Rosalyn D'Mello: Where women don't need to hide

Nine days into my Myanmar sojourn and I am still amazed by how women are as omnipresent as the ubiquitous owl figurines seen in all homes pagodas and random street corners They run restaurants they sell curios they work as customer service representatives they form a prominent section of hotel staff they even work as stewardesses on night buses No one seems to think twice about whether it is safe or not to embark on a certain profession or even to get into a car loaded with men Womenrsquos safety in a newly democratic Myanmar seems to be taken for granted at least in the way it is manifested in everyday life And it feels extremely liberatingWomen at a local market in Yangon Myanmar PicRosalyn DrsquoMelloYet it seems almost impossible to imagine a scenario like this back home in India in any city Delhi Guwahati Chennai or Mumbai Can you conceive of a stewardess on a Paulo night bus from Mumbai to Goa handing you beverages making sure all is fine and interrupting your sleep every three hours to inform you that the bus is stopping for 10 minutes so you can use a restroom that is so impeccably clean it makes us Indians seem like a filthy grimy lot And when you do stop midway to grab a meal you find it is being cooked by a band of women From what Irsquove witnessed in Yangon and Bagan the men are around for sure But the women are too and you will see them doing all the things men do even loiter Irsquom too much of an outsider to determine the relative degree of emancipation felt by the women here but Irsquom enough of an observer to know it far outweighs anything Irsquove experienced back homeIn these nine days not once have I been stared at lasciviously not once have I been catcalled or lsquoeveteasedrsquo or been at the receiving end of an unwelcome touch I have been treated with nothing but respect and dignity It seems like a stark contrast even to Dhaka where I spent almost a month in February and where I could literally count on my fingers how many women there were on a crowded street compared to the seemingly infinite number of men I have come to realise that I love feeling invisible like this Itrsquos like Irsquove worn some magical cloak and suddenly no one can see me unless I want them to And what Irsquom dreading when I return to Delhi is that this cloak will be ripped off the second I exit the airport Irsquom already anticipating the reverse cultureshock I felt when Irsquod returned from my 10day trip to Japan two years ago and was absolutely horrified by how aggressive and impolite we Indians can beI suppose that centuries of patriarchy have bred in us as a society such deepseated misogyny that it will take the womenrsquos movements decades still to undo At the heart of it is this collective disbelief in the very concept of a woman as a fellow human being who has the right to dignity and freedom We imagine notions of development and economy with little thought to what it means for women When I returned from my trip to the Parvati Valley one of the first things I did online was add my signature to a petition conceived by Bangalorebased Vasudeva Sharma asking Nitin Gadkari Minister of Road Transport and Highways to build safe and clean highway toilets for women Although the 16hour ride from Buntur to New Delhi was in a fairly luxurious bus with reclining seats and decent leg space my bladder felt tortured because the random stops at night were in abandoned fields and even though I was carrying a packet of pee buddies a portable female urination device I didnrsquot want to risk becoming a statistic Sharma was himself appalled by how his female friends and relatives had to ldquohold it inrdquo during bus trips particularly because bus drivers either wouldnrsquot stop or when they did did so at really pathetic loos with questionable hygiene standards Our lack of consideration for the comfort of women is so pathetic we cannot be bothered to ensure a lessened risk of a urinary tract infection UTI ldquoWhat is the point of futuristic highways and smart cities if women canrsquot use these highwaysrdquo Sharma asks in his petition that has received about 98585 supporters but which still needs at least 51415 to reach its target of 150000 Please sign it right nowPersonally Irsquod like to start a petition to find out exactly whatrsquos happening with all the money thatrsquos being collected under the Swachh Bharat cess which ever since it was instituted makes me feel even more exploited as a taxpaying woman citizen Will Indian women ever see acche dinDeliberating on the life and times of Everywoman Rosalyn DrsquoMello is a reputed art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover She tweets RosaParx Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom