So I was at this wonderfully comfortable place today... mostly women and a few token men... and we were all sitting and talking about being feminists... and the usual concerns about being identified as a feminist were raised and the answers were mostly the ones that I had evolved to form in my head for myself (and by that virtue possessing some sort of longer staying power)

Towards the end however, a woman told us her story. Of how she was subjected to having people question her about the way she was dressed and how she was probably guilty for the advances made and for the time when a man broke into her room.

Now, the outline of the story has been played and replayed so many times that it has become monotonously trite. But at that moment it all came alive, filling in the gaping outline, was the real and the physical, the woman who stood there while people passed judgements on her and her body.

And suddenly, women were reborn in my head.

Forgotten for the past two years. Their body and the struggle to reclaim that space forever and continuously. Forgotten in the power of being a journalist.

I do not claim for journalism the higher ideals of equality. Like much of the world outside, it sucks and aint that great a place for women.

But it did something for me. It took away from me the shackles of worry of my physical safety. I remember riding home at eleven on my two-wheeler on national highways and open fields, having imaginary conversations with creepy men who would accost me midway. I would tell them that I am a journalist. That I know the area politician. That they would be in big trouble if they tried to mess with me. And in my head, they would run away in fear at hearing these powerful things.

My most cherished moment as a woman journalist came at this chief minister's city tour that i was assigned to cover. Now, wherever the cm went, huge crowds gathered. huge crowds of men. some of my women colleagues decided to opt out of the field trip and sit in our bus. but since i was always uncomfortable acknowledging limits of my gender, i went.

i went and i stood amidst hundreds of men. a woman in a crowd. nah... a huge, huge crowd. but automatically, there was space around me. people jostled and pushed, but never in that one hour that i stood, never was there an "innocuous brush", a prying finger, a humiliating groping.

i felt safe. for the first time, i felt safe in a crowd of men. i didnt have to move my body in those obvious, non-obvious ways we do, to protect myself, i didnt have to look out for suspect men, i didnt have to worry about a hundred little and big things i would otherwise have been worried to death about. i just had to do my job of covering an event and i did without worrying about being me, a woman.

i m not saying here that my safety was a result of being journalist alone. but it is the power i commanded because there was a whole battalion of people out there, police included, who were there for me. who stood as my shield.

this sort of safety, much flawed maybe, i can only dream about, having left the profession for a while. but. but imagine a world where this safety were possible. where we lived not afraid that we were women, but content in that we were women.

Dum dum dum...

sat here in this corridor amidst scores of people alone. i like it here. to see how i can create my space with so many people milling around.

dum dum dum

kept wondering how long i can resist from opening up my blog and seeing if anyone has miraculously found their way here and even left a comment (gasp!)

dum dum dum

lasted about an hour and fifteen minuted before i capitulated and let the world know (heh!) that i exist and write.

tra la la

saw a random movie... someone' s random thoughts were on it... corridors, outlines, black and white, profiles, lines.... randomness that was assertive and defensive....

had conversation... lilting and.... random... about everything and nothing... about elsewhere...

hmmm....

dum dum dum

have started on a vicarious path... begun to read other people's blogs... what fun! different styles... of writing and of life.

little panic.

what waste of time.

all that knowledge to be gathered.

sigh.

sigh. sigh.

eleven already.... dum dum dum. little alcohol would be nice. but sleep would be nicer.

some organisation, classification and movement needed.

dum bum lum tadum ta da

what fun laptops are. people even read them during movies that they ve chosen to sit through. not a class by a lecturer imposed on them. little random no? actually very much. like an addiction. pah! people i say!

what fun laptops are. people all around you. their crowd laughter filters in and out. while i sit esconsed in my world. staring and writing. random. some pleasure at knowing worlds can be created with the aid of technology wherever and whenever.

seriously maybe i should read some science and see how it affect development.

dum dum dum

blogging

somebody told me not to write a blog when you re down and out. increases your "existential angst", she said. makes sense. a previous experience with blog left me writing things I never would say to people, random people, but only to myself in conversations with her.

but now, three years later, as i find myself in a really new place, with her far, far away, at moments with no one to talk to, i turn again to this easy place.

i think to myself- i could write in my diary- that book which has so much of me, which if another read would think that the long life of 23 years has been a series of depressing moods, and that I could possibly not have been happy ever. but i dont write in it. i cannot anymore. its as if its life-span is over. brief attempts to revive it have failed and i am left with nothing to pour my angst into. nothing. except this.

this flicker of space. in a world where i am anonymous. the relative anonymity of this space-my blog-means i could say so much and yet maintain the sanctity of the thought, the emotion. i suppose.

and as i end this post, the mind goes back to how it violated the space of two people who had found each other through this medium. by reading their entries to each other about each other. and regret is overwhelming at ever having told them that i intruded into their space.

somethings are best kept silent.

Stories

Everyone has a story to say about death. About how somebody survived death by pure, sheer luck. About how somebody almost survived. About how death struck somebody like thunder. All pointless, but nevertheless, they are told and retold. Unattached and emotionlessly. But overflowing with pity and sometimes as if it were a novelty.

As I hear them, I want to scream and ask them all to shut up. Tell them all that their stories are just that-stories. They do not make the pain go away. They do not bring a person back from the dead. They do not help the shattered family, coping bravely, feel any less unbroken.

Regular chitter-chatter seems so banal. It leaves me wondering how so many trivialities could be talked, sent out into the cosmos, when someone has lost their father, her husband for almost thirty years. When death is such a regular, recurrent feature, how could one lead a life immune to this overpowering knowledge?

Of death and of life

For three days now, I have been walking around with the feeling of a heart constantly sinking. The tragedy, the grief of someone, someone a part of me, has been searing me with an intensity I cannot fathom.

With him losing his father, I feel as if I lost someone myself. Someone I could have laughed with, someone I could have known. Someone I thought I would know. Sooner or later. But that was not to be. He died much too early leaving behind shattered lives, lives that will have to weave a new pattern of keeping him alive and yet moving on.

Every day I read of people dying and it fails to move me, as I am sure it is for many. But every grief is personal, searingly so. And as I hugged and held her hand, I felt within me the need to know her, the wish to have her in my life, in however small a way she would let me.

He goes on strong. Vulnerably so. Mature in the way he handles his grief. Expecting it to fall to a set pattern. Knowing when it will hit him and how he could cope with it. I hope it does chart out a familiar path for him, yet knowing perhaps that it wont and that it would stray into darkness.

All of the life led seems so banal, all the pettiness and the idle thoughts of cruelty seem just that- petty and idle- till one is reminded- that there is something bigger than that- death. with its oft-repeated finality occurs and reoccurs. ripping off the permanence of life. hurting you again and again. till life with its temporary healing powers recuperates you.