Senses

Clock chimes,

Time, time.

Looking out the window,

(I see)

Up high on a branch,

Hope as a bird,

Spreading its wings.

Walking towards the jungle,

(I hear)

The divine gait of,

Dream as a doe,

Dashing to freedom.

Dipping my feet into

The silky stream,

(I feel)

Lucid and perfect,

Love as a pebble,

Letting life trickle past.

Pricking my finger

With its sorrow,

(I smell)

Elegant, wistful,

Joy as a flower,

Hugging a disenchanted thorn.

Gathering the day’s

Ruins in my soul,

(I shout)

I love, I dream,

I hope and I learn.

And hence I live.

Clock chimes,

Time, time.

I wake up,

Ready.

On woman part 2

This musing is inspired by one of my favourite RJs. On last night’s show, he commented that women have a power over men that can be used to draw make them dance to their lines. I really don’t know how or where to begin or end. This is absolutely true. But, the under currents are so much more than he could conceive. First of all, this particular ‘power’ he refers to is of raw sexuality. To understand that statement, we need to look into the process of evolution of gender. The primary objective of any species is to propagate themselves. In this process, man had the role to impregnate as many women as he could while female had to make sure she got impregnated by the fittest male to enrich the gene pool. Haven’t you ever wondered why men mostly go for younger women and women go for men who could protect them? Well, this facet of life originates from evolution. So while this inextricably torturous factor remains in our build up, it is also true that society has changed, there are many other factors in play. Evolution continues. The point is that this power is not limited to one female. Every female has it. So when a male meets a female he isn’t committed to and is attracted (which is quite natural) to her,  what my dear RJ doesn’t perceive is this invisible thread of control from good to better genetic prospects. I am not talking about intellectual relationships where mind does matter, but about the ordinary section of the species. Now, here man is tempted to go for a smaller reward of granting attention to this woman temporarily forgetting that a longer fulfilling relationship with the other woman is what he actually wanted. When a woman finds out that she is ‘cheated’ upon, naturally that bond of trust is broken. So, this illusion of ‘power’ is nothing more than an illusion.

Secondly, I take offence at his advice to make use of this power. It is stereotyping. It is telling a woman that she has to use tact, sexuality and her charms to stay in a relationship. I agree that it is how it works most often, but it is wrong. There is a phrase Stoop to Win, when it comes to women. An advice rendered through mothers generation to generation. Females have to use tact, keep the man to her side, feed him right and he will protect you. In this 21^st century, designating this strategy as the ultimate weapon of one half of the population is no more acceptable. It shouldn’t be acceptable. It becomes all the more atrocious when an opinion such as this is aired through a popular show. It is as degenerating as telling a woman she should lay back, open wide and think of god, whenever he commands her to.

I am not going to whine on how men treat women and how we are subjugated. As far as I am concerned, men are in the same cage as women, they just don’t realize it because the material aspects are for their benefits. Whenever somebody sees and not perceives through the blindfold, he/she is nothing but blind. But whenever he/she has her eyes gauged out because truth was seen and can see no more, still the perception is there. This stereotyping of both genders occurs very slowly, continuously and steadily. The reason why we are still primates with the animalistic instincts controlling us is because of this. Throughout history, ever since family became a unit in the idea of private property, human race has needed an order to be kept. And for this order, some sections had to obey. It is quite simple actually. Who obeys? The physically weaker. Who is physically superior- the warrior or the potter? This warrior can control women, traders and serfs. But not god. That’s how clergy came into existence. So you see, we are still living in an extended version of Vedic times. Isn’t it time we moved past?

As I read somewhere, ‘The emotional, sexual, and psychological stereotyping of females begins when the doctor says, "It's a girl."’.   

On the closeted.....

The expression- the closeted may confuse you. Am I going to write about homosexuality or what? No, I am going to talk about a much wider section of the population of India. The ones that have their own ideals and principles which are different from the majority and the only place they can express it is right where you are, on the internet. I began social networking years back when my friends asked me to join Orkut so they could connect with me more easily. But once I did join, I began to explore the mileu of opportunites in its communities. I found out that people who would dare not express their opinions in public were expressing them online, vociferously and strongly. Now, I have moved away from Orkut and migrated to Facebook. The first thing that strikes me is that it is not about simple expression,. But rather about finding an in group, where your views are echoed. It is hard to do out in the reality, considering the fact that in all my family and friends of my age, I am the only atheist and feminist. So naturally, when I extend this logic to the rest of the people, it is only predictable that they could be feeling the exact thing. I have found that though many movements start out on the net, they comprise of only the middle to upper classes and mostly they are constrained to one city or so.

Now, my question is what makes us not be wary of such in groups on the net. Why is freedom of expression practiced there and not outside? Why do I write about what I feel, but when it comes to arguing with my grandfather who says that no matter what you become, women should cook, I simply smile and let it go? I am confused. I can refuse to be served second at the family get together lunch because I am a girl, but I don’t. Instead I ferociously attack the predatory nature of chauvinism on the online communities, but hardly open my mouth in public. Why is there a social gag on our voices? Shouldn’t the system encourage us, the majority, to find in groups within us rather than discriminating on the basis of beliefs? I have to be able to stand up straight and say I have my period and I have entered the temple to prove that the sky doesn’t fall down if I do so. The other fellow should be able to express something equally politically incorrect, no matter what his views are. That is precisely what the online communities do. There is no necessity for political correctness. Your conviction is held true without judgment which might cause you any direct harm. Besides, there is always some random stranger who supports your case. It is this safety net that lets most people take that leap into the world of public opinions.

But, the real question here is, whether this helps anything. True, the ideas are broadcasted and you find your in-group, but it stops there in almost all cases. I found out rather roughly that there is a kind of social barrier which promotes isolation between these groups. For example, certain atheist groups do not encourage theists to join their discussion since they ‘preach’ to them. Similarly Pakistanis cannot have a say in Indian matters. There is almost no communication between the groups, which is rather sad. Here, social networking becomes just another vestigial tool, which majority doesn’t care to use in the right way. This social isolation or should we say virtual isolation demands of the individual that he/she be dogmatic, whether a theist or an atheist, whether a chauvinist or a feminist, whether an Indian or a Pakistani, with absolutely no say over the other. The intellectuality reeks of rotting thoughts and nothing more. We have become parodies and parrots, with no originality. We talk, we create. To what end? In this case, the system gags us again. How pathetic is that! That we allow the gag on our liberty in the real world to closet us in the virtual world! Where we are headed, I wonder!

Hopefully ‘To a future or to the past, to a time when thought is free, when men are different from one another and do not live alone, to a time when truth exists and what is done cannot be undone’.

And thus I bury my originality by plagiarizing George Orwell. Thus, we all, generation after generation, in this futile attempt to be original, do nothing but remain closeted and ape the words of the greater ones.

The sparrow

Sparrow frets,

Twigs, sticks,

It frantically searches.

Needs more, a lot more,

To build her nest,

Her lovely home.

She smiles,

Her eyes grin,

As the light breeze

Ruffles,

The feathery womb,

Tingling the wee eggs.

Beak quivers,

Her colors sparkle,

Heart somewhere far,

Where he is,

Of whose she is!

Twigs? Nay, love made

Her nest divine.

Sparrow, she chirps,

Happily,

Eagerly sings him home.

From afar,

(There, those spots,

See them?)

Happily chirping his love,

To sparrow not her.

Sparrow sinks,

A hundred stones,

Million screams,

Drowns her heart.

Doesn’t cry,

Nor weeps.

Off she flies,

Off to his nest,

The other’s nest.

He,

Berates disapproval,

Voices displeasure,

Anger.

Sparrow, she doesn’t care,

Not now.

The eggs, she lays,

One by one,

One by one,

At his feet.

‘Off, I say,

Push them-

Off your nest.

Break them now,

I don’t care.

I fly,

High and away,

Seek skies beyond,

Dreams beyond nests,

Dreams beyond you.’

Dreams beyond nests.

On democracy and its reality.

There was a feature on a prominent news channel today about mass adulteration of milk in Mumbai. It was shown how they carefully open hundreds of milk packets and replace the milk with water. Apparently milk adulteration is a non bailable offence. I have often noticed that in such cases the media tends to concentrate on the harm caused by such ‘anti social elements’. It makes me wonder how far we would go using laws and security as solutions to problems that lie at the roots of the society. Do we ever pause to wonder how desperate a person should be to turn him to such activities? Does the Govt provide jobs or rehabilitation in such cases? Are second chances given instead of labeling them as criminals? What we do not remember is that this is an illness which strikes at the whole system. Now, we have two choices. We can take immediate steps to cure the system or we can take preventive measures. And I say both are necessary. Laws and force aren’t going to be enough to deter a person from engaging in wrongful activities in the future. It is because of some simple reasons. One, our population is becoming larger and larger. True, the growth rate is slowing down, but still it is a long way from stabilizing. There is a constant demand on the resources of the nation by the populace. Since agriculture has ceased to be a viable means of income and since globalization has given an impetus to the service sector, naturally the rural to urban immigration is more. Once the migrants reach the destination society, they exert more pressure on the framework without any scaffolding from the system. They need money. Two, global warming. Seems silly? Well, in the coming years more and more people…millions will be pushed down the gutters of poverty. The Ganga plains will dry up slowly. How will the system feed all these people? The British did nothing during the various famines India witnessed during their reign. Lakhs perished. Now, this is a democracy and millions will perish by starvation. There is nothing we can do to avoid it. We can try and postpone the catastrophe. But I doubt if we can stop it by the looks of the complete indifference of the system keepers. Three, plain apathy of this generation. The present generation which idolizes nepotism, vindicates consumerism and are products of complete brain muting hardly care what happens at the lowest rungs of the society. So what if Dalits are still made to bear inhuman torture? So what if their ACs take much more energy than fans in a climate where people are dying of heat stroke? Their lives are comfortable in the nuances of Prada, Pepsi and Twitter. 

We are at the crossroads here. And we are taking all the wrong turns. Without exception we know which ones are the right ones. But we refuse to. We know that people cannot be approached as problems that have to be solved. They have to be approached as people. The Govt says, the FICCI says that we need to build infrastructure in the Maoist controlled areas so that people can be empowered. Now the right question is why is the FICCI concerned other than to make sure ‘development’ proceeds along the lines they draw? We build bigger storage facilities, store more wheat when people are starving and instead of exporting the necessary quota, we import. The facilities will get bigger and bigger. Who benefits? I don’t know. All I know is that democracy has ceased to be democratic. It has ceased to be people centric.

Agnes Repplier once wrote ‘Democracy forever teases us with the contrast between its ideals and its realities, between its heroic possibilities and its sorry achievements.’ How true! How sorry!

Me.....Love and pain

So, well here I go again. When I wanted to write, I had two topics in mind, both running off in opposite directions. Obviously I chose only one. It is about me. You see, only when life throws something big at you that you even realize that you are capable of catching it without falling down. Or even if you do fall down, life seldom waits for you to get up and pick up the pieces. The winner is not the one who doesn’t fall, but the one who falls, gets up, brushes off his/her defeat and stares at life in its face. I realized this only a short while back. So I thought maybe I should write about what I have learnt in the past month. It may seem strange. But like I said, you need to wait till life taunts you cruelly to see how strong you are. As I write this, there is a strange sensation at the pit of my stomach. My critics tell me that my most endearing quality as a writer is the honesty of my words. Perhaps it is this honesty that I am scared of. Doesn’t matter. Consider it another of my rants. Where do I start?

Where better than love! I learnt that love is the strongest word in the dictionary. It is stronger than words, swords or the most evil cause that can be conjured by the human mind. I am not talking about the eternal love that beseeches you and lets you believe life is euphoric. I am talking about falling down, looking around helpless and suddenly everyone whom you thought had turned against you gives a hand. I had that moment a while back. There was not a murmur of disapproval, no questions, no accusations. However much I might’ve pained them, they held me tight without even a tremor of anger. Only my pain mattered to them. It is that love that brought me back to reality. The highlight of that period was when my brother with whom I was fighting for silly reasons, one who always expressed his love in the un-loveliest ways, put his arm over my shoulder and told me that he cannot be mushy, he doesn’t know how to be, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love me. This unconditional love gives me the protection that I thought I could get from an ephemeral infatuation.

Then I learnt that no matter what I won’t crumble. I considered myself to be too fragile which I am not. I have strength in me which originates from my heart. Somehow, my heart throbs are stronger than ever. And now, they beat only for me. That liberates me. After all, goddesses need gods, not mediocre human beings. (Didn't mean to say I'm a goddess, but hinting at my self worth and who should be worthy of me.) I feel not like Virginia Woolf or Silvia Plath, but rather like Joan of Arc. I am ready to fight for what I believe till am burnt at stake.I am not going down as a coward or as a woman who weeps over her lost dreams. Dreams change. But I have only one life.

Third, I rediscovered the forces of nature. When earlier it was the vastness of the ocean that mesmerized me, now it is the wave. There was this one day when I was standing at the edge of the water allowing the waves to sweep past my feet. Then somehow I was drawn forward. I remember looking at the huge incoming wave and getting scared. I don’t know how to swim. What if I am pulled in? But I stood there, my heart beating fast, wanting to run back to safety. When the wave crashed, it swept past me, higher than my waist and pulled back with the same force. And I was still standing. It might seem trivial. But it was wonderful to me. When the next big wave came, I told myself – Look at it, those are your fears; you can either run or face them. If you run, you remain safe, but you remain scared and scarred. Face them, the salt heals your wounds, but whether or not you fall, you remain true.

Around ten to fifteen such waves later, I was standing still, drenched to my bones. But still standing.

Then I learnt something. You can’t build reality on passion. Passion is something to fly on, not to build on. Passion doesn’t earn trust. It is transitory and momentary. Love is not. Love holds. And the funniest thing is, the passion had never earned trust. All the promises of taking care and protection held from me the truth that i didn't need to be protected. I have done that my whole life without flinching and holding fast to my courage of conviction. Had the trust been earned, I would still be crying over losses, not happy that I escaped my soul’s death. For now, I cease running. No nightmares. Now I know that safety and that light becomes me. Something I have to spread, not extinguish. Yes, it is hard. When you strip naked to your soul and then try and get the whole system to work again. The snake's head keeps popping up and asking 'why?' 'why?' 'why?'. The snake of hatred. It is hard to find the anti-venom to its poison which tries to invade my heart. The only protection is my purity. My love. I cannot hate. Simple truth - I don't need to hate to love this world or feel loved. And that frees me.

So yes, i learnt quite a few things over the last month. And I'm happy I did. Because for the first time in 21 months, I'm actually alive.

Didn’t Maya Angelou say something like ‘We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated.'?

Heart Beat

Mend a broken heart;

Stuck it in a box,
Clamped it shut.
Sat on it till
The screams waned, but,
Unforeseen,
In one moment
The clamp came undone.

Nursing the agony,
Pieced it together,
Glued as one.
A stubborn little crack,
Vainly was I filling
When it shattered again.

Amend a broken heart;

I sat by it,
Cried memories,
And smiled regrets.
It laughed and laughed,
At my helpless sighs,
Frozen tears.

As with a friend,
Tried logic,
Reminded the betrayal,
Scolded at the unworthy hurt,
Useless questions.
Ignore, ignore
I whispered-
His name,
In the lub-dubs
That grew louder.

With patches of pain,
Stitched up what was left.
The last pull of
My last stitch,
The needle of anger-
It pricked my soul.

I dropped my heart.

The scattered beats,
The million resonances,
I gathered with trembling hands.
Among the remnants
Of divine hate,
Set fire to it.

And as the last embers dimmed,
I felt my heart beat.
My heart beats.

Cease

I cease to be,
I cease to be her,
Who I was
And will be!

I cease to be the rain,
The sunshine,
The rising moon,
And the eternal tear drop.

I cease to be love,
Hatred and regret,
Calming whispers,
The ferocious tempest.

I cease to be the saint,
The healer and the demon,
I cease, I cease.
I cease to be.

I cease to be everything,
But I!

On a Women's Day.

It is yet another Women’s Day. The centennial actually. How wonderful! A day signifying all the glory and ‘empowerment’ of women. It is today that my attention turned to some incidents in no way connected, yet somehow entwined. First off, in 82 years of the ‘prestigious’ Academy Awards’ history, a woman won in the Best Director category. I was musing over the hurdles she might’ve faced as a woman and whether a Kathryn Bigelow would’ve emerged from the Indian soil, who stays in India and takes films of political importance. Right at that moment, I got a text message from my best friend wishing me a happy woman’s day. Suddenly I’m lost. Not because I’m not happy that somebody remembers that 3 billion people in this world exist, but because they need a day to be reminded so. My housekeeper cum cook asks me what she should make for breakfast and again, my randomly coherent brain leaps in her direction. She woke up as usual. She works for around 18 hours a day. Does she know that gender signifies anything special in this society and that’s why her sons can berate her for not getting the lunch ready in time? Even though she is the main bread winner of her family, she is treated as a second class member. Is she aware she deserves more? Unfortunately, like most of the three billion, she is not. If there is no water in the tap, she has to wake up earlier and go to the road side tap. Easier, I think. Considering the fact that women and girls have to walk miles for two pots of water everyday. So what if her uterus tilted due to some accident and every time she has sex, it pains and her husband still uses her irrespective of her medical condition, causing her more pain? Women in Congo are raped with sticks and guns so that their insides are torn apart and their bladders burst. She has it relatively easy. Alright, so let’s leave my housekeeper there. Let’s go to another extremely poignant peace of news. At the national consultation on access to justice, relief and rehabilitation of rape victims organized by the Women and Child Development Ministry, CJI said that due respect must be given to the rape victim’s autonomy whether she could marry the rapist if so offered. I’m at a loss here to understand what this ‘autonomy’ is. It reinforces the idea that patriarchal protection of women is more important than justice as established by the law of the land. It conveys to the potential rapist that his moral obligation is diluted. He can now rape a woman on the possibility that if he becomes her husband, he gets the legal right to rape her. What kind of autonomy is that? There is no freedom in choosing to live a life in hell with someone who violated you or being support less in society. What are we telling the ordinary woman here? I’m with the UP CM here. Financial compensation for rape victims is the most plausible justice. Well, it seems crude. But let us analyze the system a bit. The major social objectives of justice in a rape case should be to empower the victim and punish the rapist. Empowerment in a society like ours doesn’t come with slogans and moral courage. It comes with equipping an ordinary woman to face the morrow with confidence. Telling the woman that there is such an option undermines the scope of law and empowerment. Take the case of Sushama Tiwari, a 25 year old UP Brahmin girl who married an Ezhava man from Kerala only to have death snatch him away after seven months of marriage in the form of the ever-so-brutal honor killing. He was killed along with his parents and two other minor family members. The perpertrators? Sushama’s brother and his four friends. Although the Bombay HC awarded death sentences to them, the SC in Dec ’09 changed it into 25 years life imprisonment. Well, I know it feels like I’m on a roll here judging justice. But, like all my other rants, just bear with it. So, we would think that Sushama who escaped by a hair while pregnant and who is tired after all this struggling, would stop. No. She is at loggerheads with the SC, condemning its verdict. The society would think- ‘Say; the girl wants her brother to die too? What kind of a woman is she?’ And I would say- the right kind. The kind that awoke to this mad world and decided that she wants to change her bit of it through her convictions. Now, what gives her this courage? Is it love? Is it education? I’m not sure. I feel the latter is the firm base beneath her. Education gives the woman better odds of finding herself and standing up to what she believes. As I’m writing this, I cannot but wonder what the use of my intellectual enema is. The poor Mr Hamid Ansari was practically dragged away from his podium because the democracy in India cannot see eye to eye in one of the most historic Bills till date. The Women’s Bill is causing such a furore and for all the wrong reasons. Yes, I do agree that reservation should be there within the reservation. I do agree that UPA is trying to make this their NREGA in the next elections. But, Acts can always be amended. That’s why Parliament exists. Instead of waiting for some more years for such a bill to be tabled again (after the usual numerous commissions and reports), logic is in passing it now with precise debates and considerations and amending it later. But, it is not the objective of the fuss, is it? It is not an amendment that matters, it is the bill itself. So, yes, hundred years pass and another hundred will pass. May every Women’s Day be this eventful, because it seems man sees not the bosom but the heart and woman sees not the womb but the head only one day of the year. The question remains though…. When the planet is all sucked dry by us and we return to the cave, will the only reason woman gets the fair share of the meal be because she carries the child or because she gathers firewood? Madness, madness.