Woman and Her Bag

The Woman at the signal

It was only a moment. A woman standing at a bus stop, adjusting the weight of her handbag on her shoulder. I don’t remember her face, but I remember her presence. The ease with which she stood, the way she carried herself—not as if she was stepping into something new, but as if she had always belonged there.

She wore her saree in the way women do when the day has already demanded too much of them—neatly pinned yet slightly loosened, as if both prepared and weary. Her flowers sat fresh in her hair, yet her face held no softness. And then there was that bag. Worn, functional, ordinary, yet telling its own story. A woman with a handbag is never just a woman—she is someone with somewhere to go. Someone carrying something only she knows.

She stepped onto the bus without hesitation. The moment passed. But the thought remained.

The Weight of a Bag, the Weight of a Life!

A bag is never just a bag. It carries more than its contents. It holds movement, transition, an assertion of self.

A woman’s bag holds the life she is trying to build—a purse with neatly folded rupee notes, a tiffin packed with food she barely had time to make for herself, a handkerchief damp with the sweat of early morning labor. Some bags carry books, contracts, letters of resignation, train tickets to places she has never been. Some carry secrets, the weight of choices she has never been allowed to make.

And some women carry nothing at all—no bag, no markers of movement—because life has kept them exactly where they are, their hands left empty.

Women carry worlds, but not always in ways that can be seen. The exhaustion of proving themselves. The quiet negotiations of existing in spaces that do not belong to them. The weight of being questioned for stepping into places men walk into without a second thought.

A bag may seem like a small thing. But it is a marker. A symbol of motion. A woman with a handbag is a woman who is going somewhere, even if no one is certain where.

The Search That Never Ends

Men inherit space. Women must claim it. And even when they do, they are never told when they have arrived.

How many times have women been made to feel like visitors in the lives they built ? Like they have to justify the air they breathe, the choices they make, the voices they raise? Women like me, like the ones I see in markets, in classrooms, in social media, are always searching. Searching for permission, searching for proof, searching for the moment when we will no longer have to explain ourselves.

But does that moment ever come? Or do we live in the act of claiming and reclaiming, over and over again?

The Woman I Am Becoming

Becoming is not a destination. It is a constant state of motion, a restless questioning, a quiet defiance. It is knowing the world does not hand women certainty and daring to move forward anyway.

For years, I waited. Waited to feel ready, to feel like I had earned the right to take up space. But arrival is a myth. Women like me, like the ones I watch in fleeting moments, are always arriving, always becoming, always carrying the weight of searching. We are taught to measure ourselves through the eyes of others—to seek reassurance before we claim what is already ours.

I have lived in hesitation, in doubt, in the long silence before speaking. I have felt the weight of knowing too much yet never enough.

Perhaps that is all becoming is—not a moment of arrival, but a commitment to movement. A woman adjusting the strap of her handbag before stepping onto a bus. A woman gripping the railing of a train, standing firm in her place. A woman entering a room without apologizing for the space she takes. A woman, despite everything, refusing to shrink.

Everywhere, I see symbols. The way women adjust their dupattas before stepping into crowded streets, the way they shift their bags to the front of their bodies, cautious but not afraid. The way they sit on buses, on classroom benches, in offices, in homes—aware of their presence, measuring how much space they are allowed to take. These are small gestures, unnoticed by most. But they are declarations. They say: I am here. I am moving. I am more than what was expected of me.

Perhaps that is why the woman at the bus stand lingered in my mind. Because she did not hesitate. Because she carried herself with a quiet certainty I have long searched for. And because, in that moment, she was not just a passerby—she was a question, a reminder, a reflection of all that I am still learning to be.

I do not know when the searching will end. Perhaps it never will. But maybe searching is not a flaw. Maybe it is an act of creation. Maybe it is how women like me shape ourselves, not as finished beings, but as those who are always in motion, always becoming.

The Back and Forth of Becoming

Women do not walk through life unburdened. We carry things long before we realize their weight. The quiet policing of how to be, where to be, and how much space is too much space. The invisible expectations pressed onto our shoulders. The silent negotiations we engage in—not just with the world, but within ourselves.

But the challenge is never just one thing. It is not just men who make the world difficult for women. It is women, too. The enforcers of rules we never agreed to, the ones who whisper warnings, who question, who remind each other to stay in line. Sometimes, the barriers are not external. They are within us, built from generations of conditioning, of caution, of knowing what happens when a woman dares too much.

And yet, women have always found ways to move. To step forward, even when the ground beneath them is uncertain. To shift, to unlearn, to hold space for each other.

Perhaps that is what Women’s Day should truly be about. Not just celebration, but confrontation. Not just progress, but the hard conversations of what still remains. Not just acknowledging how far we have come, but asking how we keep each other from moving forward. How we stop being each other’s barriers. How we make room for all the women who are still hesitating.

Perhaps the real work is not just stepping onto the bus, but making sure no woman hesitates at the threshold ever again.

The bus came. She got on. And I remained, still thinking, still searching, still carrying.

But perhaps, the next time, I won’t hesitate.

Perhaps, I will simply move.

Like her. Like all the women who have stopped waiting.

Happy International women's day 2025!