Worry lines...

I have been ignoring this blog for too long. I've been busy scheduling posts elsewhere (I have been too lazy to post all the links here) and writing poetry and this little sliver of light has been dwindling away in the corner.
In the meantime, a lot of water has flown under the bridge. One girl (Isha) has actually cleared her board exams and managed to go away to college in Pune. Yes, she seems to have settled in nicely with her hostel and classes. The younger one (Amisha) is poised on the brink of her half-yearly exams and soon shall be taking her boards as well. If all goes according to plan, by this time next year she too will be studying in some college away from home and I shall be wondering whose head I can chew up next!
Predictably, Amisha continues to give me a lot of grief... I never see her studying, she is always chattering with her friends or watching some stupid "Blacklist" on Netflix or up to no good on whatever is the trending app of the day! But you know what? I've learnt to just smile it away. Isha always complained that she got all the brunt of my anger and I was much more relaxed when it came to Amisha and I finally think she might have been right. After going through the throes of dragging one child up I guess we are better equipped (read calmer) to handle the second one!
Having said that, I've also been learning a lot from the girls. They are now at an age where I can have a half decent conversation without either of us flying into a screaming rage and they enrich and scandalise me with snippets of their lives. Amisha is now writing a blog (!!!!) and I find her ideas innovative and interesting... despite the fact that her cellphone has now become an extension of her hand! Isha of course is far away and what they say about distance making hearts fonder is completely true. She is also coping on her own, had to visit a dentist without me being there to hold her hand and all in all I'm quite ready to pat myself on the back and say that I can almost see the finishing line!!!
Almost. Because don't forget there's a whole round of college entrance tests etc yet to be scheduled and poked at.
Poked at because you know teenagers. There's a slew of emails from the school regarding college entrance and when I ask she all she does is shrug and say, "Chill." You bet!!! This morning I asked her which colleges she will be applying to and she mumbled two names and there I was having a cardiac arrest because we all know about the rat race and the stiff competition to get into these places. I suspect this girl actually derives intense pleasure from seeing the worry lines on my face!
My bad back has ensured I am in bed most of the time. In a way that is a blessing for Amisha, I cannot hound her as much as I want to, lying in bed and calling for her is no competition to plonking myself in her room and eating her head and she knows it! She also runs away to the guest room to "study" because then she cannot hear me when I call. I am so tempted to get a remote bell.
So I read books and I think. I also worry about all the things I could have told Isha but didn't... you know those pearls of wisdom, like potato cooks faster if there is no tomato or sour thing in it? That if oil catches fire she should never pour water on it? Like if she rides pillion on a bike theres that little thing you put your foot on, she should not drag her feet about like I've seen people do?
So I groan and grunt and get up and go and tell Amisha. She looks at me like I just grew a second nose!

I swear, I have worry lines running up my arms because of these two! 

To Isha.

Words are superfluous

They roll off my tongue

Like the sweat on a labourer's back

Toiling in the midday sun.

Over and over words failed me

When I first held you on my breast

Unimagined pain, unbridled joy

As you wailed your first little breath.

Words were never adequate

Watching you evolve

From tiny steps to hands that let go

Rippled images that quickly dissolve

Yet my words reached you

I feel them in your heady laugh

Sharp and warm, there were a lot of those

Yet I wonder, were they enough?

You wait for my words

You are certain they will be there

Another throw of hands, another shrug

This mother 'wisdom', another lecture.

But words tire me now

They strip bare this old soul

Forever searching this weary heart

For words that will keep you whole.

I wish I had the magic words

That would keep you forever safe

But I only have only the words I left unsaid

Silence to heal when life will chafe.

Go then, I hold no words for you

Content to watch you take flight

For fly you must and fly you will

On wings that will carry you through the night.

Thoughts from a vagina. 

I am a woman and I have a vagina.

Did I just make you uncomfortable?

That's the idea.

You know, last night I went to watch a performance of the Vagina Monologues (Bangla) by The Shriek of Silence at the ICCR as part of the Youth Theatre Festival 2018 in Calcutta. Actually it does not really matter who performed or why or where. Neither am I here to discuss or laud Eve Ensler as an activist or her ground-breaking attempts to globally stop violence against women. You will get all that on the internet. I am here to talk about my reactions, my fears and my hopes: as a regular working woman, as a woman in her late forties, as a mother of teenage girls poised to fly, as a mature woman with no time for people who judge her, and also as a woman, who, by reason of her profession, is well aware of and acquainted with the awful violence (subtle and not-so-subtle) perpetrated on women every day.

Yes, the Vagina Monologues make you think. Of yourself as a woman, of other women , of your mothers and daughters and thousands of women you have known, perhaps closely, perhaps fleetingly, who have shaped your life.

There is much that resonated with me. You know, at first I was hesitant to go when I heard it was in Bengali. I admit that I am not as fluent in my mother tongue as I should be. I confided in a friend and she laughingly told me I should carry a dictionary, in case I needed it. Turns out, throughout the ninety odd minutes of the play that had me glued to my seat, there was not a single vernacular word that I did not understand. You do not need a language to understand when another woman speaks, you only need a heart. I know it was all playacting, but why then did the words of those women stay with me long after I left the theatre? Was it only because I knew that this was no fiction but the real words of women across ages and times and continents?

I remembered so many things that we hide within ourselves. Like when I got my first period. I have never told anyone but my girls about it. Or maybe I have. Maybe it's not relevant. Maybe nobody cares. Or maybe THAT is what is wrong with our society. The fact that nobody cares.

I found myself reliving each of those times in the labor room when I gave birth to my two daughters. I remembered once again the joy that burst through me when I held that blood slicked body of my first-born in my arms. I remembered being oblivious to the surgeon's needle in me for there had been no time for an anesthesia when my second child was born, she was a week early and chose her own pace (she still does). I also remembered the horror of a PAP smear, it was the first time I ever called a friend just to sit by my side and hold my hand for a stupid test. I remembered feeling small and helpless when I was groped on the road, I remembered the safety-pins and elbows that were never enough to keep us safe. I remembered every client or friend who has cried to me that she has been molested or beaten by her husband, I remembered the drug induced smiling eyes of the pretty prostitute I chatted with on the streets of Pattaya, the one who taught me locusts are tasty too! I remembered those women on the supermarket aisles urging me to buy V-wash. AND then I remembered the harsh lights of the OT and the gynecologist smiling down at me and telling me I was doing the right thing. "God will bless you," he said, his exact words. So did He?

Did He bless all of the other women too, when he gave them vaginas?

What about the woman who is forced to have sex with her husband even when she does not want to? What about the one that got raped and thrown by the roadside, the ones that are abandoned after childbirth? What about the 18 month old baby, did you read about that? How wondrous and enticing was that mound of flesh on that tiny girl? It doesn't matter if it was in India or Pakistan or in Timbucktoo, do spare a thought for the teenager on the bus, the hands that grope her and violate her in the crowd. You know, we cannot forget, we cannot let ourselves forget. We need to think about these things, we need to remember. I won't even mention sticks or rods or glass bottles, I promise I won't talk about how the bodies were dumped. Forget the cases you read in the newspapers. Read your own life. Read the lives of the women around you. 

In a book I read by Stephen King as a teenager, I remember there was this expression: "Woman: a life support system for a c**t." Indeed.

From a very early age, women are conditioned to be suppliant, to play second fiddle, to place the needs of others before theirs. Why do women have to prove their worth, either by bearing male children or by earning or by career? Men prove themselves just by being born: they are worthy. Women, on the other hand are constantly being judged. It is not enough to be "just" a housewife. If you have a career, aspersions are cast on your home. Are the children being looked after? Ooh, obviously, she has to keep three maids. She? Her mother-in-law takes care of the children! Have you seen how messily they live? She cannot cook, can you imagine! If the child is unwell, or does badly in studies, everyone looks accusingly at the mother, so THAT's what happens when you are a working woman, see, she cannot even look after her children! Being a woman is like 'heads you win, tails I lose', there's just no way out. People love to point fingers and of course, the woman is to blame. 

And in addition, women are judged on the way they look. The colour of the skin, the contours of the hair, the size of the breasts, the dent of the stomach, the curvature of the thighs, everything is up for scrutiny. On the other hand, the man may be stick-like or paunchy, hairless or beady eyed, sport hair like King Kong or have breasts the size of Madh Island, he is still a prize catch. Just because.

No, don't stop caring. But do find a balance. Stop, pause and think. Find time for the things you love, for things that matter to you. Laugh with your friends, take time out alone, make time to explore yourself and your needs and teach the women you know and your daughters to do the same. Make sure you look back one day and are happy with the woman you are and not just a receptacle for the whims of men!