That day

Forget the raucous rabble

Screaming slogans

Burning bras

Walking naked for

Support.

No one listens;

They only smile

Indulgently, at the little

Women, and their play.

It’s when you look

Straight in the eyes of the

Smirking passer-by,

Mis-direct the bust-aimed

Roving appraisal

And still the glancing

Hand.

It’s when you refuse to bow

To fear and fallacy

And third-party rules

Denying the right to

Your own life-choice.

It’s when you stand when

All would push you down,

Use your voice, your brain,

Ask for books when handed

Pans, reject convention

And grab hold of Change.

It’s on that day when Fear

Turns his ugly leer

Away from the darkened road, the

Lonely alley, the dancing shadows

Preying on your mid.

And it’s when the wrong is

Not “your mistake”, for immodesty,

Immorality, or simply, insolently

Being there, wrong place,

Wrong time.

Then, when your head is held

High above what they deem

Necessary,

That day, the woman walks

Free, among the rest.

Atlas Mode

I love talking to my friends. Everyone has so much perspective to bring to life, to ideas, to stick-in-the-mind opinions. Today, one nudged opened the door of my mind a little bit more.

My strong feminist ideologies have never been a secret, ahem, and I think I like to go through life advocating women's rights and be-moaning a woman's manifold burdens, but also very blissfully ignoring the very real pressures and burdens men have to bear. Like for instance, the Hunter-Gatherer/Caveman/Provider ideal.

Especially in our very South Asian context, the "man of the family" has the Atlas-like burden of "supporting" everyone-the poor unmarried sister, the kids, the distant relative from the South, the painter who used to work for his father, the errant son, the aging mother etc. It is expected of him to perform, provide, put aside all other personal aspirations and internalize this role. Because if you fail, then, aiyo, he didn't do right by the family no. The wife. The mother-in-law.

"It's  a fucking burden" says my friend grimly, just turned 30, graphic designer, 1 year old son, plagued by familial problems.

But, like women have internalized the roles of home and hearth, men have internalized the caveman role. And I can't help but think that not only does this seem  to create a certain balance in the gender role universe but also that it is a facet of South Asian femininity taken for granted by women. Women are expected to run households, slave over them even but not to uphold them. The economic downturn of a family is generally never really pegged on a woman, but rather the man's inability to do his duties.

Seems to me there are all kinds of problems, all kind of  burdens and that the Greek philosopher got it spot on in advice that is very hard to follow :


"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle." - Plato 

I am woman, hear me roar weakly.

Women are fascinating creatures, I find the obsession that artists- poets, sculptors, painters, dramatists, cynics, philosophers, psychologists-have with them to be completely understandable. We are a strange lot, especially us "modern and empowered women". Because, sometimes, despite the strongest bloody feminist morals and the most militant feminist ideologies, women end up being just that, women, in every sense of the word in its worst, most stereotyped form.

So I think it would be very safe to say that while I love the vagaries associated with womanhood, and deplore the bullshit (Read as stomach cramps, mood swings, periods, painful childbirth, mood swings, body image issues) associated with being one, the thing I hate most are the basic traits of my type that are sadly unavoidable.

Like pining, and feeling less than special, and being burdened with the expectations of appropriate and inappropriate behaviour and having to cover up for the lack of perception of others. All of that and more.

But what is most insulting to a carefully built up feminist ego is that after years of empowerment, the woman's spirit is still so very much at the mercy of its twin soul's, and still so very easily quashed.