writing_womans_lives_symposium_paper_book_v2

Even identical genital acts mean very different things to different people.
To some people, the nimbus to "the sexual" seems scarcely to extend beyond the
boundaries of discrete genital acts; to others it enfolds them loosely or floats virtually free
of them. 3
And so on.
I have often argued that similarly dichotomies such as Indian vs foreigner, western vs oriental
seem inadequate and even absurd in many contexts on a planet of a rising middle‐class in the
developing world, of globalism, globalisation and global souls.
It seems there will be far more revealed about who we are if we say, for example:
Even identical nationality means very different things to different people.
To some people the nimbus of 'nationality', 'ethnicity', 'race' (and so on) seems
scarcely to extend beyond the boundaries of discrete bureaucratic acts, to others it
enfolds them…
Why do we employ such dichotomies, anyway? Should we do away with them, or try to create
ones that are more meaningful that the standard are you a national or a foreigner? Are you black or
white? Are you ethnic or Anglo? I’m sure in the context of this symposium we can find among
participants examples of identity descriptors that also refuse these and similar binaries.
Are there different dichotomies we might use, ones that might be more useful or matter more in
present day reality? For instance, provincial versus cosmopolitan, parochial versus global, englishspeaking
versus non english‐speaking?
Women and identity categories: Neem Dreams
One of the things I became increasingly sure of as I wrote Neem Dreams was that the condition of
being a woman transcended identity categories such as nationality and ethnic culture. I knew early
on that the novel would feature an Indian character and that she was female, Hindu, Englishspeaking
and what might be called “westernized.”
Meenakshi, the main Indian character in Neem Dreams, is based on many women I met in India
and the USA; some I spoke with briefly, some I spent more time with, visited at work and at home,
met for meals, observed interacting with others.
She is also based on women I met through literature: through reading novels and memoirs in
particular. In one of them, Prison and Chocolate Cake, Nyantara Sahgal, whose beloved uncle was
Jawaharlal Nehru (India's first Prime Minister), says
The Chinese, European, English and American visitors who came to Anand Bhawan [the
family home] did not seem in the least foreign or different from ourselves in any way that
mattered, joined as they were to us by a common view and vision of the world. 4
What was this 'common view and vision’? In instances such as these, the entrée into the
household was a sign of class affiliation.
Middle class culture and cosmopolitanism
And that’s another category that is often set aside when considering how one woman can write of
another woman whose seems so much Other in the more obvious ways.
My travels over many years, decades in fact, have led me to consider over and over the ways in
which there is such a thing as middle class culture that either overlaps or is distinct from several
other categories of cultural identity such as nationality and ethnicity.
And it is that middle class culture that enabled my sense of familiarity with some of the dynamics
of the family of my fictional character Meenakshi. I can claim a closer identification with Meenakshi
than with, say, a woman who might be Australian like me but whose background and life experience
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