In the newspapers I read of voters crushed by 80-foot effigies of female election candidates, and of poor village widows, now obsolete, forced onto the funeral pyres of their husbands. At the cinema I saw Hindi film actresses cavorting unchaperoned on idyllic green hillsides, thrusting their pelvises at mooneyed, Levi-jeaned Romeos, all to the obvious delight of the entranced, mostly male audience, then after the film watched demure wives and sisters being loaded silently onto the backs of motor scooters to be returned to their household chores. In the temple, men queued to give offerings of sweets, fruits and cash to the powerful Hindu goddesses, while bony, abandoned women with potbellied, huge-eyed babies on their hips clung to the clothes and elbows of those departing, mouthing the familiar litany of hunger. My reading on the subject of women's lives, challenges and achievements provided many references to a publication called Manushi, but my enquiries at news-stands and bookshops in various cities yielded responses ranging from disinterest to outright hostility. It turned out that I was right but only about the content.
Illustrations are smart and relevant, book and film reviews incisive and topical.
After tracking down a few copies of Manushi in a dusty, Marxist-orientated bookstore in downtown Delhi, I worked up the courage to call on Madhu Kishwar, who publishes and edits the journal on behalf of Manushi Trust. I found her office, exactly as detailed on a map inside the back cover of each issue of Manushi, up a flight of stairs from a narrow alley packed with scooters, stray dogs and debris a typical New Delhi residential street. Madhu Kishwar was small, neat, businesslike and running late, so after the very brief but essential pleasantries she took the list of questions I had prepared and took two minutes to eliminate the bulk of them by referring me to various relevant back issues of the journal, which, with no reference to an index, she plucked from the 84 numbered pigeonholes lining the wall behind us. Madhu Kishwar has had another busy day attending meetings but is not so frantic and, arranging for a staff member to prepare some chai , seems genuinely pleased to be talking to me. When I ask her to speak a little about herself, I get practically nowhere, except to learn that she earns her living by teaching in a college of Delhi University, and that producing Manushi is a labour of love.