Gulabi, Gulabo, Gulabiya: Representing Gender Narratives in the Public Sphere

When women engage in (re)naming practices, especially names such as Gulabi, Gulabiya, and Gulabo, they perform a kind of spatial intervention that materially transforms how gender is mapped onto and understood within geographic spaces. This paper attempts to understand the act of (re)naming as an embodied writing practice through which South Asian women performers inscribe new meaning(s) onto contested spaces while simultaneously (re)positioning themselves within patriarchal spatial hierarchies. This paper examines the cultural metaphor of Gulab as a dual symbol that both idealizes and confines a woman within the structured society. This paper also analyses contemporary media representations to chart out how rose operates as a gendered symbol that naturalizes limitations on female agency and reinforces entrenched power dynamics under the guise of beauty. The analysis treats the performative act of renaming as a form of spatial authorship, where women write themselves into and out of places through identity reconstruction. When women adopt, modify, or reclaim names embedded with rose imagery they create alternative narratives. These narratives transform the semiotics of Gulabi within feminine ideals to strategic territorial claims.