Anity Roy : She intended an everyday portrait of Indian women, she did not take a feminist stance, but instead tried to make pictures of as many women as possible in as many interesting situations. She found achetypes of mythology and art history amongst women  going about their lives, resulting in a four-year project at the end of which she was totally mentally energised but physically burnt out. She says, I'm being flippant. But it's a tough assignment, trying to get a fix on this most elusive of creatures. The term 'modern Indian woman' conjures up images of women who are primarily urban, English-speaking, professional, well-groomed, photogenic, under 40. For many, the 'modern Indian woman' is any dusky dame who slips into a pair of jeans as easily as she dons a sari or salwar kameez. The nearest they've come to oppression is being fashion-victims, whose primary concern in life is whether their Tommy Hilfiger bum-bag coordinates with their YSL outfit. To attempt an analysis of these women's trials and tribulations is misguided at best, and at worst, an insult to the millions of women who face real gender discrimination on a daily basis. We're somewhere in the middle-ground with our supercilious jet-setters at one end of the scale and the agricultural labourer at the other. The difficulty is therefore not so much how modern Indian women function in traditional Indian society, or vice versa, but how to sustain the dialectic between the two in our daily lives.

 

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