Single Girl Thy Name Is Silk Smitha!
A few weeks after moving into an apartment in Mumbai, Veena Gowda found herself summoned to a meeting of the building committee to answer for her “indecent behavior.” It turned out that her neighbors had been scandalized by the fact that the twentysomething woman was living not with a husband, but with a roommate. Not only that, she would often come home later - sometimes close to midnight! - and was known to have attended the occasional jazz concert. “Someone or other’s always watching,” says Gowda, now 35, a women’s rights lawyer, and still single. “The neighbors don’t really give a damn about a woman in an abusive marriage where the husband beats her up. But the minute you’re single you attract attention.”
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on Thursday, July 19th, 2007, 4:57 pm in Brown › 
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uhhhhhhh….gghhhhhh….silk smitha….i can only think about thunder thighs….wuh, wuh.
http://indulekha.com/moviegallery/2006/07/silk-smitha.html
Oh really? I’m from Chennai, and I don’t live there for pretty much exactly the reasons the article mentions. It’s a city in which occupants of women’s hostels have to sign a guestbook each time they leave or return (9pm curfews, mind you. I tried this as recently as 2004.). Live-in relationships? Probably a tiny, tiny minority, certainly not significant enough to make a statement like the one above. Where did this writer get her facts? It’s a really good article otherwise, and I liked how cleverly the American TV-aping was brought up, in a way that acknowledged the phenomenon and hinted at its absurdity without seeming to pass judgement.
My brown American friend got kicked out of her Bombay apartment (supplied by her workplace) for a similar reason — the night guards didn’t like waking up to have to let her in when she came home from hanging out with friends at night, and they didn’t like her having male friends over, so they told her boss. She was later able to live with a brown British male friend by claiming they were cousins, and by the time she actually did get into a relationship with a local, they just both moved into a friend’s empty flat and avoided the whole deal.
I woke the watchmen up all the time coming home late from hanging out in Bandra. But I did get the sense that the fact that I’m Punjabi and the building is largely Punjabi helped get the lease.
I had the same thought as Sharanya - Chennai is not conducive to live-in relationships, and I wonder as to why the writer (inaccurately) singled out this city as an example. Madras is still very traditional in its ways - I would have thought Bombay would be the better example. Yet, even in Bombay, the smaller buildings bring on a lot of scrutiny - one of my (male) friends lent me the keys to his flat while he was out of town, so I stayed there with another one of my (female) friends for a few days. Within a day, everybody in the building - and the block - knew about those ‘foreign-looking girls’ staying in the flat. The bai was relentless in her questions, all leading up to the most important : when baba (my friend) comes back, where will you go?
By the way, Sepia Mutiny had a rather colourful discussion on this very topic recently.
if you’ve got more than the average amount of money to spend on a place in a large apartment complex where people don’t know each other, and are generally from different parts of india, and your landlord bought the place as an investment and lives elsewhere, a girl can have a different guy over every night and not be bothered by her neighbours. These types of apartment complexes are not uncommon at all in bangalore, pune, hyd, and not least chennai. all depends on the neighbourhood. bombay housing societies are close knit and are usually long standing, in the bpo boomtowns theres a lot of anonymity. half the landlords live in the gulf or the USA. The buildings are usually in an upmarket area near the “downtown” , or in the outskirts where the major office parks are situated..
Agreed, if something offends a Mumbaikar’s sensibilities it will give someone from Chennai a heart attack. I see a business opportunity here….young professionals who don’t want to deal with this crap should constitute a significant market. And you can staff it with doorwoman who are as physically intimidating as Gurinder Chadha
I had an American friend in Bombay summoned for indecent behavior too. Of course, his involved hazy memories of a drunken gropefest outside the flat, a scuffle and singing nakedly into the night.
In general, I wouldn’t put “Chennai” and “live-in relationships” in the same sentence. But I do happen to know two couples in live-in relationships in Madras (I’m from the city), which makes me wonder if the reporter spoke to just these two couples!
I know that the families were initially not happy about the live-in relationships (one woman left her husband and moved in with this other guy, and the other couple had a baby and do not want to get married). But now I notice that the families seem to have accepted these couples’ decisions even if they would like things to be otherwise.
Sharanya is right when she says there must be a very tiny minority involved in live-in relationships.