Internet mommies up in arms against Sonam Kapoor breastfeeding — but is that real fight, sistahs?

I have always found the debate for and against breastfeeding a newborn in public a whopping farce and an extension of our narrow class boundaries. To contextualise this — the recent online trolling of B-town star Sonam Kapoor Ahuja who stormed Instagram early this week with a vlog of herself and her son at her breast, as her makeup army and stylists and hairdressers flanked around, helping her get ready for her mother Sunita Kapoor’s much talked about Karwa Chauth bash.

The annual, happy hunting ground for Bollywood wives (read the usual suspects, Raveena Tandon, Bhawna Pandey, Neelam Kothari, Shilpa Shetty and Maheep Kapoor, among others) who enjoy a field day, posing and preening for paparazzi, after slobbering social media with ghee drenched messages, declaring how their husbands also fasted with them on most occasions, staring love sick into the moon, and, renewing their vows.

Karwa Chauth is the favourite kink of tinsel town, a patriarchal custom where the wife fasts for her husband’s long life and prosperity and breaks the same, staring into a pregnant, full moon, regressive to the hilt, milked dry by directors like Karan Johar for largely homesick and hollow NRI audiences who equate culture with conformity.

But, now back to Sonam, often viewed as one of the most woke Bollywood celebs. Sonam reads voraciously, after all. She even added a smart disclaimer to her Karwa Chauth photo shoot, probably sensing some sort of backlash, adding also a saving grace, brownie point to her beau, who supposedly espouses only ‘intermittent fasting’.

High five, Anand.

Woke and fit and feminist?

‘My husband isn’t a fan of Karwa Chauth. So, I have never kept it.’

Pativrata.

That’s the point.

Sonam’s point.

‘But, both of us are big believers that festivals and traditions are a great reason for family and friends to come together. I love that my mom loves celebrating it and I love being a part of it and dressing up.’

Sanskaari.

The whole point.

A lot on the lines of Twinkle Khanna who has actual bestsellers under her belt. Currently pursuing a course in Oxford on creative writing and guess what, her supportive husband accompanied her to see her off. And she had no cheesy Karwa Chauth posts, either.

Cuter, huh?

So, Net mommies, mostly middle class, exhausted, working women, who do the double shift, earn, pay EMIs, and clean baby bottoms and pamper grown male egos, are up in arms against Kapoor, claiming that an ultra-rich, ‘papa’s little princess’, spoilt, superstar with a glam squad on her tail and a hungry child at her breast, hardly qualifies for a fetching statement about any sort of women’s empowerment.

Their shrill voices also being joined in by, sadly, and, still the most invisible of them all — hard-working and hardly anyone cares about the emotional labour of women, anyway, the gharelu, ghar ki lakshmi’s (except, in matrimonial and jewellery ads), squarely pointing out that Sonam has to do no housework. Unlike them. Even on Karwa Chauth, there is a hell of a lot of cooking and cleaning and dolling up and observing customs, to be performed, just like Mataji or Mummji demands — albeit culminating in establishing rigid gender prototypes.

Man — protector/saviour/Mai Baap.

Woman — damsel in distress, ever sacrificing, eats last, fasts for family, cis het suhagaan.

Problematic and deeply divisive days like Karwa Chauth, that exclude, 74.1 million single women in India, alone, and amplified by popular culture, have undoubtedly catapulted into a Frankenstein for modern day feminism. But my point is not my personal ire against any such worshipping of men — placing them on a venerated pedestal and a gross gender inequality in celebration and veneration, whether as brothers on Raksha Bandhan, Bhai Dooj/Bhai Phota, son-in-law’s on Jamai Shoshti or husbands on Karwa Chauth.

Or even festivals like the Vat Savitri Vrat, again mainly observed by married women on similar lines to Karwa Chauth. Dedicated to Devi Savitri and the sacred Banyan tree (Vat Vriksh) and a fad amongst women from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana who keep a day-long fast, it is believed that worshipping Lord Vishnu and the Banyan tree fulfils a woman’s prayers for a happy married life. After praying, women also tie yarn around the logs of a Banyan tree.

Down South, the Karadaiyan Nombu observed on the last day of Maasi Masam, the day marks the transition between two Tamil months, Panguni and Massi. Married women observe the fast for the well-being and long life of their husbands by worshipping Goddess Mahalakshmi and Goddess Parvati. Even unmarried girls keep the vrat to get an ideal life partner in future.

Maha Shiv Ratri, ladies?

But the more apparent and the point that we seem to be missing.

Look into your own daily life in India.

Every day, at traffic signals. Every day, in a stinking slum just opposite a plush mall or swish multiplex or swanky high rise. Every day, in your home, perhaps. A woman who is not as privileged to leave her child at home or daycare or with her parents/siblings/in-laws/friends and come and work to earn a living. A woman from an economically underprivileged section of society. A woman possibly abandoned by her spouse or has birthed a baby out of wedlock and presently lives under a flyover or begs for a living — bares her shrunken breast and tries soothing a bawling newborn. We look the other way, sans a care in the world — even as she knocks fervently on your frosted car window or as you hurl instructions on what subzi is to be made for sahab and how you want his lunch dabba packed.

Do we care for this holier than thou Mother (Mother India) syndrome? Do we stop, even once?

It’s a bit like this paid, one day off at work for mahiney ki unn dino mein. Amongst corporates whose diversity and inclusion agendas, now include, motherhood — but there again, there is a deep-seated and culturally conditioned, class based bias.

Do you extend the same to the lady who cleans your office loo?

Or, the woman security guard, standing in the scorching sun, outside the gleaming glass façade?

Do workplace creches make space for the kids of such working professionals?

Is bathroom cleaning or checking handbags at the entrance and making entries into a hardbound, attendance register — sometimes, broadly categorised as housekeeping/security, today, even viewed as a real job?

Have you ever wondered if the woman who stands sullenly, has a child? If she too longs to bring her little one to work? Breastfeed them in the open?

What about female laborers at construction sites? Ever considered their motherhood on the same lines as yours? Ever wondered if such a mother fasts on any one single religious festival?

If she can…

Sreemoyee Piu Kundu is the bestselling author of ‘Sita’s Curse’, India’s first feminist erotica, and ‘Status Single’ and the founder of India’s first and only community for urban single women. She is also a leading columnist on sexuality and gender. Views expressed are personal.

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