Today I was called an arrogant bitch. I was driving in my car when my thoughts overcame me at the traffic lights. As I dawdled  into things that had happened to my life recently an unfocused moment became reason for the man in the car alongside me trying to make a turn as quickly has he could to not only make assumptions about me but to verbalise them in a way that was harsh enough for me to have to carry them and analyse them as the day continued. During my undergraduate Arts degree of varied description I came across feminism and even found myself taking subjects called ‘women and power’ or something like that. I don’t wear make up on most days. I’m a mother whose children may not have a clear answer for the question ‘what is your mum’s job?’ yet the fact that they are asked this question at all allows for some degree of satisfaction; some proof of progress. I whinge. I get labeled; I have been objectified. I complain about life and inequality. I am not always happy. I don’t spend my days feeling blessed that I can walk down the street by myself or even indulge in a drink at a pub during the day – on my own.

When I took the photo above I was aware I was stealing something. The woman whose life I dived into for a few moments – uninvited and unashamedly –  remains anonymous. I took the photo because at first I didn’t believe what I was seeing. I remember standing, frozen and frightened for a few moments while I gathered what my eyes were trying to capture. Across the dusty unpaved street in downtown Ladakh a woman hobbled slowly; her back bent over by the weight of the bricks it was carrying.  Her hands and face were protected by rags. Although I couldn’t see her eyes I could feel her shame. She did not look up or down. She did not glance sideways towards my direction. She knew I was there.

Here, here’s my life. Here’s my feminism. Here’s my lot. I carry cement bricks to building sites each day because where I’m from women do the hard labour. Women do not get to make decisions about make-up free selfies. Women do not get to decide about what to make for dinner, what else to put in school lunch sandwiches that become boring soon after first term ends. Women do not get to drive cars and be called arrogant bitches; or walk down streets in fancy clothes and get wolf-whistled at. Here feminism  – if that’s what you want to call women working – is meaningless for me. Do you want to be treated like a man and have your back broken?

Sometimes the mornings are so monotonous they lull me back to sleep; the morning drill. The fighting children. The rush to do everything and more. The ridiculous expectations we have of ourselves. The domestic crush of the soul. The anonymous woman in the photo finds her way back into my thoughts on these days in particular. As her image confuses and destroys everything I thought I knew her predicament challenges me in such an immense way it forces me to get up and try to make sense of all our realities as they naively collide and stupidly compete with each other. She may still be stuck in her reality. I am often stuck in mine. Yet even the thought of hers during my day-today so-called privileged life is what makes me believe that one day, somehow, our two realities will meet. Her bricks will fall, my complacency will be shaken and we will both be called women.