Your scarf spoke nine tongues.
I failed to know the purpose, seek the language
of splinters, shards, lazy salsas.
I thought the skies bowed to you even
as they turned mauve. Awe
filled my lungs, I breathed.
Shards slow danced, I felt your smile.
It smelt of something else.
Your ducking shadows traded with liquid limelight.

*******

“You were born to silence”, sang whispers
of the one who bore me for ten crescent milk moons.
And so I breathed in the silence
of the damp Oaxacan earth,
the silence of nopals, moriche, cacao fields,
the silence of achiotes as they painted my soul
and I yearned for harvest;
the silence by the creek
after cowbirds flocked to nests,
silence in the pauses of a distant merengue,
silence in the nook of an ancient
pottery tavern where gods were made
by hands.
Silence…

*******

I felt the cold of asbestos.
Much after, as I shuddered
on a sore bit of land
that reeked of sewage, puddles
of worm-infested waters
inching into my mouth, slower than a drip, I dreamt
of barbed wires, nine unspoken red fire fangs, fumes
from a neighbor maquiladora. I even dreamt
of the kneader I was meant to be. My heart
felt the weight of silence.

***

Divya Rajan’s work has been published in Poetic Chicago anthology, Apparatus, Read This, Gloom Cupboard, Danse Macabre, The Times of India, Femina, Asian Cha, and many others. She has been a recipient of a Pushcart Prize nomination in addition to other writing awards, and currently lives in Chicago where she co- edits poetry at The Furnace Review. She has recently finished work on her first chapbook, Chanting Silhouettes.

The above poem is an ekphrastic work inspired by artist Judithe Hernandez’s work titled, The Border, exhibited at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago. More details about the Juarez- Chihuahua crisis can be viewed at The Juarez Project.

INDIA HAS NO

The 1999 Supreme Court case of Sakshi v Union of India was the first legal attempt to challenge inadequacies of the provisions in the IPC to make CSA an offence. The petitioner urged the Court to alter the definition of sexual intercourse to include all kinds of sexual penetration into any type of orifice of the body, not just peno-vaginal penetration. The 2004 judgment in this case admitted that there is wide prevalence of CSA, but did not alter the definition of ‘rape’. “An exercise to alter the definition of rape… by a process of judicial interpretation is bound to result in a good deal of chaos and confusion and will not be in the interest of society at large…,” the Court said. In response the Law Commission of India published its 172^nd report which recommended that the offence of ‘rape’ be substituted by ‘sexual assault’, which would make it gender-neutral and bring into its fold a range of sexual offences beyond forced peno-vaginal penetration.

Thus we have the CLA, coming over half a decade after the judgment, although CSA has been given an infantile short shrift. In the CLA, ‘rape’ has been redefined as ‘sexual assault’ and includes penetration of any orifice on a woman’s body by any part of the man’s body or any other object. Consent remains the guiding factor to decide what qualifies as sexual assault.  The age of consent is fixed at 18 years. However, “when penetration is carried out for proper hygienic or medical purposes” it is not sexual assault – thus it allows for gross misuse as defense for medical personnel who can be perpetrators of CSA.

The CLA has a separate section (376C) on “sexual abuse of minors”. Unlike the section on sexual assault this section is gender neutral and lists a range of penetrations into any of the child’s bodily orifices by a man or a woman to constitute CSA. However, this section deems consent completely irrelevant. The problem with such a provision is that it could actually lead to criminalising consensual sexual acts between young people: if a 17-year-old girl has consensual sex with another boy of the same age, the boy is considered to have committed CSA. There could also be a situation where both can be perpetrators and victims at the same time. Children’s experiences of mutual sexual exploration or experimentation can potentially turn criminal under this provision. The IPC stipulates the age of criminal responsibility at 7 years. It’s paradoxical that by virtue of this law minors are capable of scheming and executing a crime at 7 years, but not capable of consenting to sex with someone of the same age till they are 18! The importance of protecting children from sexual abuse cannot be denied, however to criminalize expression of sexuality is a warped expression of conservative morality.

Unfortunately, CSA has also been understood only as penetrative sex in this section. The fact that CSA can take forms where contact or touch is not required (exposing or made to expose genitalia, showing pornography etc.) or where there is no penetration falls outside of the ambit of this section. Non-penetrative and non-touch CSA gets covered under Secs. 354 and 509 of the IPC (outraging the modesty of a woman, which only includes the girl child), though these sections remain woefully steeped in the discourse of female honour. Ideally, it should be included in a graded fashion under the sexual assault section in the CLA. The CLA also does not include incest and the processes of grooming that precede sexual contact in any case of CSA. The tokenistic insertion of this provision in the CLA does great disservice to the demand of child rights groups and the Sakshi petition for a separate and dedicated criminal law on CSA. Though the CLA gives considerable attention to punitive measures by increasing punishments and creating new crimes, a glaring omission is the absence of any provision for children with disabilities whose vulnerability to sexual abuse may be higher compared to other children.

In a state of legislative overdrive, even if the CLA amends the IPC it would mean little for victim-survivors of CSA and the amendments certainly cannot substitute the immediate need for a separate legislation on CSA.

(This piece was originally published in the New Indian Express, Chennai recently)

WERE I 17 AND A POT OF MUSH, “those three words” would mean something entirely different. But as an almost-32- year-old (ooh, how I love announcing an upcoming birthday ) who has seen a bit of life and the world, the three words that get a rise out of me are these: What Women Want.

It has been the title and subject matter of a movie. Blogadda recently declared it the topic of their weekly contest. Freud pondered the question before reportedly labeling women “the dark continent”. And I have a sneaking suspicion it was part of undergraduate coursework in Aristotelian times. What Women Want 101: Enlightening souls, one confused sucker at a time.

My question is: Why?

Why have we as women participated in our own mystification and perpetuated an image of womankind as being enigmatic, conflicted and unfathomable? According special status to women’s supposedly inscrutable desires is a huge honking excuse for men unwilling to make an effort to reach a basic level of understanding about their current/potential partners. It’s offensive to be thought of as so irrational as to be the subject of such pondering. Just like it isn’t a compliment for all women to be called emotional creatures. Is this the kind of importance we need to be at the receiving end of? That my needs are supposedly so divergent from a man’s strikes a false note somewhere.

It’s puzzling. Did I miss a memo? Don’t men want the usual suspects—health, happiness and fulfillment— too? Meaningful work, a social safety net, monetary comfort, interesting experiences, solitude, overall well-being, learning and personal growth, the opportunity to contribute to the planet, perhaps a partner/family of one’s own/casual relationships? Are these really gender-specific? Correct me if I’m wrong. I’m curious to learn whether there is a gender divide when it comes to human wants, so do share in the comments section and specify your gender. Until then, this niggling feeling of sweeping generalization and gross gender stereotyping won’t go away. If there is something I do want, it is for people to realize that it is frequently okay to divorce your gender. I write this as a person. And this is what I want.

The Initiation

Dear students and colleagues,

I am emailing to inform you that I will be taking the lead to organise a weekly 20-overs-a-side cricket match with tennis ball (our facilities don’t allow hard ball cricket yet) each Saturday morning, between 9 AM and 1 PM. We need at least 22 players for a proper 11-a-side contest. The idea is to mix students, faculty members and some campus-based non-teaching staff members in creating two teams on the spot every Saturday morning and to play with the gusto and spirit that die hard lovers of the game thrive on!!

So, please RSVP about your participation in this Saturday morning’s inaugural game to me. I hope to hear back from at least 22 of you so that we can have a rollicking start!! The plan is to make this Saturday morning tennis ball match a regular fixture that students and faculty will look forward to as a form of bonding, competing and… of course, exercising!

Cheers,

Prof. A (male)

————————————–

Dear Prof. A,

This sounds very exciting. I wonder too whether some bonding experience might also be organized that would enable the inclusion of female students and faculty, particularly considering that not only is sports generally played by men – but cricket in particular.

I am sure regulating female participates to the sidelines was never the intent – but nonetheless the side effect. I also understand how central cricket is to Indian culture. I hope to engage all faculty in this challenge.

Thanks.

Prof. B (female)

————————————–

Dear all,

I completely second Prof. B. Even the most declaredly gender neural spaces and categories – especially something like sports – turns male by default – so much so for cricket.

Warmly,

Prof. C (male)

————————————–

Dear all:

I’m excited to hear about Prof. A’s cricket plans. I won’t be able to make it this Saturday, but I’m looking forward to being a part of it from time to time on future Saturdays. I don’t think there’s a gender issue with having regular cricket games on campus. Prof. A’s initial email made it clear that all students were welcome.

I understand there was recently an all-female meeting of the Women’s Law Society (WLS), and a decision to only allow female students in the future. I don’t know that there’s any automatic problem with that, although it raises some serious concerns. This may be an area where there is room for discussion and formulation of a non-discrimination policy. At many universities, official student groups are not allowed to exclude any members of the student body based on sex, race, religion, etc. We may want to consider a policy here.

In any event, at this stage in the development of our university, it is important to foster a wide variety of student initiatives, to ensure that there are activities that appeal to a diversity of student interests. To that end, I am excited about both of these recent initiatives and I look forward to hearing about many more in the weeks and months to come.

Regards,

Prof. D (male)

————————————–

The Instigation

Dear Prof. B,

Very valid concerns indeed. The cricket we are planning will be competitive and fast, i.e. all male in likely composition. How about the Women’s Society you are forming getting together and deciding on sporting or other activities that can involve female students and staff over the weekend? I wish your endeavour good outcomes, especially considering that you are an athlete yourself.

Cheers,

Prof. A (male)

————————————–

Dear all:

Speaking from personal opinion:  I don’t think anyone’s slamming Prof. A for his love of cricket. I think the issue was more about disparate effect and institutional sensitivity. E.g., if the cricket match is the primary informal means of interaction between students and faculty, then we need to think about additional options.

Regarding the WLS, there are reasons of disparate effect and unique perspective that militate towards varying degrees of exclusion– as in almost all racial and religious societies. In my opinion, until the legal profession and educational system changes, arguments of reverse discrimination are misdirected, and take focus away from the purposes of such groups as the WLS. That said, any critical inquiry remains an important safeguard.

Best,

Prof. E (male)

————————————–

Dear all:

If more of us had been witness to the first meeting of the WLS (though that might have defeated the point), perhaps this discussion would have taken a different turn.  Luckily for me, since our research centre called the first meeting to session, I was able to attend it.  I was surprised at our large turnout, considering it was after a long day of classes and immediately after another meeting.  I was also surprised at the participation of every student in the room, something I have never quite been able to accomplish in the classroom.  And, I was surprised at what had drawn them to the meeting.  The students were so relieved, it seemed, to finally have a safe forum to discuss what had been going on in their lives, and on campus. They talked about the attitudes of male classmates and how the male students always assume females can’t do things, and that males can.  They talked about how they wanted to show the male students how prejudiced they sounded.

It is important for female students to have a space to meet, without judgment or interference.  Unfortunately, as Prof. E noted, we are in a society and a profession prone to exclusion.  The WLS is one way to help mitigate this.  Another is to foster an environment where females are included in the activities which bond faculty and students.  As someone who spent years being excluded from corporate golf, whiskey, and after-after parties, I can attest to this from experience:  what happens outside the classroom (or the boardroom) inevitably drives what happens in it.   If we exclude female students both from bonding activities and from even bonding together, we are fostering the patriarchy outside and inside the academic setting.

I think it is important to have stronger faculty-student relationships, as the first meeting of the WLS taught me.  I saw students who had never spoken up in class in an entirely new light.  I am sure a cricket match would work towards this too, for some people.  I just want to make sure that those whom it doesn’t work for, and those whom it might actually work against (those excluded for not being fast or competitive enough), have spaces and activities that do work for them as well.  And that when the cricket does happen, it is done in a spirit of inclusion by welcoming (as opposed to allowing) anyone to play.

Regards,

Prof. F (female)

————————————

Dear Prof. F,

Thank you for your email.  While I recognize and appreciate Prof. D’s point that many law schools have adopted policies that prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, religion etc. with respect to membership of student organizations, I want to share with you my experience in private practice.  Large law firms, recognizing both the importance of gender diversity and the business potential of senior female attorneys, have adopted a number of women’s initiatives to foster the professional development of women in big law.  These initiatives are generally available only to women for the reasons that Prof. E and Prof. F have already recognized- namely, current systems of professional and business development take place in traditionally male spaces.  Some the largest U.S. law firms have recognized that while keeping organizational initiatives open to all members of the organization is an ideal goal, the realities of the organizational environment necessitate certain gender specific initiatives in order to attain the ultimate goal of greater inclusion of women in the senior attorney ranks.

If the goal of our university is to provide an education to Indian students that allows them to compete on a global basis, there is no way to escape the critical component of providing an educational space that empowers the female students to compete with their male counterparts, within India or globally.  It certainly is not a given, and I don’t think there was any suggestion by any faculty member, that such an educational space must exclude male students.  Rather, the realities of the university environment at this point in time may suggest that such an educational space for the female students is best created by the WLS that includes only women.  For example, the university has an uneven the ratio of male to female students, female students grapple with a cultural and familial context that may not be supportive of their professional ambitions, female students don’t have upper class/senior students to whom they may look for guidance, and, based on Prof. F’s email, until WLS, female students had not had a forum to discuss their experiences on campus.  As these things change, perhaps in the future the WLS can be opened to both male and female students.  However, at this point, it may be premature to take a context-neutral, gender-neutral stance on the WLS.

Warmly,

Prof. G (female)

———————————-

Dear all:

Ah, now we are speaking! One mention of gender and you can see how things shake up – that’s the power of subversion. Apart from the WLS providing a much needed safe/ non-judgmental space for women on campus, it disturbs the neatness with which we want to go on with our lives within a ‘global’ space, seduced by the promise of emancipation.  It’s the old, still unresolved debate on special rights/ privileges vs. equal rights/ privileges. No space or policy can be gender-neutral or non-discriminatory if the very structure and architecture of that space/ policy is not. And our university is no exception – by the sheer imbalance in the male to female ratio of faculty, students, admin staff, construction workers, service providers.

This of course is not the only marker as Profs. F and G have convincingly pointed out. As I mentioned in my last mail, even declaredly gender/ caste/ sexuality/ disability/ race/ religion-neutral spaces are by default male/ Brahmin/ heterosexual/ abled/ white/ Hindu, and there is an almost unquestioning internalization of that fact – it disciplines us so smoothly that we don’t even recognize it.

Talk of non-discrimination in a space that is structurally unequal will only reinforce the gender hierarchy. I see no reason why the WLS should be looked at as an exclusive space – rather it’s the first step towards turning our university inclusive – making it substantively equal for its women students. It’s not factionalism, it’s solidarity. The very fact that WLS’ formation, or a move to include women students in the gender-neutral Saturday cricket fixtures unsettles us (surprisingly only men!) means that a hierarchy was already in operation. As Foucault has eminently reminded us, resistance to power, is what makes us recognize it. The WLS has done exactly that.

Having said that, as a feminist deeply committed to queering any form of essentialism – I’d like conveners of the WLS to respond to my question about whether a Hijra student can be accommodated within the WLS. This is a question with much larger purport than the WLS itself – of whether we are on the slippery slopes of biological determinism when we create women-only spaces to undo the gender hierarchy which in itself is predicated on biological determinism? How powerful is our subversion if we continue to operate within the binaries of male/ female? Are we subscribing to another hierarchy which places gender above sexuality on the arc of historical disadvantage?

Looking forward to more unsettling discussions.

In solidarity,

Prof. C (male)

————————–

The Closure

Um… excuse me? Could you guys with your subtle post-essentialist analysis and managerial double-speak please stop trying to bring sense into this? I am still hoping to see a grudge match between Profs. A (male) and B (female). If Prof. B wins, the women of our university get to be free of their oppressive masters. If Prof. A wins, we’ll join the British Raj again, wear white for the rest of the year and pay “triple lagaan.” No? Arm wrestling? Push ups? Why am I the only one laughing?

Cheers,

Prof. H (male)

—————————–

P.S.; No one continued the thread beyond this email. The cricket matches have become a hit – though participation of female students is negligible. The WLS meets every week. On the occasion of the 100 years of International Women’s Day they organized the screening of Quentin Tarantino’s ‘Deathproof’. Was it a feminist film? You need to watch it to find out.

EVERYONE IS SYMPATHETIC of a pregnant woman. But in my opinion, pregnancy is only a 10-month torment which might happen once or twice in a woman’s life. On the other hand, the torment a woman goes through each month when she is not pregnant is a life sentence. Freedom, Stayfree, Whisper–advertisements of these sanitary napkins show carefree women who wake up fresh and happy in the mornings while I see young girls from poor families stare longingly at these sanitary napkins in medical shops. I never experienced this longing as a young girl because I didn’t even know the existence of sanitary napkins when I started my period.

Delayed periods is actually a boon that poverty bestows on poor girls. I was 16 when my periods started. Those days we had just one meal a day. Even that wasn’t an assured one! It was my last year at school, around the half-yearly exams. My family organized a small celebration for me. It was exciting, but I couldn’t fully understand what was going on. I had no pain for the first six  months. Then, during menstruation, I started to experience heavy flow of blood. I had to walk for about two km to reach school; there was no money to pay for the bus ticket. Only a few scraps of old cloth were folded and kept in place to hold the blood flow all day. I had to keep folding in and folding out the wet and dry parts of the cloth.

Thankfully, I studied in a girl’s school. As for the toilets in a government school, is there any need to elaborate on their conditions? There was no water and the recess break was just ten minutes within which all the girls in the class had to use the toilet. I used to be scared to ask for the teacher’s permission to use the toilet during the classes. By the time I returned home walking, the blood-stained cloth scratched and caused bloody rashes between the thighs.

At home, the toilet was always closed. We lived in a huge compound where one toilet was shared by ten families. There were no taps in the toilet and we had to carry water twice or thrice. During my period, I wanted to use the toilet in the night as well. The owner’s son, a scoundrel, dared touch my breasts in the dark. I couldn’t ask my mother to go with me because my siblings (brother and sister) were still being breastfed. Asking my father to accompany me was possible but I was embarrassed.

I joined ITI after school. Pain around the hip bone started. It was as if a sharp object was being pierced through my hips. In the stomach, the intense pain extended till the urethra, accompanied by heaviness of the head and intense drowsiness. In addition, there were frequent bouts of vomiting, heavy flow of blood for more than four days, and nausea. I didn’t feel like eating and in fact, used to be unable to eat. I craved a soda or a cool drink but that was a huge luxury we couldn’t afford. I used to lie down and scream amma, amma and roll on the ground in pain. The screaming and rolling would go down after swallowing a paralgon tablet, and I lapsed into a tired half-sleep. When the four days for over, it was real freedom!

I visited the ESI (Employee State Insurance) hospital with my mother. The doctor said that there was no medicine for this ache and the pain would be gone after marriage. Since I thought marriage was just exchanging garlands, I wondered why I shouldn’t wear them right away and get rid of the pain. That was the level of knowledge I had then and I was too uncomfortable to ask my mother about it. With time, the pain became worse. Although the ITI was only for girls, there were male lecturers for some classes. Once, between classes, before the next lecturer came, I went to the toilet quickly to change the cloth. The cloth fell down; the lecturer must have seen it. That day, I died of humiliation and shame.

It must have been 1977-78 when I read about sanitary napkins in the weekly magazines. I asked my friend Sharada about them. She was one of the rich girls in our class. She said that sanitary napkins were held in place by an elastic belt. I couldn’t ask for money at home. The polytechnic was about seven km away from home and one had to change two buses to reach the polytechnic. At home, they usually gave me enough money only for one bus (25 paise). I walked the entire distance and saved money. When I got the sanitary pad, it looked so beautiful and neat. I used it once and brought it home safely in a packet. I was wondering why I hadn’t thought of this earlier. I started washing the napkin with soap; it fell to pieces.

I was completely unaware of the idea of use-and-throw. And the price of one day’s freedom was a several-kilometer-long walk! Even today when I think of it, it hurts.

After my studies, I got a job in an electrical shop for a salary of Rs 100 per month. My siblings would now get at least one meal for sure. I was at peace. My work was from 9:00 in the morning to 8:00 in the night. The shop was about five km away from home. I used the bus during the first 10 days of the month and walk the rest of the days. A close friend also started working in that shop. Her presence gave me a lot of confidence. We would longingly wait for the shop owner to order tea twice a day, morning and evening. When we actually got the tea depended on the owner’s mood. Especially during my period, I craved that one tea desperately.

At times, stock taking would happen on the days when I had my periods. We had to climb on a ladder, remove the things from the top shelves, dust them, and then list them. My friend and I would do this together. The pain would be excruciating. One day, my friend gathered some guts and told the owner to assign stock-taking to men. Well, her family didn’t depend on her salary unlike mine. For me, just the thought of my siblings would silence me at such times.

The shop owners had actually rented out a big house. The toilet in that house did not have a ceiling. One could easily peep into the toilet from neighboring terraces, shops and houses. There was scarcity of water as well. If the second day of my period fell on a Sunday, I did not have to take leave. At other times, I took leave and the owner questioned me angrily. My sense of self never let me cry before him. I controlled my tears and worked. One day, the wife of one the owners came to the shop. She was a compassionate person though she came from a rich family. Seeing me looking extremely tired, she asked, “why are you looking so ill?” I replied, “what to do, I wish I could die, but I am unable to.” I was 20 at that time. She felt very bad.

Then, one day, she took me to a female doctor, who prescribed some medicines. But they were of no use. The doctor said that there were no medicines other than painkillers and that using other medicines could lead to side effects. She said, “after marriage, the pain will be gone.” Given my family situation, I did not need marriage then. Earlier, I had heard that the pain would go if the uterus was removed. I asked the doctor if removing the uterus was an option. The doctor smiled pensively and said, “it cannot be done at this age, my dear.” I didn’t see any doctor after that day, and the owner also stopped scolding me if I took leave.

After a few days, I got a better job. However, it wasn’t good enough to for me to afford napkins. Instead of the cloth, I started using rolls and rolls of cotton. Even if the pain continued, the abrasions around the thighs reduced greatly. That was a great joy.

After I got married, my husband’s eyes filled with tears seeing me in such pain. That eased my pain greatly. In fact, I even felt proud. In the second month, he was slightly upset. In the third month, he left for a movie. When asked, he said, “what do I do when you are under so much pain? At least, I’ll go and watch a movie.” I was numb with grief. Of course, he can’t take away my pain. But if he was under such pain, would I look around for joy?

During menstruation, I also used to vomit in the night. Before marriage, my mother, brother or sister used to massage my back as I vomited and give me warm water to drink. It was a great relief. One night, after marriage, I woke up my husband and ran to the bathroom to vomit. As I vomited, I realized that there was no one to massage my back. I returned to bed to see my husband sleeping. I was horrified but consoled myself saying that perhaps he didn’t hear me call. When I asked him, he said, “you were just vomiting; why should I wake up for that?” It hurt badly.

He’s actually not a male chauvinist. He treated my family as if they were his family. He never beat me. But he hurt me with his scathing words, just like any regular man. I am not sure whether the incident I just described would affect men. In all probability, they will think that I am making a big deal out small things. But it’s funny that men, who need their wives to take care of them even for a headache, call women the weaker sex!

Male readers and even some female readers might find this piece boring. Today’s middle class women enjoy ‘freedom’ and so they can afford to be ‘carefree’ as well. But, even today, these things are still a huge problem for women from poor families. I don’t know whether this is a woman’s problem or the poor person’s problem.

When women take off on certain days, the sarcastic smiles of their male colleagues, their talk about how women use this as an excuse to not work, managers who remind women about responsibility at work, women who suffer all this in silence, being unable to voice their problems to their managers, etc…these are things that even women from middle class households suffer every day.

I recently read in the newspaper that about 65% of households in India do not have proper toilet facilities. Both in the villages and the cities, women must finish excretion early in the morning and wait until nightfall. Severe pain affects some unlucky women like me. However, blood flow and tiredness during those days are things that all women go through. These days, I take leave when the pain is unbearable. Moreover, my office has proper toilet facilities. Indeed, life has changed quite a lot for me. But it hasn’t changed for house maids, salesgirls who must remain standing the whole day, girls who study in corporation schools, etc. I think they aren’t as naïve as I used to be. They must be aware that there’s ‘freedom’ for women, and that that ‘freedom’ is beyond their reach.

Last month, I was at the medical shop buying sanitary napkins. There was some drainage work happening on the road. I saw a 16-year-old girl carrying the pebbles to be mixed with the concrete. She was dark and beautiful. She was wearing a faded polyester skirt; perhaps bought for her puberty function. I remembered wearing such a new skirt at my puberty function. Filling the container with pebbles, she looked around to see if someone would help her lift it. There was no one. She didn’t even ask anyone. Gnashing her teeth, she lifted the container herself. A sharp pain shot through me. I remembered the days of stock-taking in that electrical shop. That young girl returned to refill the container. I felt a little proud at that sight.

First published in vinavu.com

***

Sankari is a member of People’s Art and Literary Association(PALA), Tamilnadu. She works in a private company and lives in Chennai. PALA is a cultural organisation that fights against Recolonisation and Brahminical Fascism. Anu Roy is a member of PALA. She likes to identify herself as a communist in the making. PALA and it’s associate organisation, the Women’s Liberation front, work among working class women, organising them against various issues such as domestic violence, dowry, honour killings, and caste atrocities. She translates interesting Tamil articles occasionally so that they can reach a wider audience. She can be contacted at anuroy29[at]gmail.com.

Now before you assume I speak of the sexual, let me assure you I am merely referring  to the way she sat. Her wide thighs spread apart, printed cotton dresses hiked up beyond the knees, tapping her finger to keep time with the keys, Miss Printer cared a whit for the proprieties of womanhood. If one was writing their lessons at ground level, her mammoth bloomers would greet anyone who bothered to stare (and I was witness to many a curious young boy who did). Back home, lessons in ‘ladylike behavior’ weren’t complete without a reference to the disgrace that was Miss Printer and how a future of single misery awaited me if I didn’t rein in my knees.

Miss Printer has been dead 16 years. A new century has rolled in. At 31, I’m a girl no more and the ‘lady’ tag my grandma worked so zealously on is a grey area. I don whatever garb I please, jeans and pants taking preference over traditional wear. My legs are long and take up space and I don’t usually give a thought to how I sit (I’m sure a star called Nana is cringing somewhere up in the heavens) but occasionally, those words come back to chant in my ears and I find myself hurriedly clicking knees together, adjusting my skirt and feeling just the tiniest bit guilty for letting my ‘good girl’ guard down.

Such is conditioning. And I’m sure it’s been inflicted on many of you too. Do share. I’m curious to know how many women experienced something similar and whether men were at the receiving end of something comparable. Good girl or otherwise, this is one legacy I hope not to perpetuate. The world can do with one less pair of knees posing as Siamese twins.

Mothers Sing a Lullaby
(after the 1994 Rwandan genocide)

Mothers sing a lullaby
As the dark descends on trees
Shutting out shadows.
The sensuous voices swish and swirl
Around shrubs and overgrown grass
Hiding mountains of decapitated dead
And the glint of machetes
That slashed shrieking throats.

In these camps without happiness
Mothers maintain the melody of life
Capturing wistful wind
To sing strength into the souls of children
Who have never known
The taste of morning porridge
Or heard the chirrup of crickets in the evenings.

Mothers sing a lullaby
For the staring faces
Who cringe at the sound of footsteps
Whose playmates are grinning skeletons.

Mothers become a lullaby
Silencing the sirens of sorrow
Restoring compassion to the nation.

***

My Mother in Three Photographs

Her face looks out
flawless
her sexuality electric
in a mini dress and sheer satin stockings
the girls of the 1960s
beautiful beyond belief.
She is looking through the camera
like her space is here and beyond
enchanting and enchanted
by the times when dreams of freedom were young
the fortunes of Uganda
hot and sizzling.

My mother in the 1970s
More sombre but her skin
Still flawless
The abrasive years gentle on her youth.
Her body wrapped in a long nylon dress
stopping her ankles and
full sleeves touching her wrists
hooded sorrow in her posture
the flowing dress
is not because
she is a widow (which is by government action)
but it is a government decree.
Her magnificence and elegance
Seem to support the given name of the dress
Amin nvaako.

My mother in the 1990s
neat short hair
luring in its intricate curls.
She wears a busuuti
a sign of the times
a return home, a finding of
uncertain peace
a maturing of a woman and nation
an endorsement of a recognition of the troubles
she has weathered
a sitting down to count her losses and blessings
and a hand over of the future.

P.S. Amin Nvaako means Amin let me be or Amin leave me alone

***
Susan Nalugwa Kiguli is a Ugandan poet and academic. She holds a PhD in English from The University of Leeds sponsored by the prestigious Commonwealth Scholarship Scheme. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Literature, Makerere University, Uganda, and has served as the chairperson of FEMRITE, Uganda Women Writers’ Association. She is published widely in national and international anthologies and journals.

The world premiere of Eve Ensler’s ‘I Am An Emotional Creature’ was some things expected and many not. It began regularly enough, with the usual spine-tingling statistics on female abuse, neglect and violations. Essayed as a relentless spiral of separate pieces without an intermission, the portrayals of women from around the world shifted from mediocre to spectacular as the play progressed. Moments of intense pain in “Free Barbie” were interspersed with a more defiant stance in “The Refusers” and stories of prostitution in Eastern Europe, military sex slaves in Ghana, bulimia in North America, child labor in China and forced cosmetic surgery in Iran tumbled out unapologetically, amidst joyous expressions of dance and womanhood. Woman cried, laughed, screamed, spoke, vented, explained, twirled and chanted their right to be emotional creatures and engage in the feminine act of dance as a form of expression.

Which left me wondering if this wasn’t stereotyping my gender just as much as any other descriptor. Are all women truly emotional creatures? More than men? Do we feel more intensely? Need to express more urgently? Or are we as much victim to this erroneous belief as to the acts perpetrated on us worldwide? Do all women desire to dance? Is feminine expression primarily manifested through physical acts? I, for one, certainly feel no need to plunge into a waltz each time I absolutely must say what I feel.  I am born of a mother who clicks her tongue at being “too emotional” and believes it clouds practicality and better judgement. My friends are women who rarely cry, even when they have much reason to. Are performance and feeling necessarily the domain of the XX? Could we not be harming ourselves by tarring all women across the world with the same brush and insinuating that a woman’s natural response to a situation is based on her feelings first and intellect later, if at all?

I could empathize with individual tales but not with the premise. And while I wish women power to overcome their tormentors, human and situational, I also hope that they strive to stand apart from the cluster of characteristics that haphazardly—and often thoughtlessly—define their gender.

~~~

To view a short clip about the play, go here.

IQBAL HASAN’S PAINTING of a young woman sitting on a chair with an older woman standing beside her makes for the cover of Anuradha Marwah’s third and latest novel Dirty Picture. As a reader and someone who has seen these paintings in a plush Lahore restaurant called The Cuckoo’s Den, incidentally located in the  heart of the city’s red light area, I immediately identified it as one of several painted by the artist to document the lives of prostitutes in this area. Most locals are shy of admitting to the existence of prostitution in the city. For them, the red light area in the forted city still has certain mujra performances by ‘artists’ and nothing else. The painting illustrates in brush strokes what Anuradha Marwah documents in words – exploitation of women and the lower classes through a deep-rooted mechanism of inequitable gender constructions often obfuscated by ill-disguised hypocrisy.

The novel has been read as a fictionalised documentation of the Ajmer Sex Scandal of 1992. However, Dirty Picture, tracing the personal narratives of two sisters Reena and Bharti, uses the incident as a site to critique exploitation at the levels of gender and class.

Reena and Bharti live very different lives yet their narratives absurdly merge into each other’s forthright questions about notions of love and consent. Reena, divorced from a man who was struggling with substance abuse, is engaged to the married CEO of the company that

employs her. She lives a seemingly comfortable life in the cosmopolitan city of Mumbai weaving dreams of a married life with her boss, Suhas, a middle-aged man inebriated by the power he wields.

In Ajmer, Bharti lives a life driven by idealism and a desire to make a difference to the parochial town and its regressive outlook. To gain clout in college politics, she befriends local politicos Anish and Sarosh, which in itself is a scandal as these are Muslim men. Sucked into a vortex of political intrigue, Bharti finds herself involved in a sex racket with no one to turn to and nowhere to go. She looks at her sister

for help in the hope of escaping an Alcatraz of impending shame but Reena is caught up in her relationship, which she realizes will never evolve into more than that of mistress.

A novel that gains momentum with each word hurtling towards its fatalistic conclusion, this reads more like a journalistic account than a work of fiction. The universe of Dirty Picture has no clean edges to it. The world of Reena and Bharti leave the readers with a keen sense of discomfort. The journalistic gaze gains strength in the section on the making of the blue film where the writer assumes a stationary camera angle and pens an otherwise traumatic imagery in monotone, thus de-fetishising the woman’s body. De-sensationalising the issue was the writer’s concern and the literary tools that she uses to describe the sexual scenes in the novel achieve the purpose quite effectively.

Marwah’s writing has often been called manly. This refers perhaps to the way she handles sex in her works. According to her, when people say she does not write like a woman, they mean her writing is not internal and domesticated. She says this is only a perception about fiction by women. She herself finds writing an exercise in androgyny. The demeanour of the book as well as the attitude to writing seems like a simultaneous exercise in involvement and objectivity for the writer.

Unlike her first two novels, The  Higher Education of Geetika Mehendiratta and Idol Love, which negotiate the space between the personal and the political without locating a concrete political centre, Marwah’s third novel is honest, brave and candid. She fleshes out each character — even the ‘villains’ — so non-judgmentally that they could be any of us. The nonchalant prose disallows prejudice as reader’s judgments too are suspended and deferred, nudged towards a desire for deeper analysis. During her extensive research for the novel, the writer came across a number of reactions and observations to the scandal. She documents some of these in the introduction to her novel: ‘Ajmer tapes’ are still freely available in the blue-film circuit. Muslim men consider it their obligation to ‘spoil’ Hindu girls. The real culprits have escaped; the arrested men are scapegoats. The real culprits are bureaucrats and politicians; the arrested men are scapegoats. Why did the girls keep going back to their tormentors? Could it be that they were enjoying the sex act? Certain Hindu sub-communities have issued whips against their boys marrying girls from Ajmer. Three of the girls involved in the sex scandal have committed suicide. It wasn’t suicide; the families murdered their girls to escape the stigma. What else could they have done?’

The victims of the scandal either committed suicide or are leading their lives in anonymity denying any association to the scandal that shocked the whole country. The victims have been coerced by the same socio-political paradigms to erase or at least pretend to erase all memory of the event. Dirty Picture challenges such an erasure, the coercive structures that first conceive and then erase such shameful memories, the facade of notions of women’s emancipation within such structures, and most importantly, the networks that centres of power operate to veil their existence.

As Manju Kapoor, the author of Difficult Daughters writes, “This is a story that needs to be told, but because of its complexity, it is not an easy story to tell. But Anuradha persisted, and we all owe her a debt of gratitude that she did. This particular incident at least will not be covered by the dust of ages.”

Dirty Picture, Author: Anuradha Marwah, Delhi: Indialog Publications November 2008, Price: Rs 195.

***

Sanyukta Saha has just completed an MA in Theatre and Development Studies from the University of Leeds (UK). She received the Inlaks Scholarship last year to pursue this degree. She is part of a feminist activist theatre group called ‘pandies’ in Delhi and has been involved with a number of amateur and professional productions in India.

Leafing through pictures mailed by a friend, I find one of me on the beach laughing uninhibitedly with my hair streaming in the wind, and I smile to myself thinking ‘this is so me.’ I am a single woman in her thirties, have never been married and have no ‘special relationship’ with any man. Yes, at times, I do long for companionship and romance but for the most part, I revel in my being single. I enjoy the time and space I have and the freedom to explore love, life and relationships in my own way without the responsibilities that come with being a wife or a mother. Yet, living in a patriarchal society where a woman is expected to prize above all, the role of wife and mother, being single also means having to regularly encounter reactions ranging from the sympathetic to the malicious.

I do understand the curiosity others display about my personal life. I probably seem like something of an oddball to them and I’ve got used to fielding questions about the reasons for my choosing to remain unmarried. My reply — that I am single because I have not yet come across the right person and that I am against the arranged marriage system where caste and religion are of prime importance and superficial qualities such as colour of skin and looks assume greater significance than the kind of person one is — does not seem good enough. It’s usually followed by advice about why I should not be so rigid and ‘settle down.’ I have got used to that too.

The hostile remarks get to me though. Sample this. One man asked me if I was single because I was ‘tainted.’ The same man also told me that my parents had been irresponsible and if he had been in my Dad’s place, he would have whacked me and seen to it that I got married at the ‘right age.’ I have been told by male colleagues that my being single gives men fodder for gossip about me and that if only I got married, the gossip would die down. I have been let in on some of the gossip and it is hurtful. I know this happens to other single women as well. A woman’s single status seems reason enough for men to speculate about her personal life and sexuality. Then, there are times when I have had to fend off men who assume that I must be eager to jump into bed with any man just because I am single. Of course, there is the ‘frustrated spinster’ tag that is lobbed at me even when I justifiably lose my cool in the workplace or with family. Mercifully, I haven’t had to deal with worse.

I recall my visit to Ahmedabad some years ago to visit a woman friend, also single. Her work demanded that she travel frequently and she often had to leave and return home at odd hours. We were leaving her apartment one morning when she spotted a few of her neighbours talking to each other. She warned me to ignore their remarks. Later, she told me that when she walked past, her neighbours sometimes called her a prostitute.

On a similar note, I have heard of a single woman in Mumbai being summoned by the residents association to explain her ‘indecent behaviour’ as she returned home late at times. The single woman, it would seem, is expected to adhere to some unwritten code of conduct — to not have male friends, not socialise with men, not entertain friends at home, to be home by a ‘respectable’ hour and so on. It also seems that it is okay to make assumptions about her character and to subject her to verbal abuse and harassment if she deviates from this code.

Even in this day and age, even in urban India, people find it difficult to accept that a woman can choose to remain single and lead a healthy, happy and full life. The idea that the single woman is entitled to the full range of freedoms that any other adult does and is entitled to live her life as she chooses is also one that is yet to gain full acceptance in our society. I wonder when the day will arrive when the single woman can just be and people see her as she is and respect her for what she is instead of making assumptions about her and her character based on her single status.

***