My mother has never offered me a whole lot of information about her relationship with my father. He was an international graduate student in chemistry at Michigan State University. She was an undergraduate student in urban planning. 

It was the 70s. He had striking features, long black hair and dark skin. She said she’d never seen anyone who looked like him before. She was beautiful and fit from lots of modern dance and had a magnificent afro. 

She said they fell in love, though he was awkward about their cultural differences and cautioned her about the disapproval of his family and community. Apparently, his parents made a threat of suicide, if he married out of caste or with an American woman. 

Much of what my mother did share with me about what she learned about my father’s homeland of India was how cruel the society was to women. She told me about sati or the ritual immolation of women upon the death of their husband. And there was purdah, the practice of putting women in isolation. 

Women were forced to sleep in the fields away from families because they were considered unclean when menstruating. There was widespread sexual molestation of girls and the horror of child brides. All of it drove the message home that though I was unlucky to be fatherless, I was lucky to be born American.

When it became more apparent that my first visit to India would be mostly alone, she was very concerned, as were many people. I heard all the cautionary advice about safety and how vulnerable I would be. I was constantly reminded that I was entering an explicitly patriarchal society and needed to be on guard.

But I was also told that I would have some relief because I was concentrating my trip in the South, where the education standards are higher and more egalitarian. The state where I am now, Kerala boasts being the first to have achieved 100% literacy. Education is free and compulsory and the Keralan people, who speak a language called Malayalam, are extraordinarily proud of this. 

Granted I have no comparison to the North and I am traveling with a group of white people (which has its own layers of strangeness) but I’ve felt pretty fine being a woman here. Young girls seem to be mostly going to school, and I’ve seen lots of women’s cooperatives earning money for their families with things like crafts and spices. I’ve also learned that, although it’s been largely dismantled (because dudes), there was a matrilineal (passed down through the mother) tradition in Kerala for the inheritance of property called marumakkathayam. 

My lesson has been, as with most things in India, patriarchy and oppressively overt male dominance are not necessarily universal and there are no absolutes.