Chances are you’ll not know me, however I do know you. So many people within the nation know you. And now, much more folks will know you. Congratulations on being chosen as India’s official submission to the Oscars.
I acquired to know of your tales just a few months in the past, after I watched your film, Laapataa Girls. After I first learn your film’s title, I translated the title as ‘Lacking Girls’. I used to be instantly transported to the idea of ‘Lacking Girls’ expounded by economist Professor Amartya Sen in an essay over 30 years in the past: “An ideal many greater than 100 million girls are merely not there as a result of girls are uncared for in contrast with males”.
The idea of ‘Lacking Girls’ is roughly as outdated as I’m and I ponder the way it nonetheless is just not a person’s however a gendered particular person’s world. Gender all the time marks its presence by fee, hardly by omission. Then, I realised that the film was about ‘Misplaced Girls’ and never ‘Lacking Girls’. Nevertheless it actually is about ‘Lacking Girls’.
Phool, you had been a younger bride who thought of it a sin to utter your husband’s identify and you then discovered your self misplaced on a railway platform. You slowly struck up a friendship with Manju Mai, who ran a tea stall there. Regardless of her taunts, you dreamt of going again to your husband. Even when she made a strong assertion by asserting that girls don’t actually need males, you had been unable to cross the brink of the social assemble you grew up in. So far as you had been involved, your capabilities existed to assist your husband.
My pricey Phool, when Manju Mai requested you, “you know the way to run a house, however have you learnt the way to attain your house?”, your silence spoke louder than your phrases. Her assertion hits more durable when statistics reveal that, of the ladies who migrate in India, almost 81% migrate resulting from marriage — identical to you probably did, Phool.
Jaya, you narrowly escaped being a ‘Lacking Girl’ by being a ‘Misplaced Girl’. You, like so many ladies of ‘marriageable age’, sought some extra time to hitch the mind-numbing race between the organic clock and the profession clock. Desirous to pursue additional research, you escaped your groom. Due to the ‘veil’, you ended up accompanying Phool’s husband, who realised his error solely after the veil was lifted.
You had been a ‘Lacking Girl’ who would have been anonymised in society, save in your insistence on asserting who you had been. Throats turned dry when Phool’s mother-in-law informed you that within the means of adapting to the marital household’s likes and dislikes, girls neglect their very own likes. Is that this regular erosion of individuality not making extra ‘Lacking Girls’? It was heartening to see you lastly now not lacking or misplaced. And we noticed Phool realise that you just launched her to herself.
Whereas your heartwarming tales left me smiling, a thought lingered: can we outline Phool as a ‘Lacking Girl’ or Jaya, had she stored quiet? Can we outline as ‘Lacking Girls’ all these girls or ladies who tackle the id of a girl or woman acceptable to society and neglect who they had been earlier than they acquired married? Can we are saying that each girl who misses out on a chance due to the glass ceiling is certainly a ‘Lacking Girl’?
By this account, the variety of lacking girls could far outnumber any estimate until date, for each time a girl matches herself into the mould of a suitable girl, her genuine self turns into a ‘Lacking Girl’. We’re lacking once we are invisible, we’re lacking once we are anonymised, we’re lacking when our id is misplaced. I learnt we don’t must determine as a ‘girl’ to be lacking; if we’re invisible within the social matrix, we’re the ‘lacking people’, regardless of our gender id. The lacking girls of the Nineteen Nineties had been statistically absent, however right this moment’s lacking girls are counted. We’re lacking girls, if we aren’t who we need to be.
Now {that a} larger a part of the world will see you, could I request you, Phool and Jaya, to assist deliver different tales to heartwarming conclusions too? Are you able to please communicate for all of the lacking girls who aren’t simply misplaced however, as Manju Mai mentioned, who have no idea the place they’re headed and therefore, stay lacking? I might be cheering for you, and I do know, you can be cheering for us all too.
The creator is an IRS officer.
Views expressed are private.
Nationwide Editor Shalini Langer curates the fortnightly ‘She Stated’ column
