Waking

Everyday, everytime a woman grits her teeth and gets into her daily business of living a thinking-less world. If She thinks, then she cannot be, who she has to be. she will awaken from her dream and know who she truly is, then she realizes endless possibilities. That doesn't suit this world....


 I awoke in darkness, every fibre of my body screaming. A repeat dream that has haunted me often. Locked behind closed doors, petrol fumes filled my lungs as my whole body burnt away. as I grasped my burning clothes, my skin peeled away like a glove. Petrol- heat and smoke. Air.. Help, I grasped at a semblance of some prayer. Gasping, I awake safe on my own lifetime, my partner's gentle snores assuring me all is well.


I have never shared this dream with anyone till today. It was a private nightmare, one I sought meaning for in theories of past lives and in the conclusion that it was the the activity of an over imaginative mind.


Dramatic and very newsmaking my dream may be but the real life is not that melodramatic. But it is no less a nightmare for the everyday woman. She is born into a world that she must negotiate by the art of not thinking. Thinking awakens desires not known to her kind.  Violated in body, mind and every space she has she retreats into those corners of an unthinking darkness. Washing, cleaning shopping watching mindless soaps.
 Every bit of her identity is seen as threatening, every joy she derives alone  has to balanced with giving and temperance. Even the so- called free fun that she has is presumed to be an object of pleasure for someone else.


Some of dear friends will brush this aside. But sisters, it takes some thinking to wake up. Don't wake up now, for then you will then have my nightmare to share for all women. I think and then I cannot be at peace. I am a woman born and trapped in a man's world. No home to fly away to.




Dedicated to the everyday woman's world....

Work

Thinking out of my walls they said was easy,

the walls are your thoughts.

I found solace in scrub-pad's confused layers,

as I cleaned away thoughts along with the soiled vessels,

 I spun-dry my tears after soaking them in salt.

I swept away all the taunts and teasing,

gathered them up into the empty vacuum of my mind.

I finally remote hammered my thoughts shut in 

endless pouring of the soaps on tv.

Yet one tiny thought escaped

crawled up searing my throat,

squeezed its way with a silent whistle 

 dripped down on my cheeks.

 The bell rings and I banish that traitor and

mindless, go on to receive the dhobi. 

The feminist writes

Every scar that you have rips within my womb
a pregnant cause that can only whimper
For we birth these banal monsters
who see but cannot see within,
every scar you bear within your mind
Sister.




 Increasingly with yoga and my embodied practices I am now seeing the falsity of the word 'heart' to express my feelings. I wonder if we women first started to write our own emotions would we still be talking about the heart. Women began writing late and even as I blog  I know that it has taken a PhD for me to practice writing. Writing myself, my emotions rather than parroting emotions and information sharing. I wonder now if this heart thing is all a big social learning thing. all the dil, pyaar, heart to heart all of it words I borrowed to say what I wanted to say from others even other women.


When I am suffering, in love, in hurt, in disappointment, my throat chokes and my chest feels heavy but nothing happens to my 'heart.' I can hear it beating steadily, perhaps a bit faster but my emotions are in my gut. In my womb, the center of my being. Whether birthed or unbirthed, used or not, my womb centers me as I grasp my tummy and hug myself. Are not our deepest connections of sisterhood in this womb? That's where we feel most violated, most vulnerable, many biological evolutions have made us womb beings. That's why attachment to children tears us like nothing else will. We survive heart breaks but never womb-breaks.

 I intend to continue to blog, deconstructing the borrowed language I have writing me, my body-self and my womb, a world where Pre-Menstural is not a syndrome but a normality and ability to be rational and calm in the face of stimulus is abnormal. The emtying of a womb is not MIS - carriage and wearing make-up is a choice.

Silent SCREAM

It is one at night. It is republic day. I cannot sleep. I feel burdened in my body as a woman. While flipping through the TV channels I suddenly saw a group of " sri ram activists" culturally correct some young girls in a Pub by beating them up. In My country. How easy to violate my sense of my dignity. A slap on my buttocks, a brush against my breasts, a leer with a look, a whistle, a yank of my duppata  anything... anything can damage my sense of safety. I dont have to be in pub. It is a rape of my mind, a looming darkness that haunts me.

 It doesn't matter that I may have read all the Upanishads and scriptures. It does not matter if I was pious otherwise. It doesn't matter that my attacker does not have a decency of a Ravana. It is culturally right to demand dowry, kill female unborn and beat up women.

I reject this religion today. What if a million women gave up these gods and their followers who cannot protect us anymore in this country?  Patriarchy has found its deepest ally in my more revered beliefs so I see no way forward but to let go of all vestiges of my practices. Today on republic day I  declare that only half our country is liberated . The other half is screaming.  If you shut your ears to the sounds of the mantras and the slogans you will hear the Silent scream of women, a million unborn, a million beaten up, another million like me who cant do anything about it but write.

 Listen!