Women's Day in a life of a Millennial

Pic Source: PWC-18

20's are a great time to spread those legs out on your sofa and munch a packet of Cheetos while thinking of what to wear to that party that awaits you on Friday night, and if you are edging out over the last few years of your 20s and find yourself living and working in a country like India, bless you because you won't run out of issues you "feel for" any time soon. I don't mean it in a bad way, but this is the best time to be a millennial in India. Every day comes wrapped with newer issues to fight for, and guess what, you have an audience for all your thought streams. Now writing a personal blog is fun for me, because this is only time I don't search the web for parallel narratives and sub-texts. No Huffington Post or Newyorker quotations will bore you. 

As I make my way through the crowded metro in New Delhi, I can't help but notice the growing number of women now working in my city, and women of all types, the saree connoisseurs, the fresh out of college girls, some with their headphones carefully plugged in to miss the chatter.

Pic Source- Quora

Back in 2007 things were different, we didn't have ladies compartment because there were lesser women working in the city, today we have pink autorickshaws and WiFi enabled cabs because of the growing working women population. In the wake of this not so subtle movement what does a 28-year-old woman think of Women's day and its relevance?

To begin with, I have conflicting thoughts about this "day" which I am sure most of my girlfriends also have primarily because I find the concept of celebrating a gender a little too amateur, I cannot undermine the dialogue that it's creating for sure, I am aware that these dialogues would mean a great deal to the women living in a small town in Udaipur who are now slowly foraying into the outside world in pursuit of sustainable livelihood opportunities . I have had the luck of knowing some of their stories and trust me you, women's day is for them first before you claim it for yourself. Fast forward 2018, now I am an urban woman of color from India living in a country that is not mine and far more progressive than the country of my birth, I can't stop feeling the daunting impression of patriarchy around my neighborhood. Sure the women here wear skirts for veils or traditional attire and have boisterous laughs but the men still drive the cars, so now I am back to my personal conflict zone that is my brain while i try to process all that information in my head.

If you ask me what women's day truly means to me i would tell you it should be a day where women must finally support women, not because she is your friend or you like her better than that other girl who couldn't find to meet you because she was running errands all day and you never bothered to open your heart to her issues, or because she is your mother. You must support other women because she is you. she braves that metro line because she chooses to not look at herself with empathy and it truly is about time that "women's day" becomes about women and not just the society's field day of posting lovely captions and content. 

Pic Source- Pinterest

I will confess, I have judged freely most of my 20s on how other women dressed and talked, and sometimes I still do , as guilty as I feel but when I step back and see the same women living a dignified(interpretations are free) life on her own terms my heart bleeds for I know I have sinned. This year I have decided to do away with flashy, sometimes untrue captions and write a blog instead because just four lines cannot do justice to what I truly think about this day. I feel a great deal about this day and so should you. So now that I am done writing, I wish you a great day ahead ladies and don't forget to catch up with each other this evening because at the end of the day all we truly have is each other.

The writer is Ronisha Bhattacharyya

Communications Expert