Unveiling India: A Woman’s Journey is an old book that I picked up during one of my Hyderabad walks. Primarily because the author belongs to a well-known family from the city. The subject was also intriguing, a woman’s journey. The book is based on the travels through the lanes of India in the mid-80s after the assassination of the most famous woman of the country Indira Gandhi.
Author interacts with a variety of women in various parts of the country in their own environments. And tries to understand their journies. Though like everyone else we have a stereotype in mind for rural women, urban women. For women who are behind the veil, for women who come to our homes to work and for almost all kinds of them. Through her conversations and observations author has tried to unveil the real women behind these stereotypes. She looks at the choices they made most of the times consciously.
She looks at the relationship they have with God, men around them and other women. And she tries to explore their idea of love and what marriage means to them. How they relate to their children?
As she explores these various facets of women across the cross-sections of society, she makes you think hard about your ideas of concepts she is exploring. You question your conditioning about the society that you have lived with all your lives. For me, it created an urge to go and meet those women and find out more about the world that exists in their minds rather than the physical world that you see them in.
A simple google search on author tells me that this is her most noted work. With her kind of sensitivity, I hope she does some more work like this and document these times for posterity.
