The Redemption of Elizabeth Gilbert

LIKE MANY WOMEN, my reaction — or shall we say relationship? — to Elizabeth Gilbert’s juggernaut bestseller Eat Pray Love (first published and 2006 and by 2008 a global sensation) was complicated. On the one hand, the book is mildly embarrassing; Eat Pray Love falls squarely in the chick lit category, a schmaltzy fairytale-like admission to the feminine hankering for fairytale-like love (someone even recently quipped on Twitter that the first problem she had with it was how to hide the fact that she was reading it). On the other hand, however, it’s a rather good read, a true story, a real woman’s memoir of overcoming a comparatively small yet personally overwhelming struggle. In its own fairytale-like way, it is irresistible — but this was also the source of its doom.

Now, for the few of you who may insist that you know nothing about Eat Pray Love, here it is in a nutshell: a financially successful but not particularly famous author finds herself getting divorced, going into depression, and then taking a year to travel in order to reinvigorate her life. In Italy, she indulges – eating her way through the first third of the year. In India, she joins an ashram (the book is extremely spiritual, and this section is so heartrendingly painful that you wonder why anyone would call this book fluffy… until you get to the next). And finally, in Indonesia, tying up the circle, she finds love.

All of this is a true story, told in a fashion that is alternately charming, mildly annoying, and deeply honest.

So when the sequel came out, of course I had to read it. Snarkily, with some of usual disclaimers, but with some real excitement about its subject matter (and a continuing passive-aggressive crush on the earlier book). Committed: A Skeptic’s View of Marriage picks up where Eat Pray Love left off – i.e. the author and her Brazilian-born, Bali-discovered lover float off into their happily ever after. Until the US government interfered.

As a foreigner whose trips into the country were not only frequent, but whose exits themselves were only border runs for visa renewals, Gilbert’s partner Felipe finds himself in trouble with Immigration. Fortunately, they are given a choice: if they get married, they can continue their lifestyle (sans border running, too!). Desperately, they agree — but both having survived divorce, the idea of remarriage is significantly terrifying. But the process is so complex that the couple essentially has to spend almost a year outside the country, waiting for the fiancee visa to come through, and Gilbert spends this time confronting her traumas and issues about the institution of marriage, ruminations and research that eventually became Committed.

Committed is a feminist memoir, make no mistake about it. It is an empowering, thought-provoking read that I would recommend to anyone who 1. wants to marry, 2. doesn’t want to marry, 3. is concerned about civil rights and international affairs (in all senses of the term!). It’s important that the events it describes happened prior to Eat Pray Love‘s insane success. Not unlike the happy coincidence of having met her new love at the end of her first book’s journey, everything that happens therein was also spontaneous. Gilbert leaves little doubt that nowhere during her ten months of bad traffic and matrimonial panic wandering around Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia could it have occurred to her that she might exploit this bout of hard luck. She went through the experience with no guarantee of a platform to discuss, let alone capitalise on, it. Because of this, it is all the more relevant. This isn’t a celebrity memoir, but an ordinary couple’s absolutely commonplace struggle in a world that loves and enforces its borders even as it claims to have none.

Now, this sort of gets back to the problem with Eat Pray Love. Which was not, strictly speaking, a real problem with Eat Pray Love itself, but with exactly how the memoir got co-opted into the chick-lit category. Not chick-lit as in light and fun, but chick-lit as in delusional-inducing, Prince-awaiting, hearts-a-breaking. And that problem was that many – many, many, many – of us are where Gilbert was at the start of that book. Lying on the bathroom floor bawling. And in the course of a few hundred pages, in about a year, she was both literally and figuratively somewhere else altogether. And the book was so engaging that it made it look easy.

The problem, essentially, was the expectation created. I encountered this personally in my own life, and practically every woman friend who has read it has admitted to the same rues. Some of them had become especially resentful toward Gilbert. This was not a phenomenon restricted to my circles — a real backlash against Eat Pray Love and its author occurred among its disenchanted readership. Its most common contentions, as discussed on comment forums all over the Internet, were that Gilbert was selfish, and as a white American with some wealth, she was operating from a place of privilege and entitlement. “Not all of us can give up our lives and jetset for a year” was a common refrain — as though if only we could, we would also land ourselves true love and astronomical book sales (a phrase Gilbert’s own sister, married with children and obligations of her own, sarcastically echoes in one email exchange in the book).

But here’s the thing. I don’t think – especially having noticed Committed‘s incredible redemptive powers – that Gilbert meant for her memoir to have anything to do with typically misguiding light literature aimed at women.

On its own steam, Committed is an important book, completely relevant to our world today and the choices we are faced with as thinking women who sometimes have no alternative but to acquiesce to a fundamentally patriarchal institution (even if we believe we want it, with eyes open or closed). But it’s also a most marvellous redemption for Eat Pray Love‘s unintended consequences (and there were some). As she points out almost guilelessly in the introduction, prior to Eat Pray Love, Gilbert was mostly known for writing about men. Her three prior books – Stern Men, Pilgrims and The Last American Man – were explorations of masculine life — fiction and nonfiction about “supermacho characters: cowboys, lobster fishermen hunters, trucksters, Teamsters, woodmen”. As a journalist, Gilbert had even gone as far as dressing in drag for a week, complete with a birdseed filled condom stuffed in her pants.

She doesn’t mention this in this book, but it occurred to me that even before Eat Pray Love, it is ironic that the most lucrative of her projects was probably when a magazine article she wrote about her bartending experiences became the basis for the decidedly fluffy rom-com Coyote Ugly. Sadly, between that and Eat Pray Love, her broader scope of work was overshadowed. Call it Gilbert’s chick-lit curse. And Committed, quite decisively, breaks it.

The truth is, I am still bawling on my floor. And I do wish I hadn’t ever heard the word-of-mouth that hyped Eat Pray Love as some sort of semi-prophetic text, because it did result in a few regrettable actions for me at the time (oh hey, a few good anecdotes too). But Committed‘s redemptive powers are such that not only does it completely absolve Gilbert of any hand played in the prolonged miseries of some of her readers, but it also elevates her, in a way that Eat Pray Love couldn’t possibly, to the role already assigned to her by the same masses of sad readers: that of the high priestess, the knowing one, a Solomon-like figure who could provide a solution.

Marriage, whether we like it or not, is a necessary decision for many of us. Whether the larger bodies we aim to please are governments, families, societies or own guilt-tripping demons, it can be an inevitability. Committed does two things, and does them beautifully — it strips the institution of its veneer of romance. And then it reinstates it, at a far more meaningful level.

Committed will probably help many more women’s hearts and choices than Eat Pray Love did because there is absolutely nothing here but gritty realism — the facts of the world and its requirements, and how a relationship must necessarily be an accord of solidarity in negotiating these facts and requirements. It will also, hopefully, further the cause of same-sex marriage. As Gilbert most unselfishly points out in the book, she and Felipe are fortunate to even have this choice. Across the world, most lovers of the same gender do not. And when it comes to the paperwork — immigration, insurance, death and taxes – they suffer in ways that heterosexuals can take for granted that they won’t have to endure.

And Eat Pray Love, that old bugaboo? Let’s just say I am really looking forward to the film. Aren’t you?

Each Others’ Worst Enemies: Female Rivalry at the Heart of Disempowerment

THE TEXT OF A SPEECH delivered as the chief guest at the International Women’s Day celebrations at the Hyundai plant in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, on March 8 2010.

International Women’s Day is many things – a cause for celebration, a reason to pause and re-evaluate, a remembrance, an inspiration, a time to honour loved and admired ones and in several countries – including China, Armenia, Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bulgaria, Kazakhstan, Macedonia, Madagascar, Mongolia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and Vietnam, but clearly not India! – a public holiday. So I’d like to extend, first of all, a note of thanks to all of you for taking time out of your work schedules to come here, as well as to Hyundai, for inviting me to speak.

On this day, all over the world, we consider both the steps forward toward better lives for women that have been taken in recent times, as well as the progress still required. Necessarily, we name our enemies: patriarchal structures, perhaps, or more specifically, legislative and political decisions, corporate entities, criminal menaces, culture-based ignorance and economic disenfranchisement. They are all significant things, and I am not suggesting that they are not. But I have felt for a long time now that something else is at the heart of female disempowerment. Something that isn’t as easy to deconstruct or dismantle. Something that is difficult to even name, and at times feels bewilderingly counter-intuitive.

What, to me, is at the heart of female disempowerment is the profoundly painful fact of how women can be each others’ worst enemies.

One of the most famous things that former American Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has gone on record to say is “I think there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women.” A special place in hell – can you imagine what torment that would be, and how deeply wounded a person has to feel to condemn someone that way? When you think of what she said, that such a special place is reserved for women who don’t help other women – what associations come to mind? I don’t know about you, but my heart burns to remember the countless times I have been betrayed and even sabotaged by women I loved or looked up to – teachers, relatives, peers, friends and colleagues. Haven’t men done the same? Of course they have – but somehow, it stings worse coming from another woman, because of how deeply counter-intuitive it feels. This is the sort of heartburn that makes me think, yes, Albright was right – there is a place in hell for women who don’t help – who hurt – other women. There has to be. Even if there is no Hell – how could there not be such a place? How could such treachery be left without retribution?

There are big ways and little ways to this treachery. The little ways I hardly need to enumerate, because the best examples of these are empirical ones, and you know them in your own life. The big ways tend to be a matter of collusion: for instance, it may have been men who created archaic and repressive social codes, but is it not women who pass them on, who ensure that their families function within and continue to carry forward the same logic? To choose to not break a chain is to choose to propagate it.

We can begin by taking a look at the very fact of us all being in this room today. How did we get here? Each of us have overcome difficulties in our own lives, each of us has dared to dream, and fortunately, has been born in a time where we were able to pursue some if not all of these dreams. We have had access to resources and options which were denied to women of just a few generations ago – resources and options which are even denied to other women today, in this country and elsewhere. Some of us have endured bad luck, made bad decisions, or failed at things we tried our hands at – but we haven’t been ruined by these misfortunes. We have alternatives. We have second, third and ninety-third chances. We have more autonomy than our foremothers may have been able to imagine.

In short, we are all so lucky. And this is only because of the brave women and men who fought for certain rights and equality, who went against the tide of what was acceptable, who challenged the status quo, who refused to take as an answer that “that’s just how things are”. We are here because they did not think of themselves alone. They did not relegate their abilities to simply securing a better life for themselves, but put the vision of a better world above their own personal journeys, and in doing so secured a better life for millions.

I am asking you today if we too can demand a better explanation than “that’s just how things are”. I believe that as women, we are conditioned on a deeply embedded level to be wary of or threatened by, and consequently cruel toward, one another. Perhaps there are biological or evolutionary reasons for this. But I refuse to accept that we cannot evolve female rivalry out of our systems. Larger systems of power, yes, but more importantly, smaller microcosms of the same.

In our own lives, can we get over our mistrust of other women? Can we leave cliques and factions behind in our school years and embrace a greater loyalty? Can we see that another woman’s success need not necessarily mean our own failure? Can we cease to be judgmental or jealous? Can we cease to be threatened by other women, for reasons of our own insecurities, and can we stop acting out of that sense of fear?

Just as our palette of big life choices continues to expand the more society develops, I would like to think that in our day to day interactions, we should also become more mindful of how we choose to treat one another. Can we make choices that deprogramme the way we have learnt to feel about other women – learnt from all the ways we ourselves have been hurt – and choose to say, “This stops with me. What has been done to me by girls I went to school with, women in my extended family, superiors I worked under or any other situation, incident or environment that fostered in me a sense of female rivalry or mistrust will no longer control the way in which I respond to individuals now.” Will we choose to undermine other women, in ways big and small, or will we choose to embrace a less cynical view? Can we work together to create new environments in which all of us can feel free to meet our highest potential without being hindered by unhealthy competition?

You may be wondering why I have taken a less festive approach to International Women’s Day and am asking these potentially uncomfortable questions. I promise you I didn’t start out this cynical. In fact, I started out quite the opposite – if I could have had feminist slogans on my diapers, I would have! Throughout my teenage years I volunteered with women’s NGOs, and continue to do so in some capacity today. I was one of those girls who would rather have a tee-shirt that said “the revolution is my boyfriend” than have an actual human one. I think I limited my own literary forays for some years by refusing to read anything by authors I derogatorily labeled “dead white men”. I was proudly, radically, obviously and – I must admit, perhaps a little obnoxiously – feminist. And then the disillusionment set in.

At some point in my life as a young activist, I began to see that polemics and politics only go so far. How far does philosophy translate accurately into one’s practical realities? One’s fundamental humanity and compassion are all that really matter – it is of no consequence if this can be backed up by proselytizing or theory. You know how this works. I am almost certain that there is no one here today who would not name her grandmother, mother, aunt or sister as her personal inspiration – a woman who did not necessarily know of or say that she subscribed to theoretical ideals but nonetheless manifested the best of them in her life and across the lives of all she touched.

Today my feminism is nuanced by the understanding that as with all great adversaries, the most significant challenge to female empowerment comes from within. From within our ranks, from within our own hearts, from within our own inability to look beyond a reactionary and defensive stance.

But there is something else that also comes from within. And that is strength. Women have always regarded as being strong, and we are, but in modern times we are also powerful. I think of power as originating from an external source, from the validation of being in a certain position of influence. But strength has a far more esoteric source. It manipulates less, and moves more. There is a difference between strength and power – which do you operate from?

And I ask these uncomfortable questions not because I am above reproach but because I also deal with them in my day to day life and work. Sometimes, I frown on the actions of teenage girls because they do not seem as empowered as I was at their age. Or I might secretly judge someone of my generation for having had an arranged marriage, letting her in-laws dictate her career choices, or not realizing how beautiful she is because TV commercials tell her otherwise. But who am I, really, to judge? How would I know what those girls or women have been through and what has shaped their decisions? Why can’t I just respect that they are different, but no less equal? Concurrently, I struggle to undo and unlearn traumas imprinted on me because I am a certain kind of woman, born into a certain kind of culture, in a certain era. I struggle to not be manipulated into being pitted against other women in social and professional situations by those who know just how to push those buttons. I struggle to deal graciously with female associates who have backstabbed, cheated and even plagiarized me without having to descend to petty conflict that would only satisfy those who believe that women cannot evolve out of our habituated enmity. Because I believe we can.

As we celebrate International Women’s Day this year (and celebrate it we should!) let us also bear in mind that the struggle is far from over. Women’s empowerment should never be reduced to individual success stories. It should be about collective well-being. As long as women continue to operate from that deeply embedded place of suspicion and resentment, we will never be free. No matter what material, social or intellectual heights we scale, we will never be free unless we learn a new paradigm with which to see other women. With which to see ourselves.

There are two ways to light a second lamp: you can do so by snuffing out the first as you ignite the second, or you can allow the flame of one wick to touch another, and inspire its own flame. You are a luminous being. Be secure in this knowledge. Let your light illuminate as many lives as possible. It will not diminish your own.

I would like to end this talk with a quote from an anonymous source that I came across on the Internet. I find it comforting – and I hope that you too will be inspired by it. “Blessed are the women, who have grown beyond their greed, and put an end to their hatred. They delight in the beauty of the way things are, and keep their hearts open, day and night. They are like beautiful trees planted on the banks of flowing rivers, which bear fruit when they are ready. Their leaves will not fall or wither, and everything they do will succeed.”

“Frida To Sharanya”

Sleep wherever is most convenient for you.
Whoever and whatever is left in the morning,
take home. Be kind. All the world is yours for
the taking, long as you know that your little heart is
theirs for the breaking. Leave lipstick on their
china and on your letters. Make sure they know
that you’re a mariposa, blue as copper sulphate,
or blue as the sea, blue as a baby stilled too soon,
darling wench, and you never really intend to leave.
Set love free like a boat with neither oars nor anchors.
Trust it. Don’t trust yourself. Accept every familiar
that comes, even if one happens to be a goat. Forgive
less of people. Remember that things come in triptychs.
Be magnificent, like Coatlicue. You only owe it to me,
but break a mirror now and then, if you can afford it.
Kiss as much as you want to, and as few. Be difficult.
It will make you more desirable. If it will help you to
let him go, cut off your hands. They will grow back.
You don’t need them. You don’t need him. The older
you grow, the more you will amputate. Dance on stumps
if you have to, but don’t stop. Wear one item of red
every Wednesday and when death comes for you,
you will go as his bride. Burn every bridge you ever
built, and build as many as you possibly can. The one
that takes you home will be the last one standing.
Sing over the bones. Go slow.
Don’t forget me.

—

Evil As She Does

By Amrita Rajan

Pity the female villain.

Male villains can look forward to world domination, tons of moolah and all the power they can handle; females, on the other hand, spend all their time scheming to sabotage various weddings when they’re not forcing their daughters-in-law to mop floors while dressed in rags or nagging their husbands to death. And if somehow they manage to stumble onto a bitchin’ gig, they might just find themselves laboring under gallons of body paint and CGI because God forbid they show an actual live woman having the sort of fun men having been having for ages now (before getting blown up or dissolved in a vat of acid, naturally).

Male villains get cool names, all the chicks they can bang, and fly around the world like the billionaires they frequently are; female villains are typically the mom or the wife from hell, nobody loves them much less wants to bang them, and all their plotting and planning usually leaves them with a wrinkly face.

Chee. Who’d want to be a female villain?

The Secret Lives of Women

THE HADEES he had read yesterday talked about how it was Shaitan who always tried to corrupt us. If we escaped his attempts, we would surely go to Heaven. In Heaven, rivers of milk and honey flow, thousands of Houri women serve the men and make them happy. As she remembered this, she wondered, if there were Houri women for the men, wouldn’t there be Houri men for the women too? (From Irandaam Jaamangalin Kadai by Salma; my translation)

Understanding and Responding to the Mangalore Assaults

By Sumi Krishna

How should we in the women’s movement understand and respond to the cluster of assaults by the Rama Sene, Bajrang Dal and other fundamentalists; the targeting of minorities and their places of worship; the harassment and molestation of women of all classes in the name of nation, culture and religion; the fear and anger spreading through villages and towns in southern-coastal Karnataka?

As Sandhya Gokhale of the Forum Against Oppression of Women, Mumbai, says in The Hindu, on one level the horrific abuse of young women in a pub is ‘a morality issue’, but it is also about the space and decision making power for which women have fought for years. Arvind Narrain of the Alternative Law Forum, Bangalore, writing in the Indian Express, sees the abuse of religious and sexual minorities as the ‘saffron’ challenge to ‘the legacy of the women’s movement in India’ and ‘the thin end of the wedge’ in re-establishing male dominance.

Joint Statement on the Barbaric Assault in Mangalore (please add your names)

Editor’s Note: Please leave your name and location / affiliation in the comment space if you want to be added to the signatories and we will collect them and send them to Sumi Krishna, the coordinator.

JOINT STATEMENT ON THE BARBARIC ASSAULT IN MANGALORE

Bangalore: 9 p.m., 29 January 2009

We, the undersigned, strongly condemn the horrific and unprovoked assault by a group of 40 hooligans, reportedly members of the Sri Rama Sene, on young women in a pub in the coastal city of Mangalore, Karnataka, during the afternoon of Saturday, 24 January 2009. We are saddened by the inaction of the public who looked on as the brutal attack unfolded.  But we appreciate the attitude and actions of the staff of the pub, who tried to intervene, and the young man who stood up to the attackers.

We are shocked by the tardy action of the State administration, police, and political leadership, some of whom have dismissed this is as a “minor incident”. We believe that violent threats to the democratic freedoms and human rights of citizens, whether women or religious minorities, cannot be trivialised as “unfortunate”.

Nothing Moral About It

By Anuradha Prasad

When I first heard about the Mangalore pub incident, I was not surprised. Ever since the BJP came into power, as glad as I was to see the Gowdas go, I felt some apprehension. ‘Moral policing’ and communal conflicts always seem to ride on BJP power.

However, it was later, when I watched the videos that captured this disgusting act, that I was horrified, angry and sickened. The government’s lack of immediate action, the speeches against ‘pub culture’, the lack of remorse about what they are doing in the name of ‘morals’ left me indignant.

Protest against Mangalore incident in Delhi

Protest against Assault on Women in Mangalore Pub and State Inaction

We condemn the brutal assault by members of the Sri Ram Sene on young women in a pub in Mangalore, Karnataka, on Saturday, 24 January 2009. We are shocked by the response of the State administration, police, and political leadership, some of whom have dismissed this as a ‘minor incident’, while others have blatantly justified the violence. We believe that such threats to the democratic freedom and human rights of citizens, cannot be treated as ‘minor’. This incident, and the unabashed justifications of it are part of a larger trend to curb the freedoms of women in the name of a regressive and distorted notion of Indian culture and tradition.

To strongly condemn the disturbing trend of violence against women and ‘moral policing’ as a means to enforce a particularly regressive interpretation of culture, there will be a protest on Tuesday 3rd February, outside Karnatak Bhavan, Chanakyapuri (near Samrat hotel), Delhi, at 3 pm.

Jagori, Nirantar, Saheli, Sama

An Open Letter to the State Government from the Women of Karnataka

We fear for lives of women in this state… is the Government listening? Is there a Government in this State at all? Or is it only a political party whose highest priority is its own regressive right wing agenda, which violates the responsibility of governance?

In one of its latest acts of bigotry and intolerance, members of the Sri Rama Sene and the Bajrang Dal barged into a lounge bar on Balmatta road in Mangalore and viciously attacked the girls who were present there. Their crime: Firstly they were indecently dressed and second, despite being Hindu, they were daring to socialise with Muslim boys. Prasad Attavar, State Deputy Convener of the Sri Ram Sene said that it was “a spontaneous reaction against women, who flouted traditional Indian norms of decency.”

And what was the spontaneous response from the government to this absolutely uncultured act of violence against young girls in the name of culture? Not surprisingly a studied silence from the powers that be and total inaction and apathy from the subservient police force in South Canara.

Interview with Madhu Bhushan (cont…

THIS IS Part 2 of the two-part interview with Madhu Bhushan of Vimochana.

UB: The feminist movement has always been very critical of militarism and war. Can u tell us more about your involvement with these issues?

MB: While Vimochana’s specific concern was and is the socially sanctioned personal forms of violence perpetrated on women within the home and outside (dowry tortures, murders and other forms of marital violence, sexual harassment and rape of women, trafficking and commodification of women), our wider preoccupation has always been with the larger forms of violence in society. So our engagement is also with the more public and political forms of violence stemming from ideologies like that of communalism, fundamentalism, nationalism and militarisation which are leading to greater human insecurity, institutionalised intolerance and the increasing brutalisation of patriarchies both within the home and outside.

Interview with Madhu Bhushan

VIMOCHANA IS one of the oldest women’s rights organization in Bangalore. They have been part of the Indian women’s movement and have significantly contributed to the rights of women facing violence in Karnataka. They have a crisis intervention center for women facing violence called Angala and campaigns against dowry deaths, harassment and female infanticide. More on their website. I spoke to Madhu Bhushan, activist at Vimochana, about terrorism, fundamentalism and women’s rights in a two-part interview.