ode to women

Eulogy for Girl X

Feminism is not a dirty word.

Feminism means you either have a vagina and believe that doesn't make you inferior or you know someone with a vagina and believe they're not inferior.

A vagina is not an invitation.

Your body is not an invitation. In fact, it's members-only and the members are whoever you'd like them to be.

That means you can still take pride in your long legs, your shapely calves.

You can love your high breasts, your slightly low but large ones. You can wear flattering necklines. You can accentuate your waist, or your butt, or your boobs. All totally your call.

You can choose to let the person who gives you tingles rest their hand on your knee. You can let them make love to you or make love to them. You can kiss them in the back of an auto rickshaw till you're both cross eyed with desire.

People might look at you. Chances are, that they will. Don't let that stop you. Looks can't hurt you.

Wear your body like a banner. Let your vagina be a badge of merit. Sure, you can only pee sitting down, but you have magical things going on over there.

The human body is a wonderful thing. All of it. Innies or outies.

If someone grabs you, don't go along with them because you don't want to make a scene. Make sure everyone knows your body is YOUR body. You give it pleasure, you feed it, you nurture it. Your body belongs to you.

If someone grabs you, yell. If someone lays a hand on your beautiful members-only breasts, tell them your breasts are your own. It might need a little knee to the groin to get this message across, but you are only to be admired from a distance.

You are a feminist, not because you hate men, but because you love women. You are a woman who believes in equal rights--including walking down the street in that fuck-off red dress--you are a man who thinks women can walk down the street doing whatever they like, as long as they're not harming anyone else.

You will not be raped today.

awesome, huh? i wish all girls and boys were made to study this in indian schools..

rape is a sickening crime. being super protective of personal space (mental and physical), the idea of some man thinking he has the RIGHT to violate a woman’s body, is something i cannot fathom, no matter any mind twisting contortions. WOMEN who make comments like, ‘she was asking for it’, be that rape or molesting, are perhaps even more unfathomable. living in india, i have unfortunately come across too many of such men and women.

compulsive confessions also has another post titled ‘why delhi gets away with rape’. the little that i read was enough to churn my stomach.. oh india, when will you not make me cringe?

a sri lankan woman was gang raped on january 23, and a colleague wrote the following poem:

A Woman for Other Women
Basil Fernando

Dressed in Red, nine older men
Wearing Wigs, sat, looking down.
In the middle, in two rows, sat
Men and women, mostly young.
Around sat the onlookers
In the large hall of the Supreme Court.
One by one, those in the middle
walked to the microphone.
In the middle of the hall
Each one read the solemn oath.
Came to turn, one more.
A young girl dressed in a black gown
Over her white sari and blouse.
In a clear voice, well modulated,
She read her oath ,
bowed and returned to her seat…..
Proud and happy inside.

Years she has walked the Hulsdorf hills,
Full of ideas and dreams,
That she will take her place
Equal to everyone else.
To fight injustice, a woman warrior,
Fearless and upright.
Listening to learned teachers,
Debating within herself
What was right
What was wrong.
In the books she read
What was “the general will”
Wondering what Rousseau meant.

All these pictures
Rushed to her mind
As now she faced her client
Lying in a hospital bed.
A forty-five year old mother of three,
Gang-raped in the early morning,
As she went to work,
Picked up by three-wheeler drivers.
What shall she tell those red-clothed men?
What do the books say?
What will bring justice
To this devastated woman?
Where is “the general will”
She wondered.

**
on february 14, there will be a global rising of women (and men) to demand an end to violence against women. you can check out the events near you and rise up with them.

table of hope

i really liked the idea behind joey velasco’s painting, ‘table of hope’, which is a wonderful twist to the original 'Last Supper' painting, as well as his documentary on the painting, the models and the inspiration.

while velasco’s inspiration for the painting came from his own children,

“who were being picky about their food; “So, I thought of providing them with a visual reminder, strong and challenging, of their blessings of life and to appreciate what was on the table.” Velasco went to different squatter areas of Manila to seek his models, where he fed the children noodles and juice, and took their photos unnoticed. When his painting was complete, he hung it on his dining room wall.”

 the inspiration for his documentary, 'Canvas of Society', came from the malnourished children of the painting:

“The subjects of my painting were observing me. I could no longer escape them. They became missionaries to me, and took me on a spiritual journey.”

you can view the documentary here and here, and read my review of it here.
 

a space of my own

i’m back! and it feels great. logging on to blogger felt like opening the door to my childhood room.. the template may be dated, but it’s home. this is my space, my corner of the vast universe where i can say what i want, where i can vent, where i can articulate and share and organize all those random jumbled thoughts running through my head at any given moment.

i write largely for myself, but always knowing that i have a small audience reading.. so yes, i write for them too. that doesn’t change what i write, perhaps just how i write it.

home is where the heart is
and my heart is filled with ink,
waiting to be spilt
in patterns and designs that share my soul with yours
 
i started this blog as a way to help me articulate, get over my fear of public speaking.. since then, it has become much more like a journal, a room for me to live in on my own, amidst all my thoughs ad words. it also became one room amongst many others, where a few travellers would come and pause, and perhaps share their journey with me. i found several online communities through blogging, for which i will always be thankful.

here’s to more writing, reading and sharing!

motherhood and parental love

the moment i became a mother, was when i understood parental love. when my mom stayed up with me to rock my unconsolable twins, when she woke up at odd hours to feed me various nourishing concoctions, when she shared with me her experience with her first born; that was when i appreciated and truly felt her presence as a mother. she was my anchor in the sea of nursing, wailing, pain and exhaustion that i was buffeted by in the early weeks. she told me that her mother did the same for her children, and now she was doing the same for mine.. the circles of motherhood hence continue..

when my dad came and bolstered my courage, when he told me that i was given two blessings that i now had to do shukr for by bringing them up in the best way possible, i again felt blanketed in parental love. it is like a security blanket, one that will never let you fall. no matter what, no matter my tantrums, my idiosyncracies, my antisocial behaviour, i KNOW that my parents will always love me, they will always be on my side, that i will always find a refuge in their presence.

sure, i might have known all this before, but being a parent myself changes the perception. i know it more deeply now, i can feel it in my very essence, because i feel the same way about my babies. i imagine my love for the twins will only grow, and so the love my parents must feel for me is ten fold.

my pregnancy was not easy, and it took quite an emotional toll on me. giving birth had its own issues, and by the time i was ready to come home from the hospital i was in sore need of not just some TLC, but bucketfuls of unconditional love. i was panicky, mildly depressed and in constant tears. i was terrified of the responsibility of taking care of two tiny babies who never -so it seemed- stopped crying. in fact, i have to admit that the early days of mothering were not at all like the golden moments people describe, and i am very thankful to those who shared their own un-golden experiences.

i started reading momma zen by karen miller a month later, and that helped a lot too.

baraka described the process of becoming a mother wonderfully, capturing all the angst and joy it entails:

Every mother has two birthing tales:

One, that of giving birth to her child, is shared. The other, of giving birth to herself, of becoming a mother and all the ways that smashes into and fractures everything else she is, of being broken open and made anew, is one that takes a lifetime to understand.

this is the first of what i hope will be many posts on motherhood and parenting. i look forward to this lifetime journey with my twin boys :)

women and obama

i loved reading bits of president obama’s speech at the 18th Annual National Issues Conference held by the Democratic National Committee’s Women’s Leadership Forum. mel has a nice post on it, describing the ‘strides the Obama Administration has made on behalf of women’: 

"The Affordable Care Act has brought health care services to 45 million women. He signed into law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act ensuring women receive equal pay for equal work. He has forced employers to create space and time in the workplace for expressing breast milk for breastfeeding mothers. And he didn’t just recognize women as part of a campaign slogan — he appointed eight women to cabinet-rank positions, appointed a woman to be third in command of the country, and nominated two women to the Supreme Court (a branch of government which has only had four women total in its 220 year history)."

my fav quotes: 

And as long as I’m President, we are going to keep moving forward. You can count on that. You don’t have to take my word on it – you’ve got my signature on it. Because something like standing up for the principle of equal pay for equal work isn’t something I’m going to have to “get back to you on” – it’s the first law I signed. 

---

Women are not an interest group. Women shouldn’t be treated that way. Women are half this country and half of its work force. You’re 80% of my household if you count my mother-in-law… and I always count my mother-in-law. 

POWERFUL stuff. so nice to hear a politician, a president say that. as mel said, 

"And in saying this, pointed out how there are no such things as “women’s issues” because what affects women affects many other people. If we don’t earn enough money, we’re not spending it in stores, and therefore, equal pay is an economic issue, especially for businesses. If we have discrepancies in health care coverage, it affects the people who depend on us, becoming a family issue."

india, and so many other countries, have a looongg way to go..

books

i haven’t blogged about books lately, so here are the last four books i read: 

the wedding officer by anthony capella 

a wonderful, light read. history, romance and food, all in one scrumptious mix. set in italy during wwII, it describes the growing relationship between a british officer tasked with preventing soldiers from marrying italian brides, and an italian woman who cooks for him. i will definitely check out capella for further light reads! 

hullabaloo in the guava orchard by kiran desai 

another light read, more of a novella than a novel. it was refreshing as a satire of indian society, a nice change from my usual choice of genre, but nothing i would necessarily recommend unless satire and magical realism is your thing. there is no comparison to ‘inheritance of loss’. 

calcutta exile by bunny suraiya 

i reviewed this book for another blog, check it out here.

the reluctant fundamentalist by mohsin hamid 

i no longer recall why, but when this novel first made its debut, i decided i would avoid reading it. i do remember the title putting me off, and i’m sure i had a glib conversation with someone about it, and after that it never made its way to my reading list again. until it was recently gifted to me, in my book drought phase. so i read it, and was pleasantly surprised. the novel is in fact highly engaging and intelligent, and not what you may expect from its title. the only aspect to annoy me slightly was that the entire novel consists of a monologue. but even that is undertaken with great skill by the author. his other books are definitely on my to read list! 

some quotes:

“I was, in four and a half years, never an American; I was immediately a New Yorker.” 

“I resolved to look about me with an ex-janissary’s gaze.. Seen in this fashion I was struck by how traditional your empire appeared. Armed sentries manned the check post at which I sought entry; being of a suspect race I was quarantined and subjected to additional inspection; once admitted I hired a charioteer who belonged to a serf class lacking the requisite permissions to abide legally and forced therefore to accept work at lower pay; I myself was a form of indentured servant whose right to remain was dependent upon the continued benevolence of my employer.” 

“As a society, you were unwilling to reflect upon the shared pain that united you with those who attacked you. You retreated into myths of your own difference, assumptions of your own superiority. And you acted out these beliefs on the stage of the world, so that the entire planet was rocked by the repercussions of your tantrums..” 

“..it is not always possible to restore one’s boundaries after they have been blurred and made permeable by a relationship: try as we might, we cannot reconstitute ourselves as the autonomous beings we previously imagined ourselves to be. Something of us is now outside, and something of the outside is now within us.”

identities and types

a comment on a friend’s photo, about not thinking of her and her uni friends as being ‘family type people’ at that time (she is now married with two daughters), got me thinking. i’ve only known this friend since she was married with an 8-month daughter who i babysat as she attended her grad classes. her life before that is largely unknown to me, except for brief glimpses through conversation. to me, she will always be that cool grad student mom, who carried her daughter around in a carrier as comfortably as other students wore their backpacks. she was the smart japanese student who was now navigating life in cairo, living amidst her husband’s large egyptian family.

of course, what i knew of her was so limited. our conversations generally focused on our immediate surroundings: auc, the day care her daughter was at, cairo, her daughter, kids, our few common friends, and sometimes we would talk of japan and hk. she rarely talked much about her marriage, her dreams, her future plans.

**
we all must carry so many identities, perceptions and dreams within us, with them merging and separating as we grow and embrace new experiences, new challenges. i know that as a teenager, i was SURE that i would be married with kids by the time i was 30, but this was somehow separated from my wanting to be a writer and travelling the world. the latter was where my energies were focused, what was ‘real’, while the former was just.. something that would happen while i went about my ‘real’ life.

today, being married and 30, i can say that there is nothing more real than this. i foresee this to be the case for the next few years, as our family grows. perhaps later, my identity and role will evolve yet again..

**
her comment reminded me of another comment, made by another friend, a few years ago. she said that before she got married, before she had her daughter, she was largely oblivious to kids. any kid sitting next to her would get practically no response from her. now this was from someone who i saw as good with kids, who spent a considerable amount of time with her young nephew and niece, regularly babysitting them when their parents were out of town. she was naturally friendly with other kids at the mosque; she could make them laugh, have a conversation with them. none of these were skills i possessed.

i like kids. but i am not naturally comfortable with them. it takes me time to build up a rapport with them, which is why i am good only with my nieces and nephew.

her comment made me feel better. if her skills and comfort had been developed, mine could too. i assume (and hope) that this development will increase several fold when i have my own kids!

in other words, 'type' can always change..