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.

He always snips off ends. My tranquil ends,
fins deep asleep. Hair is frond. Hair is leech.
Hair is auction. Hair is lintel. Hair is traffic,
sigh, umbrella butt. Gaya, Kashi, Vrindavan.
Coconut-flesh scalps, a manifesto. “Boy’s cut.”

He always snips off ends. Antennae
of lust, tendrils of moist defeat. Hair is vial.
Lady Godiva. Hair is oyster, hiding nudity. Scissors
– suspicion’s toolkit. Sita, Vedavati. Sharpness
a male moral – “Haircut’s our last ahimsa art”.

He always snips off ends. Kesh is a congested
city. 1984, shears, rape of the lock. Hair is pilot.
Haircut is amputation, tattoos on memory. Indira.
Taslima. Bun’s a burqa, beni a beauty of bridges. Bob,
Bang, Blunt. Hair burns, without waste, like a vowel.

He always snips off ends. Hair is shame’s prosody.
Hair is sex – a woman’s mistake. Hair is hotel. Chemo,
autumn, venetian blinds. Hair loss is Sibyl’s prophecy.
Hair is habit. Hair is rosary. Hair is vomit. Hair fall is debt.
Comb turns into procrastination. Haircut to humility.

***

Sumana Roy’s first novel, Love in the Chicken’s Neck, was long listed for the Man Asian Literary
Prize 2008. She’s working on a collection of stories about clothes, tentatively titled SML. She’d
like to work harder on growing her hair.

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.

Now, for the few of you who may insist that you know nothing about Eat Pray Love, here it is in a nutshell: a financially successful but not particularly famous author finds herself getting divorced, going into depression, and then taking a year to travel in order to reinvigorate her life. In Italy, she indulges – eating her way through the first third of the year. In India, she joins an ashram (the book is extremely spiritual, and this section is so heartrendingly painful that you wonder why anyone would call this book fluffy… until you get to the next). And finally, in Indonesia, tying up the circle in perfectly fairytale style, she finds love.

All of this is a true story, told in a fashion that is alternately charming, mildly annoying, and deeply honest.

So when the sequel came out, of course I had to read it. Snarkily, with some of usual disclaimers, but with some real excitement about its subject matter (which trumped any reservations brought on by my passive-aggressive crush on the earlier book). Committed: A Skeptic’s View of Marriage picks up where Eat Pray Love left off – i.e. the author and her Brazilian-born, Bali-discovered lover float off into their happily ever after. Until the US government interfered.

As a foreigner whose trips into the country were not only frequent, but whose exits themselves were only border runs for visa renewals, Gilbert’s partner Felipe finds himself in trouble with Immigration. Fortunately, they are given a choice: if they get married, they can continue their lifestyle (sans border running, too!). Desperately, they agree — but both having survived divorce, the idea of remarriage is significantly terrifying. But the process is so complex that the couple essentially has to spend almost a year outside the country, waiting for the fiancee visa to come through, and Gilbert spends this time confronting her traumas and issues about the institution of marriage, its history in American society (paradigms which are increasingly emulated around the world), its relevance to contemporary life, and how it compares and has evolved (or not) based on cultural and religious circumstances — ruminations and research that eventually became Committed.

Committed is a feminist memoir, make no mistake about it. It is an empowering, thought-provoking read that I would recommend to anyone who 1. wants to marry, 2. doesn’t want to marry, 3. is concerned about civil rights and international affairs (in all senses of the term!). It’s important that the events it describes happened prior to Eat Pray Love’s insane success. Not unlike the happy coincidence of having met her new love at the end of her first book’s journey, a happy coincidence which resulted in an almost too-perfect book, everything that happens therein was spontaneous. Gilbert leaves little doubt that nowhere during her ten months of bad traffic and matrimonial panic wandering around Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia could it have occurred to her that she might exploit this bout of hard luck. She went through the experience with no guarantee of a platform to discuss, let alone capitalise on, it. Because of this, it is all the more relevant. This isn’t a celebrity memoir, but an ordinary couple’s absolutely commonplace struggle in a world that loves and enforces its borders even as it claims to have none.

Now, this sort of gets back to the problem with Eat Pray Love. Which was not, strictly speaking, a real problem with Eat Pray Love itself, but with exactly how the memoir got co-opted into the chick-lit category. Not chick-lit as in light and fun, but chick-lit as in delusional-inducing, Prince-awaiting, hearts-a-breaking. And that problem was that many – many, many, many – of us are where Gilbert was at the start of that book. Lying on the bathroom floor bawling. And in the course of a few hundred pages, in about a year, she was both literally and figuratively somewhere else altogether. And the book was so engaging that it made it look easy.

The problem, essentially, was the expectation created. I encountered this personally in my own life, and practically every woman friend who has read it has admitted to the same rues. Some of them had become especially resentful toward Gilbert. This was not a phenomenon restricted to my circles — a real backlash against Eat Pray Love and its author occurred among its disenchanted readership. Its most common contentions, as discussed on comment forums all over the Internet, were that Gilbert was selfish, and as a white American with some wealth, she was operating from a place of privilege and entitlement. “Not all of us can give up our lives and jetset for a year” was a common refrain — as though if only we could, we would also land ourselves true love and astronomical book sales (a phrase Gilbert’s own sister, married with children and obligations of her own, sarcastically echoes in one email exchange in the book).

But here’s the thing. I don’t think – especially having noticed Committed’s incredible redemptive powers – that Gilbert meant for her memoir to have anything to do with typically misguiding light literature aimed at women. How Eat Pray Love has been marketed – even by readers who recommend it – has not done it justice.

On its own steam, Committed is an important book, completely relevant to our world today and the choices we are faced with as thinking women who sometimes have no alternative but to acquiesce to a fundamentally patriarchal institution (even if we believe we want it, with eyes open or closed). But it’s also a most marvellous redemption for Eat Pray Love’s unintended consequences (and there were some). As she points out almost guilelessly in the introduction, prior to Eat Pray Love, Gilbert was mostly known for writing about men. Her three prior books – Stern Men, Pilgrims and The Last American Man – were explorations of masculine life — fiction and nonfiction about “supermacho characters: cowboys, lobster fishermen hunters, trucksters, Teamsters, woodmen”. As a journalist, Gilbert had even gone as far as dressing in drag for a week, complete with a birdseed filled condom stuffed in her pants.

She doesn’t mention this in this book, but it occurred to me that even before Eat Pray Love, it is ironic that the most lucrative of her projects was probably when a magazine article she wrote about her bartending experiences became the basis for the decidedly fluffy rom-com flick Coyote Ugly. Sadly, between that and Eat Pray Love, her broader scope of work was overshadowed. Call it Gilbert’s chick-lit curse. And Committed, quite decisively, breaks it.

The truth is, I am still bawling on my floor. And I do wish I hadn’t ever heard the word-of-mouth that hyped Eat Pray Love as some sort of semi-prophetic text, because it did result in a few regrettable actions for me at the time (oh hey, a few good anecdotes too). But Committed’s redemptive powers are such that not only does it completely absolve Gilbert of any hand played in the prolonged miseries of some of her readers, but it also elevates her, in a way that Eat Pray Love couldn’t possibly, to the role already assigned to her by the same masses of sad readers: that of the high priestess, the knowing one, a Solomon-like figure who could provide a solution.

Marriage, whether we like it or not, is a necessary decision for many of us. Whether the larger bodies we aim to please are governments, families, societies or own guilt-tripping demons, it can be an inevitability. Committed does two things, and does them beautifully — it strips the institution of its veneer of romance. And then it reinstates it, at a far more meaningful level.

Committed will probably help many more women’s hearts and choices than Eat Pray Love did because there is absolutely nothing here but gritty realism — the facts of the world and its requirements, and how a relationship must necessarily be an accord of solidarity in negotiating these facts and requirements. It will also, hopefully, further the cause of same-sex marriage. As Gilbert most unselfishly points out in the book, she and Felipe are fortunate to even have this choice. Across the world, most lovers of the same gender do not. And when it comes to the paperwork — immigration, insurance, death and taxes – they suffer in ways that heterosexuals can take for granted that they won’t have to.

And Eat Pray Love, that old bugaboo? Let’s just say I am really looking forward to the film. Aren’t you?

Toilets, trees and gender? Can there be a connection? Is there a gender angle to a business story? Is gender in politics only about how many women get elected to parliament? Is osteoporosis a women’s disease? Why do more women die in natural disasters? These are not the questions journalists usually ask when they set out to do their jobs as reporters, sub-editors, photographers of editors. Yet, by not asking, are they missing out on something, perhaps half the story? This is the question this book, edited and written by journalists, for journalists and the lay public interested in media, raises. Through examples from the media, and from their own experience, the contributors explain the concept of gender-sensitive journalism and look at a series of subjects that journalists have to cover – sexual assault, environment, development, business, politics, health, disasters, conflict – and set out a simple way of integrating a gendered lens into day-to-day journalism. Written in a non-academic, accessible style, this book is possibly the first of its kind in India – one that attempts to inject a gender perspective into journalism.

Kalpana Sharma is an independent journalist, columnist and media consultant based in Mumbai. She writes regularly for several newspapers and websites on a range of issues including urban development, gender, contemporary politics and the media. She was, until 2007, Deputy Editor and Chief of Bureau, The Hindu in Mumbai. She has also written and edited several books and is a founder-member of the Network of Women and Media, India.

Laxmi Murthy, Rajashri Dasgupta, Sameera Khan and Ammu Joseph also collaborated on the book.

___

Have you written a book that would be of interest to feminists? Send me details to see it here.

Recently, I came across this new item that talked about a young girl in a Chennai engineering college who killed herself because she was ticked off for talking to a boy. It wasn’t just the scolding she received which precipitated the suicide, but the fear that her parents would have been informed of her heinous crime – talking to a boy.

Strangely, this new item did not shock me. For those of us who have spent many years in Chennai, the ultra-conservatism of its colleges, especially those offering professional courses, is no news. For years now, many such colleges have enforced rigid, gender-segregation policies. Some of their diktats include no conversation between male and female students and separate seating areas on college buses and in classrooms. Lecturers are asked to strictly enforce these policies and some colleges, like the one in this instance, have even installed cameras to monitor students.

All this is done in the name of ‘preventing distraction’ and asking students to ‘focus on studies’. The fact that college administrators deem 18-20 year olds as incapable of managing their own academic work without coercion, says something about the quality of education these colleges impart. Surely, if they had any confidence in the calibre of their own teaching and infrastructure, they would be confident of enabling students, not coercing them.

Beyond that, there is a deep-rooted fear of ‘children getting spoilt’, and of course, interaction with the opposite sex is held to be the root of all spoiling. Dig deep enough, and at the base is the fear of young people making independent decisions on their own lives – decisions that could challenge long-held beliefs about marrying within the boundaries of caste and social status. Rein the girls in long enough (until they finish studying) and get them married soon after (so that they don’t have time to fall in love with the ‘wrong’ person). College authorities are not isolated tyrants – many are the parents I’ve seen supporting them enthusiastically in their gender-segregation drive.

As young people in India begin making their own decisions – whether it is in the matter of careers or partners, the ire of those in authority becomes manifest. Haryanvi Khap Panchayats and Chennai professional college administrators bear a closer resemblance to each other than may be obvious.

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.

Used right, ECP is an empowering tool allowing women more control over their reproductive lives, says Dr Kar. Therefore, they need to be made available over the counter, doctors say. Yet, awareness of the dangers of excessive and indiscriminate use of ECPs must be stepped up significantly, says Velankar, the health activist. And this necessarily extends to consumers, particularly youth, and even drug store owners.

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.

The Lonely Grave of Paula Schultz

Tonight, there’s been a burial.

A careless hammering of nails into a dry casket –
by men drunk on moonshine – breaks the night,
scattering the weevils and owls into the rising moon.
They’ve taken my words, my amour, my knife and
left me here to fill the lonely grave of Paula Schultz.

This cross I bear, is mine to carry for they’ve been
afraid too long – these men drunk on moonshine.
Afraid, when they peeked into my tent to watch
me put on my girdle, gather my bow and arrow
and swing the pelta around my one breast. Afraid,
ever since I rode through the wild crags of Pontus,
kicking up the dust to leave them momentarily blinded.

Tonight, there’s been a burial.

The stars die and I have a night to call my own. The
casket hits the ground and earth pounds hard on its shell.
Darkness smooths out my ragged breath. I remember
Deborah’s Song and hum the tune. Soon the raging
desert winds that once muffled the cries of Sisera
will fill the lonely grave of Paula Schultz.

***

the hours i keep

i’ll pretend i didn’t
hear the rain last night
that it didn’t lash out
on the roof
that it didn’t soak the
clothes on the line
that it didn’t rouse me
from my sleep
i’ll pretend i didn’t
hear the rain

i’ll pretend there are
no stories or verses today
hidden in the half light
waiting to be
put down on paper
that they don’t
rhyme and punctuate
to draw us in
or leave us out
i’ll pretend there are
no stories or verses today

i’ll pretend there is
no tea this morning
that it’s not lapping
against a gold rim
that it will not steam
my glasses
that it will now goad me
out from my bed
i’ll pretend there is
no tea this morning

i’ll pretend i don’t
know where you live
or what you do
that you like walnuts
and your sky grey
that sometimes you don’t
listen to things
i have to say
i’ll pretend i don’t
know anything about you

i’ll pretend there wont
be any more of this –
rain, teas, stories, verses and walnuts –
that they don’t fill up my hours
that they don’t pack up my days
in neat little
cardboard boxes
till they leave me in a silent catacomb
i’ll pretend there won’t
be any more of this

***

Trisha Bora is an editor and writer who has been away from her hometown – Assam – for many years now and currently lives in Delhi. She is fascinated with the workings of the city and its people and her writings are informed by this. She is working on her first novel, which explores the intricacies of diasporic urban lives. She often reads her poems at the Delhi Poetree Society.