We all have spent evenings getting chumpies from our grandmothers or mothers listening to stories about angels, birds and animals. But did we ever ask about the stories of their lives? Did we try to find the caged woman behind their empowering stories? I also used to listen to stories while sleeping next to my maternal grandmother. I liked the nickname she gave me and the way she used to hug me each time we met. However, as I grew up and started noticing the injustice that women face, I was compelled to ask my grandma if she was happy living in her marital home with Grandpa. Reluctantly, she replied, "No. He used to beat me with belts and even climb on my chest to abuse me. Even my in-laws were not kind to me and abused me for every small thing."
That's when the mirage of my grandma being the best storyteller broke. I realised that the violence against women is a result of the generational silence that women have inherited. My grandma silently bore all the violence and so did my mother. And now my mother is passing on that silence by asking me to normalise "one or two slaps." However, I choose to say NO.
The fetish for marriages of older times holds a dark secret
We often come across people, especially men, who say that our grandparents had happier marriages. That the older times were the golden times. But little do we know that the shine of the gold was the male ego being polished by women's silence. During the older times, the male ego was a power that ruled women and treated them like humans with no agency or voice of their own. Women who had internalised the power of men did not dare to speak against it. Most women were uneducated and were only taught to cook and serve. Even if a few of them managed to get an education, the strict norms of society didn't let them exercise their rights.
However, every cloud has a silver lining. If some women, or most women, were silent about injustice and patriarchy, others didn't shy from expressing their rights and opinions. They defied patriarchy at that time and are continuing to do so even today. I am talking about the veteran Bollywood actor Zeenat Aman.
How Is Zeenat Aman Breaking Generational Silence?
In the 70s and 80s Bollywood, Zeenat Aman was known for her assertive appearance on-screen. However, her personal life was not as glamorous. Aman's movie Satyam Shivam Sundaram drew controversies because of her obscene clothes. But she cleared the air by saying, "I was always quite amused by the accusations of obscenity as I did not and do not find anything obscene about the human body."
Even magazine headlines of that time depicted Aman in the wrong picture. She said, "If the headlines were to be believed, in 1979 I had cursed myself, in 1982 I was being picked on, in 1984 I was out of sync, in 1985 I was marching towards self-destruction, and in 1998 I was shattered! There was a time that I subscribed to glossies and tabloids, but that passed very quickly."
How Zeenat Aman is enlightening the current generation with her bold pieces of advice
Now, when Zeenat Aman has reached an age when she is flaunting her silver tresses, she marched onto Instagram with her wisdom making all of us in awe of her. She is not only breaking her silence but is also creating a change. In one of her posts, she talked about embracing old age and said, “I really don’t care to buttress our society’s idolisation of youth. Being young is wonderful, but so is being old. It thrills me to see more and more silver-haired women (of all ages) challenge the status quo.”
In the most recent post, she gave her insight into live-in relationships amidst the UCC's act of caging such relationships. Aman said, "During the very first year of marriage I realised I had made a huge mistake, but I decided to live by it and make it work. I tried to make it work for another 12 years." Giving relationship advice, she further said, "Here’s a personal opinion I haven’t previously shared – if you’re in a relationship, I strongly recommend that you LIVE TOGETHER before getting married.”
She also addressed the social stigma around live-in relationships and said, "I’m aware that Indian society is a little uptight about ‘living in sin’ but then again, society is uptight about so many things! Log kya kahenge?”
This is the kind of outspokenness we need from women of the older generation. They need to be empowered to speak up about the challenges and injustices they face and give the new generation advice to navigate through them. It is not right to pass on the silence to the next generation because then the cycle will never break and patriarchy will always win. Aman said that she is teaching her sons too about the importance of live-in relationships for a successful marriage. Similarly, women of previous generations need to educate both men and women about the ways to deal with patriarchy.
Maybe then the current generation will recognise the positive changes brought about by feminism. Maybe then, the generation will normalise the upheaval of the current times as a result of the long silence.
Views expressed are the author's own.
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