My Son

My son,
savior, my beginning and end,
dawn of welcome you have
brought to my frail being, long
awaited pardon and eager joy.

Look,
she slept crying, your sister, the
little bundle born with you, an
unsure dream of life, her share of
my milk resounding in your burps.

She
will die, death croons softly to
her, neglect and hunger smile
gently. Sleep, my girl, to your end,
before HIS arms sing their lullaby.

Should I lie that HE loved you?

My son,
she has gone, you live and shall
love, life will carry you forth in its
glory, wrapped in your mother’s
gratitude, saved from HIS arms.
Saved by you.

This one is about men... technically.

There has been an argument that I have often come across- that women have it easy. Women have to just take care of the home and do nothing heavyweight. It is the man’s responsibility to protect the woman even if she is capable of protecting herself. I have encountered this while dealing with some of my friends, completely wonderful male friends who insist on ‘taking care’ of me and some other friends who rant about how they are upset about their wives or girl friends or sisters being somewhere alone. It is like men need to a pair of eyes sub-attached to all the women in their lives.  I have noticed there are certain qualities which are overrated in today’s world and some qualities which are quite ignored and need to be cultivated in today’s man. 

Let us consider chivalry and protectiveness. I dislike immensely when a guy opens the door for me just because I am a woman. True, there are the polite ones who open the door for every person with them. Why offer a seat to a woman when she has two legs which were meant for her to stand with just the same as a guy? Chivalry in the romantic sense of the word makes no sense today. It is not about treating women as if they are fragile creatures, mainly used for decorative purposes. It is not about getting manipulated by a woman who cries on purpose (I have never understood why most men don’t like to see women cry. Perhaps it evokes a sense of incompetence in them, since tears are a measure of unfulfilled needs.). It is certainly not about holding back because the opponent is a woman. If you will react strongly to a man who offended you in the same measure as me, react to me in the same measure, I don’t mind. In this age, chivalry can be accorded to both sexes. Women should be able to say no the perks that society offers them just because they are women and men should stop trying to rescue the damsel in distress. Chivalry should become more equitable in its distribution. It is more about women allowing men to express their emotions without feeling irritated that men should not be sensitive as much as it is about men allowing women to fight the dragon themselves. After all, swords and lances are not made in women-repellant material.

Then there is the responsibility part. In a typical household, where the man is held responsible for the woman, he is the main bread winner of the family. Unless in a household the woman earns more than the man (which is quite rare) or the woman’s career profile is publicly better than the man’s. In either case, ego-conflict is a strong possibility because of the traditional gender cocoons. Decisions are attributed to him because traditionally he has been making them, not because he is more capable of them. Hence bad decisions end up affecting the whole system. This position inevitably puts both power and uninvited responsibility on a person by default of his sex without considering his efficiency. There is a constant pressure to be successful and to take care of his family while the same is not expected of the woman to the same extent. She is however, supposed to keep the family together. The roles can be thus summed up as the negotiating diplomat for the woman and the responsible autocrat for the man. It is like a binary code. There is no half, just either or the other, which automatically puts the gender fluid in a conflict mode because there is no sharing of responsibility. This translates into every man-woman relationship. Sons are responsible for their mothers, brothers for sisters and male friends who make sure you don’t step on the puddle on the road.

Now we come to sensitivity. I remember one of my friends being disgusted at her male friend when he cried in front of her. While sympathy is attributed to the feminine, she experienced disgust instead of sympathy. Men and women are trained to expect no expressiveness from men. If someone dies, they shouldn’t cry, they should bear all the brunt without letting others know their troubles. This system is not fair to either sex. Cautiousness is termed as cowardice.  Boys are taught to be tough, toughness being associated with power and power in turn keeps the status quo. Every single quality absent in a stereotypical man is made so by generations of conditioning, with mothers, wives, sisters and daughters carefully supporting the system which functions as a factory to produce mechanized versions of humanity, which will become ‘his’ story. In a sense, it is this perception of power and the apparent helplessness of the female that leads man to deliberately use aggression against women as a tool to control them. 

  

All in all, we teach our boys not to bend or break, but without giving them an adequate support system. We tell them to be capable and successful, to be strong and unyielding. We teach them that they have to be responsible towards women, to give women what they want (without understanding that the wants are society prescribed.) and when they deviate a bit out of the culturally accepted level of normality, we punish them by taking away their self esteem.  We need drastic deconstruction of what is feminine and what is masculine. We need the individual reconstruct for him/herself. Gender should be a study for both the sexes, not just females. It seems that mostly women are interested in gender roles because women are the oppressed lot. It is as if men take it for granted that gender is something that does not concern them. They hold power. True, if a discussion comes up in a group and somebody asks who among the men care for women’s empowerment; every hand goes up, without knowing why empowerment is needed or that they need to be empowered too. Why do men need to address gender then? Because if they were interested in how gender roles work and how they are limited by them, there is the chance that women and men will become partners in the actual sense, in fighting against  pre-defined gender rules. And that is what we not. Not the polarization that is happening now because of the power shift.   

  

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.