The moment has come when I change...

From being a spectator, to being a participant. From wondering how people let themselves get bullied, to thinking how to prevent myself from getting bullied without hurting sentiments. It’s tough, I finally agree. And I now see why others succumb.

It’s tough not because one is relatively weak, but because one is never strong enough to hurt those one loves.

Marriage -- an institution that has been coming down the ages, with its own set of rules, its own stamp of patriarchy and I am finally going to step into it, with my principles of an emancipated woman intact but my actions unsteady under the assault of emotions unfelt before.

Suddenly I am surrounded by his relatives, who obviously love me because he loves me but who also expect me to behave in a certain way or do certain things befitting the bahu. Well, it’s not as bad as it sounds. There is no “ghunghat” or “you can’t work”, not that they would have gone far with any such demands, but there are assumptions such as “you can’t take off the nowa”!

Kind of weird, but I couldn’t say a thing. Nowa is the sign of a married woman and linked to the husband’s life by prejudice and tradition. Even I felt weak under the strength of the belief.

I cursed myself for my weakness. A girl known for calling a spade, a spade, I was shocked at my hypocrisy. To compensate, I thought -- well let them say what they want to, I’ll do as I wish.

But really, let’s face it. I was thinking like a loser. The truth was I couldn’t say a thing, firstly out of respect, secondly out of fear and thirdly because it was after all only a nowa, a bangle. Now I sound like the Saraf girl who stopped wearing green after marriage and told me very calmly “I can wear it once I have a son, it’s only a colour”.

Its’ not only a bangle just like it’s not only a colour. It’s about principles. Why does the society require a woman to wear or not wear certain things to show the presence or absence of a man or son in her life?

But, sigh, I am shackled too. I might have the comfort of knowing that I can after all do as I wish because my doing does not depend on something as abstract as “once I have a son”, but I still have a problem.

I don’t want to do as I wish, concealed from the people who wish me to do it otherwise. They need to be told why things are being done or not done in the accepted way. Only, now I realize this cannot be done in my usual matter-of-fact way.

But it will be done nonetheless. I will make the little change I promised I would in a woman’s life, in her state… and I will begin with myself.

As honest as it can get

I find a pattern that I want to break. It’s the same story repeated over time, at different locations, with different people and the same me. Somewhere down the lane I even stopped blaming others. I agree it was time I did, but there is a certain bliss in stupidity, in the pretense of ignorance. It offers a safe haven one would not want to exit, but exit one must. What stares at me are faults, shortcomings, the existence of which is known to me to the extent of the generic abstract intangibles they are. Beyond that, once again, I move blindfolded, groping and cursing others for putting things in my way.

And I suffer loneliness, an isolation I wish I could leave behind but I can’t make up my mind as to whether this is a curse or a gift. If I can assure myself of this being a greedy need, then I would be happy. No, I am not sad but I am happy only in pockets. Is it wrong to want all my pockets to be full with things I want? I crave for bonding as I see it around me but what to do to satisfy the craving, that’s something I don’t know. And maybe, I don’t need to.

A little bird tells me it’s better this way and I have half a mind to believe it. I just pray for conviction to reach me faster than despondence.

Just random

A conventional picture, a conventional thought -- a long tunnel ending in the promise of light without, the belief of warmth, of visibility… and then there is the sudden crash. In the whirl that slowly sucks you in, the light that was so real suddenly becomes a distant star – taunting and unreachable.
A look around somehow always convinces that each person caught in that whirl will find a way out, will reach the arms of security while you wont.

Visiting a graveyard

The Hosur Road Cemetery

It's one of those things I always wanted to do. It will probably sound weird but it’s true. I still remember a story a girl in the boarding told me about All Soul’s Day.

It was early morning, she said, when she and her family and many other families went to pay their respects to the departed. The graveyard lit up with candles. A gust of wind suddenly snuffed all the candles, except for a lone one — the one my friend had lit in her brother’s memory.

This picture has stayed with me and finally last Saturday I visited a graveyard.

It wasn’t a morning Dawn had spoken of, nor were there any solemn candles. But the calmness was the same, the serenity also similar and… something more — so many stories untold.

A small granite grave of a two-day old child spoke of the grief of the mother barely out of her labor pain, the pretty picture of an 18-year old girl spoke of untimely deaths, of accidents, bricks being removed from an old grave to make place for kin of the constancy of it all, of the pattern of life while fenced in larger areas with one grave and place for more spoke of the sadness of truth, of inevitability, of times now when bookings open not only for a place under the sun but also for a space under ground.

There was more… the stamp of patriarchy where every woman who died was identified as w/o, her parents not anymore a part of her being and men remained proud individuals, needing no identification except the worldly qualifications acquired at earthly institutions.

Silence took over conversation as we left the graveyard. For some in the car it was probably many of the departures before the final arrival while for us it was a reminder of the day we would be reduced to ashes…

On the happier side of it, if I live a full life with relatives, children and grandchildren rallying around me, I will probably be able to avoid the limitation of being just somebody’s wife.
(Don’t know why I felt like adding this last bit)