‘There is a world of women who can’t write their own stories’: Kalpana Sharma
In her essay, Stomping on the Cookie Cutter, journalist and sports writer Sharda Ugra writes that the 2011 Census reported that the number of urban single women was 27 million. “Of those 27 million, even if we assume that only 10 per cent are single by wild, wilful choice, it’s still 2.7 million women, the populations of Lithuania, Jamaica and Qatar. We are certainly not alone,” she writes. Ugra is joined by 12 other women in an upcoming anthology, Single by Choice: Happily Unmarried Women! (Women Unlimited), which explores why some Indian women, mostly living in urban centres, consciously decided to live single lives. Excerpts from a conversation with Kalpana Sharma, who edited the anthology:
One of the things that some of the contributors to the anthology have addressed is how the concept of ‘growth’, whether it is career or personal, is limited to men; that they get to ‘find themselves’, but women should be anchored to the home, lest we get lost. Sharanya Gopinathan’s piece touches on this desire to stay single so that she can discover who she is as a person over the years.