12.11.09

alone

tell me that story, the one i don't like to hear. it stings, and the tears are already in my eyes. i know i've heard it several times. i know, your fingers clench when you say "oh her, she's okay, you know, quite a beauty though." her eyes, i can see them as well as your words paint them. lovely black eyes, with her curly, mindless hair all over her face. her regal nose, and her lips, how soft, i could kiss them the way you did. this is our story isn't it, of love, hidden sensual maddening love. seeking her, seeking you, blushing when you find each other, smiling to yourself, hoping she wouldn't notice. but she does, doesn't she? she knows you're looking at her. she knows you day dream about her voice singing as she speaks, her breath, hotter as you blush some more.

i wonder if she saw you the way you saw her. i wonder if she saw you the way i see you. your eyebrows, perfectly arched, your laughter, thrilled, child-like, your fingers, long, each with a shape of its own. how i like to put my hands in yours. did you do that with her? did she play with your hair? did she like kissing your earlobes? your smell, shampoo and hamam soap, moisturiser and musky deodorant. tell me that story, won't you?

say it, in your charming voice, "our story is of the single life. we like being alone. we take pleasure in being me. i, i'm hot, i'm honest, i love myself, and that's all the love i need." oh, of course i'll interject, i'll ask you, "what about her?" and you know what you'll say. but you don't need her. you'll meet her one day, at a pastry shop you know, buying the cheesecake you got her addicted to, while you'll be buying the banana walnut bread she made for you once.

ofcourse you don't need her anymore. i know, it's bitter between the two of you. but the memories are sweet aren't they? pungent, like red wine and smelly cheese. they leave stains you can't ever wash off.

i don't feel like blogging anymore. mediocrity kills.

18.10.09

a lesson

to find a crowd in loneliness,
to speak in silences,
to lighten up darknesses

and still find shadows.

2.9.09

burning.

burning in my stomach is a hunger so deep, so painful, it cannot simply be last night's. i can smell the food from this far away, and yet i know that food alone is not going to take the pain away. my son follows me. when we reach, he asks for two teas and two breakfasts. there is vada today - they serve it with a chutney that is watered, but spicy enough to stay in my stomach. it makes the feeling in my stomach worse, like rubbing salt to a wound. when i leave, the orange sun is in front of me, looking me in my eyes. the ground on which i walk is dry, hot, i need to step faster to keep my feet from burning too. he leaves me, my son, to join his friends at the corner of the road. i know that he is probably hungry too, but not the same hunger of the stomach anymore. i don't know whose hunger bothers me more, mine, his, or the feeling that i am unable to do anything about either.


while i walk to work, i keep my eyes firmly downwards. many men pass by me, and i only have to see the lining of their lungi to know who they are - they are men who live in the houses i am walking around. they know nothing of the thirst of the earth for the heat of the sun - they laugh in their homes while i work in their fields to make their crop reach its harvest. they walk slowly, their feet enjoying the coolth of the leather footwear. i can feel their eyes survey me -i feel the bareness of my legs and the shame of what my upper cloth doesn't cover. i walk at the same pace, not faster though i want to run, because i don't want to let them throw me off the road.

i reach the fields. i like working in paddy fields. the water in the field keeps my feet cool. the mud goes through my toes, and i enjoy it after the walk in the sun. i bend, ignoring the pain that runs down my back, and begin to pull out the weeds. i am lucky this season - i got to work even during the weeding. i sometimes wonder what it would be like, being an upper caste woman, laughing, as i prepare the harvested grains, working in my own house.. i feel that i am made to do this only because they don't want to do their dirty work themselves. it is soon time for tea. i drink it, gossiping with the other women, listening as they tell their tales, of wayward children, of drunken husbands, of someone else running away with other men from different castes.. it is the story of all our lives, shared so simply, told as someone else's tale to make ourselves feel better.

i wonder what they say about my husband. i wonder this everyday, when i wake up in the morning and walk three miles with a bucket of water and a lota in my hand, away from male eyes. i wonder what it is that these women will be saying when i leave the hand pump in the morning with my daughter, one pot of water on her head, and one pot on mine. am i the woman whose husband does nothing but smoke beedis all day? is he too sick, or simply too lazy?

do i ask him, like i ask myself everyday - where is my husband today? is he at the shop, drinking tea, smoking beedis? is he working on our field or someone else's? is he spending his money on himself as usual, not thinking of our daughters sitting at home, or even our sons who are just like him? where is my husband today? when he comes home at night, to eat the food that i will make, will he find a fault in what i cook, or will he eat quietly not even looking at me? will he leave me and go, because i yell at him too much, or will he throw me out because i do? will he protect me when other men eye me, or will he stay back, too powerless to retort? is he even there? is he there for me?

i finish work. i collect my wages, a full forty rupees for my day's work. i know that it would have been nicer if my husband could have done this work instead. he is stronger, and men generally get more done in one day, so they get more money. earlier, when he used to work here, he made atleast fifty rupees everyday. immediately, i start to think of what we can eat tonight. i will have to buy extra flour for the rotis tonight, i'm sure my other son has been working all night. i also need to buy hair oil and soap for me and my daughters. i see my daughter wait for me with a basket on her head. we go together to the market.

i see her eye the glass bangles as we walk past that stall. green bangles, red bangles.. glinting in the light of the evening sun. they call to us, and i look determinedly away. i imagine my daughter wearing green bangles like a married woman, with her own children and her own husband and her own hunger burning her stomach. that day will come soon, and with thinking about it, i also think about the dowry that i will have to give to send her away and make her a marriage. i wonder if my sons will take care of me when i can work no more.. will they be like my husband, too lazy to look after even themselves, to bother looking after an old woman? the bangles remind me of my wedding day. what did i know of what marriage brings to a woman, in the day and at night?


**

as i watch the comb go through my mother's hair, so meticulously parting every stand of oiled hair, i can't help but think how beautiful it is. who is she, my mother? it is not even morning, and i see her thinking of us already.

watch her there.

do you not see her, wrapped in her agony? look, each layer of her worry swathes her, binds into her deeper.

open it up, pull it apart, this swathing, and then probably, i can answer my question.

who is she?



------

this was written as a narrative to be presented as a role play in a class on poverty. this one looks at the gendered nature of poverty, talking about hunger to represent the absolute nature of poverty, the simultaneity of caste and gender in oppression, the sex-typing of work and the value ascribed to this sort of division of labour which becomes oppressive to women. it talks about how the family binds the women to it, in a way that men aren't bound.

18.7.09

about (iii)

"Whatever is unnamed, undepicted in images, whatever is omitted from biography, censored in collections of letters, whatever is misnamed as something else, made difficult-to-come-by, whatever is buried in the memory by the collapse of meaning under an inadequate or lying language -- this will become, not merely unspoken, but unspeakable."

-Adrienne Rich

2.7.09

today is a rainbow colored day in the history of this country. the delhi high court has re-read 377, now decriminalising consensual sex between people of the same sex. while it is a time for much celebration, one must also realise that it is only the first step, "the first door that has to be opened", and there are still long distances to go.
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/000200907021111.htm

30.6.09

about (ii)

i repeat, constantly negotiating spaces. physical spaces. creating dichotomies. private, public. economic spaces. seeing the value, valuing differently. political spaces. inclusion, expansion to shifting perspectives. to empower the individual while also emphasising collective. the personal, the political, which is where?

**

dupattas and burkhas, closing doors and drawing curtains.
what does it take? silence to noise to raising a voice?
a struggle is never simple. that one, she moved from saying no to the burkha to saying no to the scarf, and then saying no to the dupatta even. she started to talk of sexuality, and who the good woman is. negotiating at all times. sometimes giving in, sometimes bargaining, sometimes accomodating, sometimes standing steady and not moving an inch.

**

what are battles worth fighting? ones you're sure you'll win, or ones you might not know if there will ever be an end to?

6.6.09

some posts

that seem great when one is half asleep (and/or) at 3 am, never really are.

30.5.09

interviews - i

they giggle, sometimes laugh, hide their faces in their dupattas and ghagras, glance at the older women, most meekly, and hardly speak. in the monosyllable, the answer this strange person who asks questions about their lives, about what they do at home (she calls it work).
they do everything, simply everything, or even sometimes they say they do nothing - what is there for them to do? they eat, and they sleep, they stay at home, what is work? of course they cook, of course they fetch water, many times in a day in the scorching heat, pots and pots, wash dishes, wash clothes, look after their younger siblings, their older siblings' children.. they have a good life. nothing they feel bad about, there are no problems in their lives and saaa'ub achcha lagta hain.

**

even at fourteen, married to her sister's husband three months after becoming "jawan," for the sole purpose of bearing male children, five months pregnant.. is she not a child? is she not a woman, now? is she something else, something in between?

she doesn't speak to me, but i doubt she really speaks to anybody. did you know what would happen after marriage, i ask. she said no, looking away, outside at her sister's daughter. her husband's daughter. did you know how women get pregnant, i ask, and she stares away, moving her head to indicate no. would you have agreed to get married if you knew, i say, almost whispering. she never looked me in the eye, or even in the face, not once. she let silence answer this question. for a while, we said nothing. abruptly, her sister came back in, and she spoke about why girls should get married sooner than later. and what people say about girls who go to school.

**

i wonder who i am, to them. old, unmarried, still studying.
but another girl, fifteen, told me, "you are from City, the village ('tanda') doesn't work like that. everybody tells everybody what to do. they talk. they say bad things. it is wrong ("thappu") for girls to go out to their friends' houses."

i end up feeling like i felt in gujarat. i am free to do as i please, study as i please, get married when i please. that i am a man, to them.

18.4.09

about

the seamless lives of women.
constantly negotiating spaces.
redefining. boundaries. imagined. physical. geographic. mind space. mind time?

**

whose voice? whose perspective?
whose lived experience do you see the world as?

!

!!