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My Mother’s Ramadan – The Exploitation of the Women’s Labour in Indian Festivals

April 15, 2024
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Moumita Alam:

Representational Image

Scene – 1

My mother is dozing in the chair. The cuckoo’s coo and the slow shuffling leaves in the wind of spring are suddenly interrupted by the loud lowing of the cow. The calm, placid noon breaks into reverberations by my mother’s favourite cow’s call. My father shouts at my mother for it broke my father’s afternoon nap. My mother runs outside. She pats the cow and gives it the straw. My father turns the side and tries to continue his afternoon sleep, Ammi goes back inside and checks the time. It’s 3 pm! She rushes to the kitchen. She has to prepare the iftar – fruits, ghugni, sherbet, sweets etc! Then she has to prepare dinner too. And then the Sehri (the late-night food before the sunrise) She turns on the stove and begins to cook. It’s a long process. The sweat on her cheek runs down and touches her dry cracked lips, she wipes the sweat beads with her aanchal. In between she turns off and on the gas stove to perform the namaz. My sexagenarian mother is gasping. But she has to run…run…faster! She has to finish by 5.45! Iftaar time is at 5.58! She is always terrified! She has to make everything perfect in this Ramadan month. One miss and she will be bowled out by my father’s perfect delivery of curt comments or shouting. He is fasting! So is my mother! But my mother is a woman and my father believes she must make everything perfect.

Scene – 2

My aunt, who is in a paid job, returns home from her office. This is the month of Ramadan. She returns one hour early. Setting the foot at home, she rushes to the kitchen to let the sugar melt in for sherbet. Today is her first day in society. Every family in the locality has to serve iftar for the whole area, today is her day. Her neighbour has given five dishes including a new one that she cooked following a YouTube channel, she has to give more otherwise it will be gossip. My uncle sitting on a sofa is ordering her to do this and that. She is like a whirlwind flying from one corner of the kitchen to another. After packing the iftar for the others and distributing them, she has to arrange everything neatly and cleanly on the dining table. Her husband wants everything in his hands. She is running with no time to breathe. She has to catch many trains- not to reach one station, but many – good wife, good neighbour, ideal Muslim woman. While my aunt has so many stations to reach, my uncle counts Tasbeeh- the holy beads. He has already reached many stations and our society doesn’t want to reach him elsewhere as he is a man, he is entitled. So he has one station to reach – Jannat. But doesn’t my aunt also need to reach heaven? Who will answer? Even asking the question can be blasphemous.

Exploitation of Women’s Labour is The Common Scene:

My mother and my aunt with thousands of women drudging in the kitchen are into the thankless jobs Indian women do every day. And the embedded patriarchy is so deep-rooted the women don’t even realize how they are being exploited. And Indian festivals are the main arenas of women’s labour exploitation. No wonder The Hindu reports that 92% of Indian women participate in unpaid domestic labour work while only 27%of  of men participate in household chores.

While Indian women spend 7.2 hours in unpaid domestic work, the men spend 2.8 hours. This ‘time poverty’ deprives Indian women of leisure, sleep, and work. They lag behind their male counterparts. The women who are in paid jobs are doubly exploited. They have to work in their workplaces as well as running the household. It seriously challenges the myth that a salaried woman is an empowered woman. They have to make odd compromises “to be allowed to continue their work.” Without providing a conducive environment like a crèche for children, implementation of Bishakha commission recommendations, and flexible working hours, paid jobs often come as double exploitation. It raises the serious question of whether things have changed at all for women.

In reality, nothing ​much ​has changed, rather “evolve​d​” is the right word here. In the capitalist, patriarchal economy women are now ​​”​allowed​​”​ to work. ​Being a part of the workforce and earning members of the formal economy doesn’t necessarily translate into their own financial independence and social agency. It’s not an urban myth but a reality in several homes that women don’t have any choice but to hand over their salaries to their fathers/husbands and they become passive buyers and investors, labouring away to a ​consumerist cannibalism​ masquerading as empowerment.

The National Library of Medicine of India publishes a report that states that in India 50% of women of reproductive age have iron deficiency anaemia while 23% of men of this age group have iron deficiency anaemia. The report further points out that,

“Due to a double burden of work outside the home and completing the majority of unpaid work in the home, women lack time to visit health centres to get tested for anaemia and to obtain iron supplements.

Women are expected to prioritize the health of their family over their own, thus affecting their access to health care.”

And Indian festivals, irrespective of caste and religion are the festivals of gluttony. The Indian women have to satisfy the “husband gods” ‘Father-gods’ or ‘brother gods’ apart from the other Gods or Allah to attain Swarga or Jannat.

So my mom and my mother have no escape while my Abba and my uncle yawn away on their beds with the holy beads in their hands. The whole long day fast with less sleep – my mother and aunt, like millions of women, are not even aware that they are victims of patriarchy and the exploitative nature of family where the men are still the boss.

When will things change? Only gods know? Do they? I have doubts as in Indian families as well as in the Government Men as the agents of patriarchy are Gods!

About the writer:

Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. Her poetry collection, The Musings of the Dark was published in 2020. The book has about a hundred poems written in protest against the humanitarian crisis from the abrogation of article 370, the Delhi riots, and the Shaheen Bagh movement to the unbearable sufferings of the migrant labourers due to the unplanned COVID-induced lockdown. Her second poetry collection, Poems At Daybreak has been published by Red River Publications. The Telugu translations of her poems have been published in a collection titled, Poems That Should Not Be Written. The Tamil translations of her poems have been published in a collection titled I Am A Muslim Woman And I Am Not For Sale. It’s a bilingual collection.

Some of her published works include:

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