silence

Re-reading  Urvashi Butalia’s ‘The other Side of Silence’... actually reading sections i hadn’t earlier.. this book is part of the reason i have been tempted to take up law and do something to help victims of abuse and violence..  but thats not what i want to talk about right now..

So many were killed in the name of partition, hatred, religion.. as someone who is more than 40 years removed from the horrors, for someone whose family stayed more or less safe in delhi and someone who has never heard personalised stories of the partition or even of the ’84 riots.. its incomprehensible to me how ordinary people can be capable of such bestial acts of violence..

How is it that people live with themselves after having taken someone’s life...

There have been so many episodes of violence in India during the short span of my life.. and sitting in my protected space in Delhi i’m so far removed from it all that i can’t even begin to understand how people change into animals.. how an idea becomes more important than humanity and life...

I’m surrounded by insulated intellectuals.. people of middle and upper middle cass origins who have stayed within the cocoon of their own circles through teh upheavals...

My grandfather tells me how during teh independence movement he and his brothers, young school students then, would carry around messages and stick posters on walls.. my grandmother has stories to tell of the great -great- grand-somebody who was beheaded and his head stuck on a pike outside the thana after the 1857 revolt.. nani’s family had to run away from lahore.. they never knew of what happened to their things that were left behind.. and yet they escaped the kind of violence Butalia and others have described as the most commonplace occurrence during partition.. my father tells me of the refugee camps he and his friends helped manage after the ’84 riots and how bad the situation was.. and yet none of them were really THERE.. they came before or after the tremors subsided.. they helped clean up and bandage the hurt people... they don’t have personal stories to tell because they were spectators,... just like i am..

And in my selfishness i thank god for that sometimes.. for being away from the horrors.. for having an open, intellectual background where my family does not have bitter recollections of violence perpetrated against or by them.. they have stories of hope and rebuilding, of helping and human charity after the storm has passed...

How is it, why is it that throughout history, the women have borne the brunt of men’s ‘honour’? that it is the women who are abducted, raped, paraded, beaten, all for the sake of a group identity and honour.. stripping teh honour of another group almost always involved subjecting their women to some kind of violence while the men were renedered unable to defend them..

I understand the basic animal instinct underneath it.. that it is the women who create the next generation, physical and mental control over women automatically translates to control over the coming generations..

What i fail to understand is how has this gone on for so long in this so called civilsed society? That even today, the first signs of violence are marked on women and children.. i think not just about the partition because that was something dealt with by a previous generation. My incomprehension is about whats happening today.. Honour killings, forced marriages, seclusion, violence against women who choose to step out of the home for anything.. 

insomnia

when you're with someone you want space for yourself.. when that person is not around you have trouble sleeping without hearing their voice...
its the wisdom of the ages.. which rave learnt today...

feminism...

whats feminism?? trying to prove that we're as good as them or accepting that we're different and there is simply no comparison  between the two sexes?
i had to answer a questionnaire on feminism and activism today.. and can't stop thinking about the questions it asked and the semi-articulate answers i've given..

am i a feminist?
not if feminism means that i have to strive to prove that i'm 'as good as' a guy..
yes if it means that i proudly proclaim that i am what i am and those who want someone else can eff off...

what is feminism though? the bra- burning, 'we can do anything you can' brigade is one side, the calm, stoic female boss who tells her male colleagues to look at her face when she talks and not a few inches below it is another..the young bride to be who turns away a baraat because the groom's parents humiliated her own is yet another, the young mother who walks out on a marriage with children in tow rather than suffer abuse is also one, as is the angry fighter who takes on chauvinist ideas and idealists intellectually and physically..

but there is the young woman, who left her career because she got married, who covers her head and touches her in-laws' feet, who cooks and minds the kids and keeps the perfect house, who defers to parents and husband... is she too a feminist if she brooks no argument when it comes to sending her daughter to school? if she raises her children to treat everyone as equals and to never believe that any of them is inferior to the other?
is one who wants to raise a family and doesn't mind putting her career on hold a feminist if she decides this on  her own as opposed to having been dictated to?
is one who accepts that going out late at night in a city like Delhi is unsafe an anti- feminist?

is one not a feminist if one refuses to join a march opposing violence against women?

is the hijab- clad woman in france who argues that she wears the veil as a symbol of her faith and not because of a diktat a feminist?
is the girl who wants to elope and marry the man SHE wants a feminist?
is one who enjoys dressing up, who wants male attention and approval a blot on the feminist sisterhood?

is one who believes that election quotas for women are simply eyewash striking a blow against women?
how do you define feminism?

i dont quite care about what roles are 'good' for a good girl or a devoted feminist.. i'm equally at home in a sari and in my own skin...
for me, the assertion of identity depends more on the intellect than on the physical structure of one's genitalia..

am i a feminist?? or am i just clueless about gender roles in this world..

to my favourite couple...

i've admired you both for a long time now because you showed me something incredible about love.. u reaffirmed what i'd learnt in my own disaster of a relationship.. that you must put friendship over coupledom.. that telling each other everything created a level of understanding that no storms could shake...
i learnt it the hard way.. that if you keep something hidden away it can become a festering sore that affects everything thats good in the relationship and in life..
it was when i saw you two tell each other everything, expose your silliest and weakest and most vulnerable to each other that i realised that it was infact possible to be opposites and yet work out harmoniously... you could say anything to each other, including telling each other when you didn't want the other to be around..
that honesty and trust was the bedrock of it all i always knew.. i didn't quite know how it could be managed till i saw you two together...

and yet today i see you unhappy.. and it breaks my heart.. that two people who i thought shared everything no longer have the words to express themselves..

i love you both very much.. and i hope you find your rythm again..

inspired by tinni's photograph..

I’m not sure if i’m dreaming or i’m awake.. it feels like a dream.. or a barely remembered memory.. maybe it is the flickering yellow bulb on the streetlight that throws shadows across the narrow lane i’m standing in.... the wall to one side looks like a corridor i’ve walked own many a times.. to the left is a blank wall i’ve never seen.. The end of the lane is bathed in shadows.. i know i’m meant to walk further and yet my fear of the dark holds me back.. even in the half asleep daze that clouds my eyes i can see that the darkness if the lane deepens ahead into what must be a doorway.. i have to walk through it,.. HAVE to get to it.. across the recesses in the walls beside me that i know someone or something awaits me in...


at the weirdest of times, the lyric of an avril lavigne song come to my head.. ‘Sometimes i get so weird, i even freak myself out...’ i laugh at my silliness.. Its weird how i have a song in my head ALL the time.. even now, when i stand atremble facing this dark narrow alley..

Is it a metaphor for my life? Or is it just another strange and beautiful sight like the millions i ignore every day.. the flickering ochre of the grimy bulb seems to follow m footsteps.. as far as i have walked, the light’s shines right at my feet turning the far end of the lane to mysterious shadows.. i can just discern the doorway because it’s a darker black than the shadows that surround it...

Something glints in the half- light..

Is that a bar on that doorway? I force my numbed eyes to look, squint into the gloom.. maybe, maybe not... damn that phrase seems to be the definition of my life lately..

But no worries.. there’s the alley, there’s me.. and there’s that shadow within the shadows that i know i’m walking towards through the deepening gloom..

wealth of comments

watching the news the last few days has been like gupta sir's labour law classes.. the entire discussion gets repeated in every class till u can almost predict the next sentence.. the commonwealth games discussion on the news channels has gotten to THAT level of repetitive..