BehanVox: Diving Deep Into Women’s Relationship With Their Bodies and Swimming
This week in BehanVox: stories of Dalit women diligently protecting the mangroves, the Ladki Bahan Yojana controversy, pronatalist conventions, and more
Hello and welcome to BehanVox! With summer blazing its way ahead, we have a cool story on women who are overcoming social and personal inhibitions to learn swimming. From coastal Odisha we have the story of Dalit women who are diligently protecting the mangroves with no hope of a reward. Tid-bits on the news of the week and of course recommendations for weekend unwinding.
Story So Far
This week we took a dive, literally, into the very complicated relationship between women, their bodies and swimming. And found to our utter glee that so many of our readers could relate to it. Who does not have those memories? Of mothers and aunts standing on beaches holding hands in bellowing sarees and screaming in delight as the waves swept. Of mothers again, sitting by the pool watching children learn to stay afloat. The water somehow always seemed to be the preserve of men, with the privilege of being unselfconscious about their bodies.
Priya Menon’s delightful story this week took in these and many other nuances as she reports on the public swimming programmes for women being held in north Kerala’s ponds and rivers. The coaches have only one aim – to get women comfortable, happy and competent in the water. And they can come as they are. In a salwar kameez, leggings and T- shirt, joggers, hijab or abaya or even the ubiquitous nighty/maxi. They are joining in droves, says Priya, discovering how liberating, energising and calming the feeling of buoyancy is.
Swimming once used to be an easy and integral part of Kerala’s everyday village life and popular culture is full of stories of women, men and children revelling in local ponds and canals after a day’s hard work. CV Janaki amma grew up learning swimming in one such pond as a child but gave up as the landscape changed, adulthood arrived and so did social inhibitions about her body. She returned to swimming after four decades when a terrible boat tragedy brought home to her the critical need for the life skill. Now she joyously swims in her nighty and makes sure to invite other women to it, holding lessons for them in a pond.
The demand for her classes has been such that many Muslim women from conservative families have approached her to teach them swimming. “They want to learn but are not comfortable if there are men in the pond. So, I conduct swimming classes for them in a separate pond. I let them keep their hijab on,” says Janaki amma.
Her ‘student’, Museedha Shuhaid, 36, who began coming for classes along with her sister-in-law Saajida Shahul Hameed, says that, as a child, she always wanted to learn swimming. “But I wasn’t allowed to do so. Now the times have changed, and my husband is supportive,” she says, adding that she wears leggings and a top while swimming. “Many of the women from my community are now coming for swimming lessons. Who knows, one day it may save lives.”
The terror of the swimsuit is not just a small town thing. Priya weaves a personal narrative into the story when she recalls her own struggle to learn swimming late in life in Chennai’s pools with their ‘ladies classes’. Her classmates in the water include an elderly woman, a grandmother, who could not dream of learning to swim as a youngster, especially under the guidance of young male coaches. But she wants to enjoy a beach holiday with her family in Bali and is determined to swim. “Just look at me now,” she pointed out with a cackle.
Then there are three young Marwari women, all clad in modest, full-sleeved swimsuits that cover their legs right up to their ankles, revelling in their newfound freedom post marriage.
As for Priya, swimming has been a transformative experience. “Stretch out your arms, pull the water back, come up for air, kick out … again and again. The trick, I realised, is to let yourself go, tune everything out, take it slow and not worry about reaching the other end of the pool. As I concentrated on the feel of the water, and the rhythm of my breath, I began feeling totally relaxed. At the end of the hour, I found myself tired but elated, and strangely peaceful and calm.”
Read our story here.
The mangroves of Odisha’s coastal line create a precious ecosystem that is critical not just for the environment but also the lives and livelihoods of those who live near it. For it is the last barrier between them and the devastation of cyclones in a disaster-prone area.
It is the women of Sana Jhadling village in Puri’s Astaranga block who care for and nurture the mud flats and its unique vegetation. For Nalini, a Dalit fisherwoman, the luni jungle (mangrove forest) is the one place she has no one to answer to but the tides and the land she has vowed to protect.
Every morning before the world awakes, she takes a short boat ride across the backwaters to the swamp. Then she trudges for 30 minutes through the muddy terrain, sometimes through knee-deep water, sometimes over sharp, dry roots that threaten to pierce her bare feet. She checks for broken saplings, pushes them back into the mud with her hands and then nursery of the mangroves and weeds out any unwanted growth.
It is a battle fought every week against erosion, climate change, and indifference. For all the work she does, she does not own an inch of the mangrove land. Aishwarya Mohanty writes a remarkably thought provoking story on why it is important that these women with so much at stake also have some ownership of these mud flats.
“We seen disasters up close—no roof over our heads, nowhere to go, destruction all around. And we have noticed how cyclones are becoming more frequent. We do not want our next generation to suffer the same fate. These mangroves are not for us but for them,” says Mamina, another woman who protects the mangrove vegetation.
In a beautifully narrated story, Aishwarya Mohanty explains why it is important that the women be given real stake in these mangrove lands which fall in the uncertain zone between land and water with no clear ownership rights possible. But the Forest Right Act can apply here too, argue experts, rewarding the women for their diligent if thankless work.
Read our story here.
Talking Point
Scheme Interrupted: So the Ladki Bahan Yojana brought in with much fanfare as a means to woo women voters in the run up to the Maharashtra election – cynically considered by politicians the surefire strategy to win an election – has run into chaos over who qualifies as a beneficiary. The scheme provides Rs 1,500 per month to women not enrolled in any other government schemes. On Monday, minister Aditi Tatkare told the media that the financial aid has not been reduced for any beneficiaries, reports the Indian Express. This was in response to reports that 7,74,148 women were not getting the full benefit of the scheme due to their participation in other welfare programmes. The report cited a vegetable vendor and a part time beautician from the state complaining that the fund flow has been interrupted leaving them struggling to deal with their expenses.
‘More Babies’: They look like those women out of The Handmaiden’s Tale, bonnetted, gowned and aproned for a dystopian regime which imprisons, enslaves and forces women to have children. Except the long suffering look is replaced by a grin. But even as cosplay it is not funny. Late last month, 200 American pronatalists held a convention in Austin wherein men – and fewer women – pushed for the idea that women needed to be persuaded to have more children to reverse declining birth rates. You could dismiss this as the fringe of course but remember, the men at the helm of power in the country have pretty much the same vision. According to the NYT, the Trump administration is listening to ideas on how to get Americans to marry early and have more children. These ideas include baby bonuses to women, a reservation in the Fulbright programme for those who are married or have children and a ‘National Medal of Motherhood’ for women with six or more children.
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