A lot of things — part 2
Sometimes when you trot around the house, thinking about things, some series’ scene, a movie dialogue, a conversation playing over and over again in your head — making sense or not, you are on that train of thoughts. You pull the chair, sit on it, your hands move, you drink water, a piece of paper on which you wrote earlier fell out on the floor, you pick it up and you didn’t even realise when you opened the laptop and it’s powered on and some old video is playing to which you fell asleep last night. Jolted back to reality with this new sound, you heave your brain and try writing about the thoughts that mattered so much, a few minutes ago. Alas! you will never get them back.
Bringing back those memories from my novice years as a human/woman when I would pick up my diary at the end of the day because I was taught that writing a journal is one of those good things where you can use them to, well, listen to this — bring back memories. So what, you write only good things that happen to you because that’s what you want to remember, right? Hardly. As a teenager/young person, nothing good really happens. It’s shitty for the most part. Everyone treats you like you don’t know anything, like you are not a real person but a faceless blob who fills this outline sometimes. You can keep shouting at the top of your lungs, and no one listens.
Gradually you start internalising the stories you thought were funny enough to be shared or someone said a horrible thing that made your boots heavier the whole day, or your teacher loved that other crummy kid who ranks 1st in your class, or your parents didn’t show up for the parents-teacher meeting because they thought that you are doing fine without them meeting your teachers. And this becomes a habit of never having the need to say things out loud. You just become a person who feels a lot of things, but never have the right words to express them or not witty enough to grab someone’s attention. Ugh! grown up things. I never believed in the whole premise of introverts and extroverts — it’s flawed. A person who never got heard doesn’t mean that she can’t be heard at all because she likes to keep things to herself. I find it easy to talk to anyone who listens.
Having lived most of my life like a blob, I found it easy to buy into this idea that I like privacy and keeping to myself, but looking at my own reflection in the mirror also felt shameful for some reason. I found it to be quite disturbing, I didn’t know how it happened. How did I become this person? I loved mirror as a kid — spent most days dancing in front of it, doing my hair, trying out outfits, making faces, familiarising myself with all my expressions. My mum would scold me for spending hours in front of my dear mirror before bus time and most days I’d miss my bus, but it was worth it.
"I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful ‚
The eye of a little god, four-cornered."- from Mirror, Sylvia Plath
I can’t recall which class I read this in, but I had an immediate connection with it. I was going through a big lit-fan phase. I would drown myself in these poems, would quote them in my journal, decorate them and make them more memorable, without realising why those became important in the first place. My life was becoming tedious with these people, complicated with identities. Blowing my own horn, I kept trying to place myself with them by reiterating what I like and what I don’t, but forgetting the important part of it all — no one cares.
Quivering underneath this, was rage, so much rage. My mum tells me I had fever the day my brother was born because I was jealous. She says this with affection that night they brought my brother home that I urged to sleep with my mum and my newborn baby brother had to, with my father. It was the day I became the “two year old”, of course I had fever!
The invisibility started the next day, my grandmother was so happy that it was a boy at last. We had celebrations, all my relatives poured in from different towns, it was a hoot. Conversations must have started around how his parenting should happen, people might’ve commented how I am responsible for my little brother now and what not. I could not recall anything but later years of my life made sense to have played that earlier episode like this.
It was a live show in real life about tolerance and sacrifice are qualities to die for in a girl, about training to make a more rounded chapati, about having to feel responsible to feed hungry people at home, about making tea for house guests, about how wonderful I am at dancing, about how quickly I grew, about how good is my brother at science and sports, about buying things from outside, about why don’t you learn how to drive — look your brother is already an expert, and about just shut up!
I need feminism. It was always there, when I stopped listening to myself all those years ago. Brimming with self doubt, almost on the verge of drowning in it last year, I don’t know how my hope didn’t die an imminent death. I spoke, and felt heard for the first time in my life. It was a woman, my sister. It was help, it was courage, it was a belief in my voice that it exists, it was my super power returning to me while I was awake. I looked around and beside me was my stupid grave. I felt like Uma Thurman from Kill Bill: Vol II, when she crawls her way out of that coffin when the whole world was out to kill her and all she wanted was to kill Bill. I needed feminism.
Women have struggled and come out of this gender coma. Believe me when I say, we are still a little drowsy and our legs don’t work, but for now — wiggle your big toe!
My life as it is, is not very special — mediocre at best, it has had an ordinary amount of adventure, rebellion, resolutions, doubts, and conflicts. With a pinch of googolplex thoughts in this whole haunted humanity — most of them are half assed and half baked, but they do give you a sense of life. You exist! — that’s all you ever want to know and live with this clarity as long as it lasts.
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