WomeN PoweR in Literature

February 2018: India

A rarest of the rare occasion when you can get to meet over 50 women writers from 17 languages in one platform @NCPA, Mumbai. 
Of the three-day festival, I was able to find space for half-day of day one. I came out feeling energetic with power of women writers and filmmakers. Here I share my reflections about the two session I'd participated. 

Now when I announced to my male friend that I'm going for this festival, his immediate reaction was: "When will world stop segregating male and female?". His basic argument was why do people need gender-based identity. Well, I guess, as a gender social scientist, I am familiar with the reasons, and he is equally aware of the fact being patriarchal head of his family. It's the comfort zone that people think equality exist in terms of education, pay, leadership or political representations for everyone. It may for some groups, but it does not for the majority. Moreover,  equality does not mean equity! 

The first panel touched upon a naive question - Is fair sex getting fair share as characters in film? The panelist were famed Bengali filmmaker Aparna Sen, actor-director Nandita Das among others. What I liked about this panel? Its good question, but need to be asked to men. All the four panelist bored me! Yes, sorry to say that. The discussion was completely sitting on the fence, except in some place Ms. Das tried to express her views that was refreshingly different from others. I was glad at the end of the panel that it got over - the problem is to have big names in the panel. The attract audience so the hall was full, which became almost half for the powerful next session. 

I liked the second panel compared to the first one. It was about women writers in modern India - one of them was Nalini Jameela. She was a sex worker in Kerala. Her talk touch me despite her speech in Malayalam was translated - it carried the emotions. The next speaker was Baby Haldar, a domestic help whose books have been translated in to dozen languages all around the world. The third speaker was a fearless Rana Ayyub. She equally narrated a emotional and challenging journey that is accounted in a book Gujarat Files. She did an eight-month undercover investigation posing as Maitili Tyagi, a filmmaker from the American Film Institute Conservatory. Ms. Rana met bureaucrats and top cops in Gujarat to learn about the Gujarat riots and fake encounters to bring new revelations.  All these women braved to establish themselves to tell a powerful story by becoming a powerful human. 

Overall, at then end of the afternoon, I found myself wondering would the story be differently written had it been men. Such literature festival brings out the hidden debate about gender equity in an artistic way, which for me was fun to listen, talk, watch and meet artists and writers.