s lockdown rules and left home each morning to save lives, not knowing if she would be allowed back home in the evening; the doctor who received the ever growing litany of worries and complaints from her patients with a stoicism that belied the challenges in her own life; the page 3 diva with the picture -perfect insta- life, who sheds a silent tear on her evening walks, when she thinks no one’s looking, or her maid, who goes from home to home, cleaning plush bidets and bathrooms, knowing there’s none for her to relieve herself in, until when she will return home- six hours later.

Those women: the school teacher who despite poor internet connectivity and personal challenges, somehow managed to keep in touch with her brood of scattered children, even as her own languished dissolute and unhappy at home, like kids everywhere during through the lockdown; the sous chef at the five star kitchen, who having daily fed a hundred appreciative mouths to great success, often finds no time in her busy schedule to feed herself; the college student whose verve and vigour falls in direct proportionate degree to every degree she pursues to achieve her soaring ambition, or the resident of Kamathipura who possesses enough star quotient to outshine the best of Bollywood even though her life is not an SLB production by a long shot.

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Mumbai’s women. The ones who live in dread and fear behind the four walls of their homes, trembling in trepidation of the next blow or the stinging slap and the others who live in well-appointed homes where the neglect and indifference hit just as hard; aged, lonely mothers with adult children long emigrated, who still keep their pictures near their hearts and their letters under her pillows, and newly arrived out of towners and upwardly mobile professionals, eking out their salad days in cold, indifferent PG accommodations and cheap hostels, so different and unwelcoming compared to the cherished small town homes they’ve left behind.

The fisherwoman who each day watches the shrinking catch in her basket from the shrinking sea with mounting horror; the itinerant construction worker building dream homes for strangers with her baby tied to her head; the rag picker who constructs her life on what the city discards and the highly sought after lifestyle guru who having created the perfect ambience for good living IN a hundred upscale rooms across NoBo and SoBo tosses and turns each night in bed in spite of all her aromatherapy candles and 800- thread count Egyptian cotton sheets, with no rest for her well-coiffed head.

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Mumbai’s women. The ones who buy their bargain basement fast -fashion shoes on Linking Road and the ones who buy their high-fashion Jimmy Choos at Harrods in Knightsbridge. The celebrated and successful ones and the ones crushed and weighed down and overlooked. The ones you see every day in the city’s streets, shops, malls and markets and the ones you only read about or watch on the big screens or OTT platforms or who smile down at you from hoardings.

Those women. The ones who receive your annual Women’s Day greetings with bemused grace and the ones who set them aside with a cynical shrug and a weary sigh, knowing them for the tokenism however well-intentioned that they represent and the issues they blithely ignore.

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Because Mumbai’s women deserve better and more. By all means give them the flowers and the commendations and compliments, but also give them what they need and a city they deserve: with safe, well-lit public transport systems and secure open spaces and clean and affordable public toilets and decent welcoming hostels and residential accommodations and easily accessible skill training and child care centres and old age homes and emergency shelters for the rest and recovery of the victims of domestic violence and abuse- all ideally manned by empathetic and supportive staff so that they can be the superwomen that they are and always were.

And remember, for starters: a welcoming, comfortable, dedicated space at their places of work, where they can rest those weary heads during their office lunch break, and catch up on some much-needed shut- eye, will be appreciated more and last long after their special day is over, and the chocolate hearts and roses and memes and messages have faded.