Fence…Us and Them…and our Pieces of Sky..

Fence…Us and Them…and our Pieces of Sky.. 

(Fence is written by Ila Arab Mehta translated by Rita Kothari)

A fact and now referred to as the “feminist myth “about the women’s property holding states:

While women represent half the global population and one-third of the labor force, they receive only one-tenth of the world income and own less than one percent of world property. They are also responsible for two-thirds of all working hours.

Current day, this is a highly debated statistics, however that doesn’t take away the fact of deprivation and marginalization women face across the world. Even today renting a house if you are a single woman and trying to have an independent life is difficult- unless of course you can negotiate with your financial prowess. The inheritance laws are blur and the avenues and access are limited.  And imagine if you are woman who belongs to a minority or marginalized community, who wants to stay in a cosmopolitan, believing in the same democratic and constitutional rights of equality and equity? Will it be easy?

Needless to say, we often read newspaper reports of the gated communities and housing societies which deny rights to stay to people belonging to a particular community, caste, city, origin. We are so scared. So what you dreamt of having your own piece of sky with dignity. There are invisible fences and barbed wires all around.

Fence is a story of Fateema, her dreams and her belief in multiple possibilities. Fateema Lokhandwala, the second born in the impoverished family of 4 siblings and parents, almost scraping to make ends meet. Fateema however is full of optimism. Fateema, as one friend of mine had once pointed out to me, “a differently sounding name”, not the Amars and Sheetals, we get to meet and share our space every day is no different from any other girl in her dreams and ambition in reality. Neither is her family. Khatijaben, Fateema’s mother is a feisty woman who wants her daughter to study, to become someone else, their hope of turn-around of the daily grind of poverty. Fateema is a bright girl, who truly believes in the poem in class, which Gaekwad Sir teaches:

Holding a hand in a hand
Joining a heart to a heart
On the path of progress
We shall fly away

Fateema, feels herself as much a part of the small village in the once princely state in Gujarat and as the brightest star of Navprabhat High school that no fence exists in her mind. Her best friend is Chandan, the daughter of an austere Jain family. Majeedbhai and Khatijaben are also not the parents one would like to believe associated with the name like Fateema. They refuse a life of security promised by few people in order to keep on sending their daughter to school. Fateema comes to Ahmedabad to study and on her way to buy her house one day when she and her ba can stay and have their own piece of sky.

It is there Fateema, faces the Fence.. every now and then, be it in the suspicious eyes of the local police who may summon her at any pretext or the absolute denial of a property agent to even show her a house. Once an apologetic dealer, tells her of his limitation- Others will be afraid of Fateema and her likes, to buy a flat in the same complex. “ She may eat meat, she may prefer sacrifices, have non-vegetarian dishes, have different festivals”… In reality, they have already created a story about Fateema, even she could create or tell her own and thereby a fence… Her trials donot end, in her own family, her brother started distrusting “others” and even there Fateema with her logic and her sense of history is an outsider..

Hand in Hand, heart to heart… Fateema still believes that’s possible… how else could she have met Manuben or Manoramaben (Fateema addresses her as Manuben remembering Manuben in Sabarmati Ashram working with Gandhiji, something that melts the heart this warden), the warden of the hostel she stayed during her college days….One who was always protective of her, shielded her and kept extending her stay.. this is the humanity she believed in, her right to exist as she is, with all others.  Her dream home had to be with each other and not in a ghetto…. Where there is an invisible categorization, the labelling of “people like her”, us and them…

There are instances where Fateema’s Gujarati (though Fateema is as much a Gujarati born and brought up in Saurashtra) Hindu friends and students wonder asking her- “are, you are Mohammedan? You are like us only”… and amused Fateema wonders can it not be the other way, they are all like her... (I remembered Chimamanda’s Americanah where her American room-mate was disappointed to see her taste of music and her English—Chimamanda, didn’t fit into the story they made for her...)

Ladies hostel was not her choice, that’s not the independence she wanted for herself. History liberated her, she believed in multiple stories…

Fence seems so real to me... something I can understand and relate to very well and so can anyone else... be it the girls leading the “Pinjra Tod” Campaign, where they believe that none has the right to select moral code for girls- and staying away and late nights donot define a single story of moral conduct for girls or boys and girls be it from Kashmir or Nigeria or North East states, LGBT or Single, wanting to rent a space of their own… and when they encounter the fence, the rising barbed wars saying “ No entry”, basis stereotypes and carrying burdens of misinterpreted identities…

Fence belongs to Fateema and us all….and when can we free ourselves from these borrowed sense of identities and scared souls creating fences to safeguard these “false friends”??