Who Controls What Counts as Leisure?

How often do you come across images of women genuinely enjoying themselves? What kind of picture do you imagine when you put together these words “women having fun”? Do you imagine young women in a bar? What kind of attire do you imagine women wearing in such scenarios? Do you imagine middle-aged women sitting on the floor singing songs to each other when you think of fun? Working-class women playing badminton in a public park? When was the last time you saw a sequence of such scenes in a film?

I recently came across this project called “Basanti: Women at Leisure” by Surabhi Yadav on Instagram. This project documents different women choosing to take rest in various ways in different settings (in terms of physical settings, and also class, profession, caste, region, age, etc.) in India. Although these images feel so familiar because I have been surrounded by such activities for twenty years of my life. It took me only a minute to realize how I have very rarely seen such images in any films or TV shows. To begin with, it is so rare to see women having the time to take rest during the day, but then it is definitely even rarer to see anyone talking about women taking rest. Or, just women having fun in some form. Are women just so exhausted that ‘rest’ and ‘fun’ have become synonymous now?

Terms like “fun”, “leisure”, “break”, “rest”, “enjoy”, and “self-care” usually come to be defined and conceptualized in a very monolithic way - very focused on and surrounded by upper-class, western norms and lives. I have come across many ‘shiny' and 'cute' Instagram posts about self-care. But never have I ever seen one about something that would actually be helpful for a woman from a lower middle class. Well, she definitely cannot afford to indulge in bubble baths!

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What hobbies does my mother have? What have I seen her doing most of the time? Cooking? I have only seen her cooking most of the time. Taking care of my father? Going to get the car repaired because my father cannot? Well, that’s not a hobby. I don’t know. 

What color does she like? I know she definitely doesn’t like white because white clothes get dirty easily and are really hard to wash, she says. 

When was the last time did I see her go on a vacation because she could afford to? Never. 

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“Mom, what’s your hobby?”, I ask,

“Hobby? Why?”, she replies. 

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