We have been meeting single women in small town and rural India in our Ekal podcast series. In Episode 4, we meet a collective of single women in Marathwada, Maharashtra. What happens when the singular turns into a collective?
My first meeting with Annu was over a Zoom call at 7 pm on a Thursday. The past few months I had been meeting with women from rural areas and kasbahs who shared with me their stories of being ekal (single).
In this episode, Virginia Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own travels to the tehsil of Ajmer, Kekri in Rajasthan, and meets Annu, a 31 year old woman who gives it her own meanings.
In the second episode of the series, Madhuri talks to two single women from Uttar Pradesh – Seema, a 27 years old journalist and Shabo, a 28 years old mobiliser and informal worker who tell us how they found a family of ekal in the city.
What does it mean to be a single woman, when it’s not in a metropolis? What are the experiences of being single, without the romanticisation of the urban? What is the nature of singlehood that may not yet be defined, but may be as rich as life itself?
