BehanVox: Mallipoo, Mupathu, Mupathu! The Lives of Chennai’s Women Flowersellers
This week in BehanVox: a unique survey from Kerala on gender based violence, the comeback of Tamil singer Chinmayi, and more
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter that brings you top stories, gender news from the world, and our team’s reading recommendations.
Hello and welcome to BehanVox! This week we bring you a superb story on the women flowersellers of Chennai, their lives and craft. A Kerala women’s collective does a unique survey on gender based violence. And the lush-throated Chinmayi emerges from the shadows of a seven-year “ban” by the Tamil film industry after her #metoo moment.
Story So Far
You see them everywhere – on busy streets, in colony lanes, temple gates – across Chennai. Women squatting on pavements, under the glare of the southern sun, hunched over an upturned crate overlaid with a plastic sheet on which sit mounds of riotously coloured flowers – malli, mulla, jaati, kanakambaram. Even as they call out to passing pedestrians the women’s fingers are busy knotting loose flowers into strings.
The flower strings are sold by a muzham, roughly an elbow length of a string. If you ask for one, the women will cheerfully throw in a finger length extra with the kind of generosity hawkers ever show. When it is wedding season or a month of rituals, the price shoots up to Rs 50-60, otherwise it is around Rs 30.
As in many other parts of the south, flowers are an integral part of everyday life. As oversized garlands around the necks of politicians waving to the masses from podiums, as ornaments wound around or tucked into braids and buns, accessories to many rites and rituals. And it is the women who are the backbone of this informal economy, but at the lowest and least profitable rung of the business in Chennai. The big-money wholesale and retail trade run out of Koyambedu and Parry’s is the domain of men.
Archita Raghu brings you a delectable story this week on the place of Chennai’s indefatigable women flower sellers, their precarious lives and craft. There is Ammu, a hawker on a street in southern Chennai who says for her flowers are “thozhil, ulaippu, coolie (work, hard and informal labour)”, a day’s meal for her family and the means to repay the interest on a Rs 40,000 loan. “Rain or shine, Covid or fever, we work every day. Indha poo thozhil la kaanjipeirkom (this flower business drains us out).”
As the rest of Chennai slumbers, around 3am, Ammu boards the pink 21G bus from her home in Mylapore to the Parry’s wholesale flower bazaar on a half hour journey. She will return yet again to this wholesale market from her Abhiramapuram stall at 1 pm to buy just jasmines as they arrive fresh from fields. Weaving these flower muzhams and dealing with customers takes up the rest of her day though the summer heat has left her feeling drained and feverish. The profits at the end of the day for her? Somewhere between Rs 250-500.
Evictions, exhaustion and poor earnings are all in a day’s work for the women. But there is also pride in the skills learnt, often from mothers – how to not bruise fragile flowers, how to stack them into a string, how to suss out a customer, predict demand and know the neighbourhood.
Read our story here.
Kerala’s attitudes to women have always remained an enigma. On the one hand there are the undeniable markers of progressivism in education, employment and health and on the other, the equally apparent issues of everyday sexism. It is a unique effort to expose the latter, especially gender based violence, that P Navya covers this week for Behanbox.
Kudumbashree, the women’s collective for empowerment and livelihood, has been conducting panchayat level surveys for the last three years on gender violence. It is an interesting model because it works at the smallest level of the administrative hierarchy with the intention of making hyperlocal, handleable, and real changes.
The survey is not fully formed yet and its statistical model does not allow for wide conclusions but it is an experiment that could work better than ambitious national level campaigns that don’t seem to be going anywhere. It does some unique things – looks at not just physical and sexual but also economic, mental, verbal and social violence. And recognises not just the violence inflicted by a stranger but also partner, relative, friend, official, and colleague.
There are some broad findings across panchayats. For one, women face most violence within their own homes, a pattern noted in the NFHS. At home, the most common form of violence reported is verbal – abuse, threats and insults about the women’s natal family. A large number of women marked ‘No’ in the ‘response’ section of the questionnaire. This could mean any action – from resisting violence themselves, reporting it or seeking help for it. And on the case of sexual violence, women seemed more likely to take action if the perpetrator was a stranger rather than their a partner.
It is a tough survey to conduct given its intimate area of operation. For, women are hesitant to report issues within their family or community and the survey itself elicits quite a bit of hostility among men.
Read our story here.
Talking Point
Back With a Bang: Tamil playback singer Chinmayi had taken the brunt of the film industry’s backlash for her allegations of sexual misconduct against lyricist Vairamuthu. It resulted in a seven-year long shadow ban, with singing opportunities drying up for the artiste whose career soared after a brilliant debut in Kannathil Muthamittal (2002). She found little support within the film industry and it was only an accidental recording recently of Muththa Mazhai for Thug Life that brought her back into limelight with a viral viewership of 9 million. As she says in this interview, what is surprising is that few music lovers appeared to know that she had been “banned”.
Early Marriage, Motherhood: In Telangana and Andhra Pradesh, about 13% of 22-year-old women were married before they reached 18, the legal age for marriage for women in India, shows ‘Work and Family Lives: Young Lives Survey’ released on May 30. The women had also delivered a child by 19. The report also found that women who were poor and had less formal education were more likely to marry and have children early.
Queen Icon: This year marks the 300th birth anniversary of Ahalyabai Holkar, the famous 18th century queen of the Holkar dynasty known for sharp skills in political and martial strategising. She also is said to have been a devout Hindu and philanthrope and is an icon for the gadariya community to which she is said to have belonged. Her 300th anniversary has thus become an occasion for all parties, especially the BJP, to show their reverence for her. But not everyone in her community, it appears, is pleased at what this implies.
BehanVox Recommends
Contraceptives and conflict: In this investigative report, The New Humanitarian discovers how Bangladeshi authorities and healthcare workers have prevented Rohingya births by coercing refugee women to use long-term contraceptives, in Bazar district.
Documenting democracy: Over 30 years after his graphic novel ‘Palestine’, cartoonist-journalist Joe Sacco speaks to Zach Rabirof about the genocide in Gaza, violence, democracy, and the role of an artist. Sacco’s new book on the 2013 riots in Uttar Pradesh is set to release soon.
Lens of love: In an interview on Article 14, Mehak Jamal talks about her new book, Lōal Kashmir, the universality of love, mainstream portrayals of her homeland, and the impact of India-Pakistan conflict on Kashmir.
Poets in the time of Twitter: In a personal essay, Amal Kiswani muses about poetry, parasocial relationships, and digital literacy, the Internet, and writer Richard Silken’s Twitter account.
Roots of lingo: Sociolinguist Erica Brozovsky delves into the origin of jargon in the corporate world, and its link with military speak and sport terminologies, for Otherwords, a PBS web series.
Want to explore more newsletters? In Postcards, we send you missives on the places, people and ideas that brought Team BehanBox joy. Our monthly offering Postscript invites you, the reader, into our newsroom to understand how the stories you read came to be – from ideation to execution. Subscribe for more.
We believe everyone deserves equal access to accurate news. Support from our readers enables us to keep our journalism open and free for everyone, all over the world.
