Broken

He looked at her hand, tiny

palm strongly gripped in his,

rosy fingers entwining grim

firmness, wound in destiny.

Her hand trembled with him

as the cold darkness swept

awash the invisible livery of

birth, beloved baby girl of his.

Voices, whispers and shrieks

not heard, eyes blinded by the

horror of veins slowly pale as her

crimson whimpered in defeat.

Surreal splatters on the car’s

bonnet and its driver, seized by

loud sobs while a tiny lump lay

on the road, smeared lifeless.

He looked at her hand, dripping

blood, severed and calm in its

transience.. .

What Feminism Means to Me.

I don’t think I have written what feminism means to me, though anyone who has ever read my blog would have inferred by now that am one.  Needless to say, I am a Third-Wave feminist, with a lot of intricacies thrown in. I hardly go by the frames and notions of essentialist feminist ideals that are apparent in radical feminism, nor do I belong to the post-feminist category. So I decided to have a completely subjective rant about what feminism means to me without any analysis of the situation.

To me, feminism means:-

• Something that is class-race-caste-culture-socioeconomic factors specific. You simply cannot amalgamate everything into a chunk and generalize it. It has a universal set, true. But the subsets are so many, which intersect at certain points but definitely not all. To cite a specific example, sometimes I get into fights because somebody gropes me in a crowded bus or so. More often than not, the women in the vicinity keep mum whilst the men speak up to ‘protect my honour’. This is entirely different from the problems of a woman who has been gang -raped and mutilated in Congo. Feminism is highly micro-specific and empowerment has to be target -cohesive.

• Equal opportunity. That I have the same opportunity as the guy with the same educational status as me and that I don’t get discriminated against because of my sex. It also means that in an interview, my breasts do not carry extra points in the minds of the interviewer.

• Identity. It means no patriarchal propertisation of me or my womb. My name is Sruthi  J S. I have been asked continuously to tag my father’s name in the end or my surname. To me, personally, that is disgusting. I don’t prefer that I be known as the property of a man, whether it be my father or my legal husband. To me, every woman who changes their names after wedding is like a plague hindering gender equality and mainstreaming. It is like saying that her mother and her family meant nothing to her and that her genes are the property of her father to be contributed to her husband’s family lineage.

• Definitely not man-bashing. I love men. I don’t go by the SCUM Manifesto of Valerie Solanas and definitely not Separatist Feminism. I believe that men are equally trapped in patriarchy. True, they hold the power and the system is to their advantage. But what is the use of empowerment if it does not concentrate on both sexes?  I believe that every father who is hesitant to send his daughter to school must be empowered too. I believe that every husband who doesn’t want his wife to earn should be de-educated socially to make him understand the benefits of wife earning. If the men of the society need to realise what is wrong with the picture, they also need to be treated as part of the solution and not just held responsible for the system. 

• Partnership. People ask me why I believe in marriage if I am ‘such a feminist’. I don’t believe in marriage as a contract, but as a partnership. There are complementarities that are needed in every system to balance the harmony of gender. Gender is fluid. It is not a black and white boundary, but a rather contour that shifts back and forth in balance. If I find a person who is willing to make those oscillations with me, why would I be averse to such a companionship?

• NOT essentials of conformity to rigid mainstream notions of feminism. It is one thing I dislike. That I am expected to run with the pack and that a label of feminism makes me the target to certain assumptions of how I should and should not be as a feminist. I have never been tolerant of such normalization and I never will be. I will continue to cry at beautiful films, love the color pink, wear kajal and the biggest earrings in the shop and definitely continue feeding the people I love. How does my cooking for my brother once in a while make me a traitor because he is a man? I like to pamper him. Should I instead ask someone else to take over my recipe and yet derive the same satisfaction when he eats it? It only matters if he orders me to do something for him without considering my inclination to do it.
  

• Being in control of my womb. I am pro-choice and I believe it is a woman’s choice whether or not to have kids. I don’t believe it is something you should do because the society requires you to do. I don’t believe that one needs kids to be happy and it is a highly subjective issue. A woman definitely does not abort for fun, she does it because she wants to be in control of her life and I support it and if I ever have to, I will do it.

• Having my opinions and having the courage to stand up for my beliefs no matter what the opposition. It is something that women in our society find hard to do, because every time we have an opinion, it is considered to be a woman’s opinion and not a person’s. Aggression in a woman is considered as an anomaly. The cliché-est retort when a man finds a woman would not back down on her argument is, ‘you must be on your period’. Come on people, it has been millennia. Can’t you find something novel?

• Freedom. It does not mean I want to go around naked because I want to prove a point that I am not ashamed that I have breasts. It simply means that I should have the choice to do what I want. There should be no pressure on me to compromise myself more than a man because I have a vagina. It also means that every physical cultural adornment that represents that I am a man’s is something I abhor, like a thaali or sindoor, especially the latter. Of course one could argue that it is highly subjective and it should be left to the woman, but the real question is, how many women actually debate this issue within them.

So to sum up, I am a Third-Wave feminist with a liberal mix of Anarcha-Feminism, who is fascinated with how nature entwines with the social system and hence a bit an Ecofeminist and who blatantly criticizes Cultural Feminism or any misandric Radical Feminism. I wouldn’t treat my son as an inferior to my daughter and not my daughter as inferior to my son. They should learn how to share, respect, criticize and empower each other. One is not possible without the other.              

Fallen

I fell from the bouquet or a
bush, a garland or trembling
hands of love, dejected in the
rejection of earnest pursuit.

Snapped stalk, creased leaf
solitary limb, petals torn from
whimpering neck, my scarlet
dripping from pale nakedness.

Enough wonder and pity shed
on this lone fall, effervescence
of myriad stories, coalesced in
scalding futile commiserations.

Makes one speculate if my petals
would never be torn, limb intact
and gleaming, the scarlet bound
in its canvas, forever, had I never
fallen.

A Little Something on Suicide.

Around three years ago, on a dark night, I stood on a ledge of my hostel and decided to jump and end my life. It wasn’t a decision borne of being fed up with life; rather it was an attraction towards the concept of death. I had pushed myself into a period of gloom and the idea of death was just the logical culmination of it. Obviously, I did not jump. Ever since then, I have loved life for what it is. I write this not to draw attention to myself, but because I noticed recently that I have moved to a place where I could talk about quite objectively, while my loved ones who know about this still cannot come to terms with it. At that time, I had thought that it was my decision, something that affected my life and my future course. I should say that this piece is not in support of or against suicide, but merely trying to make sense of various factors involved in it. 

This brings me to the first vital question. Where does my decision become irrational? If you are a person who is well informed and perfectly capable of taking decisions in life, shouldn’t you be entitled to decide when you should end your life? The autonomy which is bestowed upon us by society to carry out our lives as we may please, to have choices when it comes to the most mundane of affairs, is taken away in the case of the termination of our biological functioning by our own hand. It hardly seems fair in an individualistic way. If you are a person with a sane mind, capable of differentiating between the different shades of grey, shouldn’t you be allowed that liberty of choice?  There is this constant impression upon us that human life is sacred. Religion, state and family tying us to this concept of self preservation, no matter what the choice of the individual.

It is on this note that I do not quite comply with the justifications for two other phenomena, which essentially features under the same category of ‘sacred life’ and simply making suicide look like the black sheep of the family. One is killing for self defense and the other is suicide as a moral obligation. Let us consider killing for self defense. How is my life any better than yours, in case you try to kill me and I succeed in stopping you from killing me by ending your life? One could easily say that survival instinct is basic and we have a moral obligation to keep on living. Let us take the second case, one of suicide as a moral obligation. People blowing themselves up for religious or political agenda, soldiers giving up their lives in the name of patriotism, etc. When you compare and contrast these two, it is obvious that there is one element that is missing from the case of suicide-social sanction. Though they are contradictory in behaviour and both are murder in their naked forms, they are normalized in society. It may be due to the fact that suicide is contradictory to the evolutionary necessities of survival and a collective coherence, which are represented by the above two behaviours. Nevertheless the explanation hardly justifies this moralistic tug of war in this age where personal liberties are greatly cherished and valued.

But when we probe further on this sacredness of life, there is clearly a gap between the definition and the realistic conception of life. Life should encapsulate not just the biological being but also the positive well being of the person. If the society is not able to provide the person with enough physical and psychological amenities for welfare, if the person is not able to emotionally utilize the facilities available to him/her for whatever reason, shouldn’t the person be allowed to decide whether or not  to continue living? It seems highly unreasonable to not take into account the preference of the individual to life. We could put forth the utilitarian argument that the person has a social obligation to be alive and contribute to the society’s progress and by committing suicide; he/she is depriving the society of his/her part of labour, thus creating a gap in its fabric and that his/her talents, skills and knowledge are vital in their own ways in the social evolution.  Emotional attachments come under the same classification more or less. Unlike me, I am pretty sure that those who think about or have committed suicide must have mulled constantly over the anguish and the consequences that their deaths will bring on their families. 

Love brings us to a primary characteristic of the ‘right to noninterference’. To what extent should a person be left alone? If a person is depressed or otherwise mentally imbalanced, hassled by the toils of the day, the stress building up to a breaking point, should there be no help offered? Doesn’t matter where the interference is from, as long as it is positive. Usually, the impulse towards suicide is short lived, ambivalent and influenced by environmental factors combined with personality traits tipping the scale to one side further and further till it hits rock bottom. There should be a counter balance involved which may not be appreciated by the individual at that time, but still efficient enough to stop the imbalance at a particular degree and bring the person back. 

There is this wrong notion amongst people who have suicidal tendencies that their loved ones will eventually get over their death, forget and move on. Having observed people whose loved ones have committed suicide and having been at the end which inflicted pain, even though to a lesser degree, I can confidently say that that ‘moving on’ is different from what the person who wants to commit suicide thinks. Time heals only in the sense that the focus shifts to newer things and more pressing issues at hand rather than grief. Guilt is a dominant emotion amongst the loved ones. The person might think that since it is a personal decision and there is only one life at stake in the long run, there is no need for others to feel responsible for his/her death or attempt. But I have seen different variants of guilt, ranging from going mad to extreme denial when it comes to taking responsibility. So, when one life ends, many end along with it, may not be the same as physically ceasing to exist. 

But, ultimately, the choice should be personal, deeply thought out with the knowledge that this ‘to be or not to be’ is a permanent solution to what could be a temporary problem.     

  

Solitude

Last, slow mouthful of ice cream

wistfully melted into her whimsical

fantasies of forbidden fancies.

Around, she saw couples in their

early dawns, enjoying the flawless

togetherness, hers long lost in sighs.

Moment of solitude, pregnant in its

lust to be alive, sanguine fortitude

creeping through veins for release.

Eyes open, in the waning whiff of

momentary suspension of herself,

reminded of errands still to be run.

On... Hindi and the rest... (Not so objective, mostly a rant.)

I studied in a Kendriya Vidyalaya for most of my school life. Have always felt more of a KV-ite rather than any other institution I studied in. Perhaps it is because of the wonderful relationships I made there, perhaps it is because I felt as if I belonged there. There was only thing I have not missed till now-speaking Hindi. This post is not a diatribe against Hindi or Hindi speaking people. It is something to emphasize the need of regional languages and the need to promote the regional languages in India.
 

There are more than 1600 languages in India, with a majority speaking languages of Indo-Aryan origin and the rest speaking mostly Dravidian languages. Ever since the struggle for independence, there has been a cry to make Hindi the national language. Now, Periyar and the DMK were the main opponents of the Hindi-isation of the rest of India and the major reason why Congress was completely ousted from Tamil Nadu. Fast forward 60 years later and still, only 40% of the Indian population speaks Hindi. Yet, there is always this tug of war between Hindi and rest of the languages.

This tug of war permeates in every level when it comes to our globalised generation. Bollywood is more visible and accessible when compared to films of other languages. There is a trend to categorise films in other languages as ‘good cinema’, but hardly any effort to promote it in the mainstream. Every viably profitable movie in other major languages is remade in Hindi with added glitz and glamour (I used to think that Indian masala was the same throughout India till I found that there are linguistic differences.) instead of promoting the original movie. It is never potato, but always ‘aloo’. Relegating people from the any other region or speaking any other language to a sub-Indian level. I am not a Mallu, I am a Malayalee. I do not address my friend as a Bong, he/she is a Bengali. All Southies do not eat masala dosa and vada. And for that matter, there are Malayalees who haven’t even heard of Rasavada. Still, there is the tendency to ignore these subtle differences and resume the categorisation as Hindi speaking and not. I learnt Malayalam till I was nine years old and moved on to English and Hindi. My friends to this day cannot understand why I do not speak Hindi. It is simply because I felt that it was alien to me. I did not identify with the culture. Now there could be a point raised that that is because I am a Southie. Wrong. I once called a friend of mine in Mumbai a Northie and I remember her reaction to this day. My ears almost bled while she went on to explain quite vividly that she was from Bombay and not Mumbai and she definitely was not a Northie.

 

One of the many differences I have with some of my ex-schoolmates is that they prefer replacing mother tongues with Hindi after the primary classes. To them, regional languages are redundant in today’s world. I strongly disagree. Because only completely blind middle-class people, who have been brought up in the post-liberalisation era of India, who do not think of how the wheel turns in a macroscopic  level can say that. How can we possibly ignore every other language on the list? How do we plan to take development to the remotest villages if we cannot speak their language? How can we understand the needs of hundreds of millions and ever increasing population if we restrict the mode of official communique?

But the most important issue is that of culture. I am culturally a Malayalee and politically an Indian. But that does not make me any less receptive of any other culture. My roots make sure that I have something to return to. Granted, I am not the typical Malayalee with all the Malayalee quirks or tastes. I grew up not speaking my language, being ridiculed by my family because every time I got emotional, I would ramble off in English. But my sweetest and best childhood memories are of thumbapoo and mangoes, of smelling the damp earth after the first monsoon rain, of not Onasadyas, but of the laughter accompanying them. I do not remember my bedtime stories being of Snow White or the Little Red Riding Hood, but of elephants whose names I can’t remember now and Yakshis and myths. That is the issue. Every region has its unique flavor, unique culture. Why do we need to homogenize it? Aren’t those memories and stories and flavor worthy of being passed on to the next generation? Does being a global citizen necessarily mean we have to push away our origins from us? Don’t we need to be aware of the cultural mediation and internalization of cultural schema so that we can promote our children’s better cognitive development? I do not think that is possible in an environment where instead of diverse stimuli, conflicting interactions are presented.

Paraphrasing, in the words of Octavio Paz, “What sets the world in motion is the interplay of differences, their attractions and repulsions. Life is plurality, death is uniformity. By suppressing differences and peculiarities, by eliminating different civilizations and cultures, progress weakens life and favors death. The ideal of a single civilization for everyone, implicit in the cult of progress and technique, impoverishes and mutilates us. Every view of the world that becomes extinct, every culture that disappears, diminishes a possibility of life."