A vocal female immigrant in the US: Reena Kapoor’s story

In the second of CIW’s diaspora stories (the first one being that of Shruti Tewari’s, an investment banker turned actor), we profile Reena Kapoor, who first landed on the US shores for education and stayed on. She is now part of the highly skilled, professional Indian community in the country, who is as vocal about political ideas as she is concerned about social causes.

Kapoor first arrived at US shores, like scores of other Indians, for higher education. An engineer from IIT Delhi, Reena did her Masters in Engineering from the Northwestern University before working with firms like Procter & Gamble and Kraft Foods. She then worked for a number of smaller firms and is now an advisor to Bay Area based iMerit Technology and also to Global Social Benefit Institute, Santa Clara University. In terms of her social involvement, Reena has always supported women related causes in both India and in the US.

That she is as supportive as she is of women’s causes is perhaps at least partly on account of her unique initial experiences as woman. Her early years were spent in army areas, since her father was a doctor in the Indian army. Looking back, she appreciates not having the additional social pressures that come from having a “joint” or extended family close by as a young girl. When she joined IIT, she was one of 2 girls in a class of 300. While the numbers today are better, the skewed sex ratio speaks volumes about how engineering is still more a man’s profession than not. 

Owed

It is a little over two weeks since the New Year eve, and the reports of molestations of women in Bangalore. India's IT capital and one of its most promising cities where scores of women work in high technology environments, is unfortunately not physically safe for them. But this is hardly the problem with Bangalore alone. Delhi, the political capital, wears the unfortunate badge of being the rape capital of the country. The heinous rape of Jyoti Singh in the city shook the country a few years ago and is a reminder of how far misogyny and treatment of women of socially inferior beings by some sub-cultures can go, if it is not curbed. While the headlines on the Bangalore molestations are inevitably winding down, we must, therefore, continue to remember the gender challenges that still persist, in order to ensure that such acts don't happen again.

With that in mind, today's post is a poem by Reena Kapoor, which she first wrote at the time of the infamous Delhi gang rape. 

*****

Nobody

India might have entered its 70^th year of independence, but the sacrifices of all those who fought hard to attain it are fresh in the collective memory, as are the memories of the horrors of the partition of India that followed soon after.

The poem ‘Nobody’ aims to capture one sentiment from that time. It has been written by Reena Kapoor, both of whose parents were from the Pakistan side of undivided India. She grew up listening to her family’s ordeal of the time of partition of India. She believes that women of partition were subjected to gruesome horrors not just by the others but by their own communities, in the name of ‘honour’ as well.

She is particularly moved by her own grandmother’s experience, who found her way from Peshawar to Haridwar during the time, as a recently widowed woman. But her ordeal had hardly ended – she made her way back once more to get the family valuables so she could bring her children up. This poem is, thus, dedicated to her grandmother, and countless other ladies like her, who were forced to flee and for others who did not even get the opportunity.