Now, for the few of you who may insist that you know nothing about Eat Pray Love, here it is in a nutshell: a financially successful but not particularly famous author finds herself getting divorced, going into depression, and then taking a year to travel in order to reinvigorate her life. In Italy, she indulges – eating her way through the first third of the year. In India, she joins an ashram (the book is extremely spiritual, and this section is so heartrendingly painful that you wonder why anyone would call this book fluffy… until you get to the next). And finally, in Indonesia, tying up the circle in perfectly fairytale style, she finds love.

All of this is a true story, told in a fashion that is alternately charming, mildly annoying, and deeply honest.

So when the sequel came out, of course I had to read it. Snarkily, with some of usual disclaimers, but with some real excitement about its subject matter (which trumped any reservations brought on by my passive-aggressive crush on the earlier book). Committed: A Skeptic’s View of Marriage picks up where Eat Pray Love left off – i.e. the author and her Brazilian-born, Bali-discovered lover float off into their happily ever after. Until the US government interfered.

As a foreigner whose trips into the country were not only frequent, but whose exits themselves were only border runs for visa renewals, Gilbert’s partner Felipe finds himself in trouble with Immigration. Fortunately, they are given a choice: if they get married, they can continue their lifestyle (sans border running, too!). Desperately, they agree — but both having survived divorce, the idea of remarriage is significantly terrifying. But the process is so complex that the couple essentially has to spend almost a year outside the country, waiting for the fiancee visa to come through, and Gilbert spends this time confronting her traumas and issues about the institution of marriage, its history in American society (paradigms which are increasingly emulated around the world), its relevance to contemporary life, and how it compares and has evolved (or not) based on cultural and religious circumstances — ruminations and research that eventually became Committed.

Committed is a feminist memoir, make no mistake about it. It is an empowering, thought-provoking read that I would recommend to anyone who 1. wants to marry, 2. doesn’t want to marry, 3. is concerned about civil rights and international affairs (in all senses of the term!). It’s important that the events it describes happened prior to Eat Pray Love’s insane success. Not unlike the happy coincidence of having met her new love at the end of her first book’s journey, a happy coincidence which resulted in an almost too-perfect book, everything that happens therein was spontaneous. Gilbert leaves little doubt that nowhere during her ten months of bad traffic and matrimonial panic wandering around Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia could it have occurred to her that she might exploit this bout of hard luck. She went through the experience with no guarantee of a platform to discuss, let alone capitalise on, it. Because of this, it is all the more relevant. This isn’t a celebrity memoir, but an ordinary couple’s absolutely commonplace struggle in a world that loves and enforces its borders even as it claims to have none.

Now, this sort of gets back to the problem with Eat Pray Love. Which was not, strictly speaking, a real problem with Eat Pray Love itself, but with exactly how the memoir got co-opted into the chick-lit category. Not chick-lit as in light and fun, but chick-lit as in delusional-inducing, Prince-awaiting, hearts-a-breaking. And that problem was that many – many, many, many – of us are where Gilbert was at the start of that book. Lying on the bathroom floor bawling. And in the course of a few hundred pages, in about a year, she was both literally and figuratively somewhere else altogether. And the book was so engaging that it made it look easy.

The problem, essentially, was the expectation created. I encountered this personally in my own life, and practically every woman friend who has read it has admitted to the same rues. Some of them had become especially resentful toward Gilbert. This was not a phenomenon restricted to my circles — a real backlash against Eat Pray Love and its author occurred among its disenchanted readership. Its most common contentions, as discussed on comment forums all over the Internet, were that Gilbert was selfish, and as a white American with some wealth, she was operating from a place of privilege and entitlement. “Not all of us can give up our lives and jetset for a year” was a common refrain — as though if only we could, we would also land ourselves true love and astronomical book sales (a phrase Gilbert’s own sister, married with children and obligations of her own, sarcastically echoes in one email exchange in the book).

But here’s the thing. I don’t think – especially having noticed Committed’s incredible redemptive powers – that Gilbert meant for her memoir to have anything to do with typically misguiding light literature aimed at women. How Eat Pray Love has been marketed – even by readers who recommend it – has not done it justice.

On its own steam, Committed is an important book, completely relevant to our world today and the choices we are faced with as thinking women who sometimes have no alternative but to acquiesce to a fundamentally patriarchal institution (even if we believe we want it, with eyes open or closed). But it’s also a most marvellous redemption for Eat Pray Love’s unintended consequences (and there were some). As she points out almost guilelessly in the introduction, prior to Eat Pray Love, Gilbert was mostly known for writing about men. Her three prior books – Stern Men, Pilgrims and The Last American Man – were explorations of masculine life — fiction and nonfiction about “supermacho characters: cowboys, lobster fishermen hunters, trucksters, Teamsters, woodmen”. As a journalist, Gilbert had even gone as far as dressing in drag for a week, complete with a birdseed filled condom stuffed in her pants.

She doesn’t mention this in this book, but it occurred to me that even before Eat Pray Love, it is ironic that the most lucrative of her projects was probably when a magazine article she wrote about her bartending experiences became the basis for the decidedly fluffy rom-com flick Coyote Ugly. Sadly, between that and Eat Pray Love, her broader scope of work was overshadowed. Call it Gilbert’s chick-lit curse. And Committed, quite decisively, breaks it.

The truth is, I am still bawling on my floor. And I do wish I hadn’t ever heard the word-of-mouth that hyped Eat Pray Love as some sort of semi-prophetic text, because it did result in a few regrettable actions for me at the time (oh hey, a few good anecdotes too). But Committed’s redemptive powers are such that not only does it completely absolve Gilbert of any hand played in the prolonged miseries of some of her readers, but it also elevates her, in a way that Eat Pray Love couldn’t possibly, to the role already assigned to her by the same masses of sad readers: that of the high priestess, the knowing one, a Solomon-like figure who could provide a solution.

Marriage, whether we like it or not, is a necessary decision for many of us. Whether the larger bodies we aim to please are governments, families, societies or own guilt-tripping demons, it can be an inevitability. Committed does two things, and does them beautifully — it strips the institution of its veneer of romance. And then it reinstates it, at a far more meaningful level.

Committed will probably help many more women’s hearts and choices than Eat Pray Love did because there is absolutely nothing here but gritty realism — the facts of the world and its requirements, and how a relationship must necessarily be an accord of solidarity in negotiating these facts and requirements. It will also, hopefully, further the cause of same-sex marriage. As Gilbert most unselfishly points out in the book, she and Felipe are fortunate to even have this choice. Across the world, most lovers of the same gender do not. And when it comes to the paperwork — immigration, insurance, death and taxes – they suffer in ways that heterosexuals can take for granted that they won’t have to.

And Eat Pray Love, that old bugaboo? Let’s just say I am really looking forward to the film. Aren’t you?

To my understanding, there are two points to be considered here, and personally I applaud both:

1. Live-in relationships of over a certain “reasonable duration” (yet to be determined), are treated as common law marriages.

2. Female parties not legally bound within a marriage (a non-primary partner of a polygamous husband) also get the legal status of wives.

Of course, there are a huge number of grey areas in relation to both categories. First and most obvious of all, an effective legalisation of polygamy will be a veritable minefield in itself. It is arguable, for instance, that in protecting the rights of the “other woman” in a marriage, the rights of the official/first wife are curtailed.  How exactly will a couple prove that they have lived together long enough to meet the law’s criteria?  And lastly, why aren’t these provisions also extended to male non-primary partners, and what if they were? Monogamy may not be better — but it is certainly legally simpler.

What do you think of this move — should we hold on to straightforward matrimonial monogamy, or expand the definition of marriage? If, like me, you are in cautious theoretical support, what kinds of solutions might be viable in tackling the grey areas that this legal amendment will encounter?

Recently, many American feminists celebrated the 35th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, the landmark case that led to the overturning of all laws in the United States that restricted or banned abortion. The new decision came into effect on January 22nd 1973, continues to be a heatedly-argued statute, and has come under threat since. (Do look up Cecilia Fire Thunder for a great example of feminist courage under fire in this issue).

Here in India, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act was enacted in 1971, came into force the following year, and was revised in 1975. Because the law also provides for abortion in the event of contraceptive failure, all pregnancies –- not just those that endanger the health of mother or foetus, or resulting from rape –- can be terminated legally. Technically, any woman above the age of 18 can have an abortion with nobody’s consent but her own and her doctor’s.

When I came across this fact, I was thrilled by how sex-positive and decidedly unpatriarchal it is, and how lucky we are that it is so — but only for a moment. Like several of our laws designed to directly impact the lives of women in ostensibly positive ways, what is real on paper is not nearly as effective in practice. As with laws forbidding dowry or prenatal sex testing, or encouraging panchayat inclusion or girls’ education, such democratic protection when it comes to reproductive rights is not something that translates to the reality of the majority of Indian women’s lives.

Abortion in India has clearly moved beyond the pro-choice/pro-life divide that debates elsewhere continue to pivot on. Legally speaking, India is pro-choice. The overpopulation issue demands it as a practical necessity. But this in itself means that women’s bodies are commoditized as reproductive vessels. From this perspective, women are not seen in their own light as sexual human beings. The reason why abortion is legal in India seems to have very little to do with such a basic, personal right, and everything to do with resources and development.

Like it or not, biology determines that the female bears the brunt of sexual consequence, disease aside — something which many cultures and societies have taken to mean that all female sexuality is consequential, usually for the worse. Unwanted pregnancy is rarely regarded as anything other than a shameful event, a slip of judgment, a symptom of the malaises of society, or at worst, just desserts. That an unwanted pregnancy can be thought of simply as a biological occurrence that thanks to medical technology can safely and quickly be dealt with is unimaginable along these terms. This is not to say that abortion has no emotional bearing, but only that as a visceral and possibly sentimental issue, any woman who has to deal with it goes through enough without the interference of moral guardians.

And moral guardians are one thing we seem to have no dearth of. Ask yourself: when was the last time you heard about an abortion in an Indian context? To be fair, disinclude any distinctly feminist dialogues you had or such literature you read, as well as questions asked in general medical-related situations. Think of a social instance. Can you recall the last time you heard the term not brought up in a hushed whisper, or with a disapproving tone or cluck of the tongue?

Maybe you can. But I can’t.

A 2001 article in The Hindu stated that the reported abortion rate in India is six lakhs per annum. We can assume a significant margin of unreported abortions, because statistics about women rarely paint the whole picture. Imagine that many women under risk had it not been legal and a percentage who surely were forced to have it in unsafe conditions regardless, or had it induced within the home. Despite this, we don’t discuss the issue in any way that really helps.

Ultimately, appropriate legislation is simply not enough to ensure that women are aware of and have access to their reproductive rights. Reproductive rights are not limited to abortion — birth control, childlessness as a choice and sexual health and pleasure are also areas in which a great deal of agency is required before results that reflect either laws or women-centric ideals (which should then be used as the basis for better laws) are achieved. Take for instance the somewhat related issue of rape: can anyone who really understands female sexuality and the power dynamics of rape and assault restrict its definition to penile penetration only? What we need is agency that radicalizes at aintimate, grassroots levels. Agency that occurs via personal interaction, exposure to feminist-sensitive media and exposure to on-the-ground activist work. Agency that doesn’t marginalize sexuality as an aside to reproduction, but regards it at its core.

We’ll know that the law is worth its salt when women can get abortions without being branded sluts, without their entire societal circle finding out, without any consequences but those all surgical procedures come with. And that day seems a long way off yet. Until then, we’ll have to take as our biggest stepping stone the fact that the law, if little else, is on the women’s side.

And finally, for the sake of discourse, I wonder about the question that will be asked when — or if — feminism impacts us enough for us to think of India as a post-feminist nation. If each woman’s reproductive choices should be honoured as her own — can we also honour the choice of a woman who practises sex-selective abortion, not under pressure or threat, but out of her personal desire to not have a daughter? I’m still thinking my answer over.

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Criminal justice law should be re-configured to put the victim’s experience and the victim’s need for protection at the centre of the law, transforming social ideas about blame of victims for the assaults they suffer. – An Amnesty International publication titled ‘Making Rights a Reality: The Duty of States to Address Violence Against Women’.

Women’s groups realized a long time ago that domestic violence is more than crime; it is a serious human rights violation. That the law’s fundamental understanding of violence against women needed to change — from something centred on dowry to a more comprehensive mental, psychological, sexual and economic violation. That a civil remedy was needed more than a criminal remedy.Civil remedies were available in personal laws, laws determined by religion or general civil law but these were very limited. Domestic violence in marriage was treated as a ‘private matter’ between two individuals and mediation was the most commonly adopted approach. Mediation usually usually aimed to cool conflicts, reach agreements and maintain the ‘institution’ of marriage. It insisted on maintaining family relationships inspite of violence and sometimes recommended drastic compromises to ‘save’ a marriage. Plus there was the notion that domestic violence happened because of ‘provocation’. Women had to battle with protracted criminal legal processes – and remain at the mercy of the abuser until the case was resolved. They were often pressurised by parents, relatives or the abuser to turn hostile in court and withdraw the case . (Then it was alleged that women were filing false cases. Statistics showed low conviction in cases of domestic violence and fueled the belief that the law was being misused.)

Why did so many women succumb to pressure and withdraw their case? Because they had no choice and little hope of relief. Resources were few, trials were prolonged and delayed, lawyers were expensive or incompetent, judges were insensitive and often failed to believe that domestic violence could include mental cruelty. At the end of it, they could look forward to a paltry sum towards alimony or a promise of divorce or unconditional custody of children or an ‘honorable’ exit from the messy and corrupt legal system. Nothing that would comprehensively address the mental, physical, economic and social damage undergone.

In this scenario, the new domestic violence law has come as a boon for women. The Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act (2005) is a gender-specific civil law that addresses the issue of domestic violence more comprehensively than ever before and provides for the woman’s immediate needs of protection from violence and violation of human rights.

Domestic violence is a complex phenomenon and involves multiple aspects. Situations range from women being thrown out of the house to getting no support from the natal family to having to leave their children behind to having no means of sustenance. The new law addresses these aspects by providing women with remedies such as monetary help, residence orders, protection from violence or compensation.

The act is one of the biggest achievements of the Indian women’s movement. After struggling for almost two and a half decades, the women’s movement succeeded in compelling the State to accept its responsibility to end violence — and not just by punishing the abuser. It is a step towards helping women out of from the dark and silent world of violence towards an environment of zero tolerance.

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