April 1, 2010
On the road in Mumbai with a Muslim female taxi driver
For her project The Taxi Takes on Terror, freelance documentary filmmaker Vandana Sood reported from India’s largest city last year through conversations with the cab drivers.
In the course of her interviews, she meets a young female cabbie in Mumbai whose identity reveals a surprisingly complex convergence of faith, fashion and femininity.
5 comments
[…] For her project The Taxi Takes on Terror, freelance documentary filmmaker Vandana Sood interviews a female Muslim taxi driver in Mumbai. […]
Change are slow but inevitable. As time passes either we adapt or get left behind. I never like to see women wearing that covering is hides their true beauty. And when you can see really see things. I think that women soon would realize that the world is moving on. These small clips about independent women makes me feel proud.
I am fully aware of oppressive, patriarchal history and culture that led to various head coverings and “hiding away” of women. And before I came into contact with so many women who wear head covering, I probably would have said precisely the same thing as “Secretary” above.
But, while I still believe such coverings are oppressive, I also see that the actual lives and narratives of the women I know who wear them completely contradict the idea that this oppression has been fully successful.
I know proud, stubborn, fully empowered women who– for their own reasons — do not feel it to be a contradiction to wear a head covering. Or, if they do see the contradiction, many of them seem so comfortable and confident in their independent identity, that they simply live with the contradiction.
This does not mean that I am comfortable, either with the contradictions or with the head coverings themselves. I know the history that they represent.
But if and when various cultures evolve past the need to hide and imprison women and cover their faces, it will not simply be the removal of those head coverings that will lead to full liberation as human beings.
I’m afraid that internal struggle is not so easily and directly related to external garb.
One day she will learn that wearing a burka is similar to being branded with a large M on her forehead. It took a long time for American slaves in the 1860s after Americas civil war to lose that feeling of being a slave. So will this lady to get rid of the past and step into the world where she can be free. She is very brave to put her face on the world stage since she is going against her fellow Muslims belifs.
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04/02/2010 :: 11:02:10 PM
Azizah Says:
Lovely, I love this, women getting employed, owning business and taking economic independence. Cheers to the future!