No tomorrows…

In a sea of dark water

Amidst the ruthless, acid rain

Steering a rudderless boat

Filled with decaying, broken

Bones of dreams

Swaying and chipping away

As the salt of tears

Wipe away the remnant

Peals of painted hope

And usher in the sink hole

Of acid springs

And

No tomorrows…

The Show Must Go On…

The other day, I came across a music company that went by this name, and it got me thinking. Whose show were they talking about? Is it the individual’s or the team’s? Or, did they mean the show will go on, no matter what happens to the individual/team? The more I think of it, the more convinced I am that it’s the latter; no matter what happens, the show always goes on.

We have actually traveled a year away from the dreadful events around the tsunami and earthquake that shattered normal life in Japan. Despite such a catastrophe, life simply goes on, without any compunction to stop for the dead, the injured, the shattered, the depressed, or the immobilized. Most of the times, when one negotiates such crises, it almost seems like the unseen hand of fate moves mysteriously and sometimes even with accurate precision to corner a single person and cause irreversible damage. I guess, it is in such instances that the oppressed/broken soul seeks help from equally mysteriously (most often spurious) sources, such as astrologers or gods. After all, materialism and atheism have become the luxury of the affordable classes, and of course it is completely another matter that god men and religious idiosyncrasies abound among the rich.

I have been wondering what it is about humans that we continue to go on without ever stopping or dropping anchor in the sea of life? Is it because we have no anchors or is it because the only way to stop would be to completely abdicate all claim to life the way we know it?

I still remember the early morning phone call I had with a close friend immediately after my dad’s funeral. Though I don’t remember most of what we spoke, I clearly remember seeing that the color of the sky was still blue, the rising sun was still crimson, the leaves on the trees were green, and the morning breeze was still cool and soothing. None of these had changed just because something fundamentally had gone missing in my life and that my grief had immobilized me. It seemed at that time that one was on a dark, dark road with nothing to hold, nothing to feel, and nothing to see.

Of course time, the other component of this mysterious life, went by, and I found a way to deal with the grief and go on; after all the show does go on and whether we want it or not, we will be part of the bandwagon, and it’s a choice that we make whether to ‘enjoy’ the various sights and whoop for joy or let everything whiz past us while we wallow in misery and sorrow.

So, are we to assume that there’s anyway no choice at all, but to completely submit oneself to what fate brings to our life next? Can we or is it possible to influence one’s life events? I remember a long lost friend who used to say things like it’s in my horoscope that I will face ‘bad’ luck for the next one year! Whoa! And it was only my bad luck that I had to even share the planet with such people! I am sure such people will have the most idiotic questions, like for instance, they might ask, how could you have influenced and stopped the tsunami! Well, we may not be able to stop the tsunami, but we could definitely have stopped having built the nuclear power plant, if we ever bothered about nature and humans in the real sense.

The more collective energies we put into building this planet, I believe we will be able to even influence such events with precision and hold each others’ hands when a calamity strikes. Most often, even grief appears tolerable when there are people to share it with. But, what’s rather saddening is the fact that as the show goes on, we are becoming more isolated and alienated, which makes the going exponentially difficult.  If only we could build bridges instead of burning them all the time, if we could forgive and not hold on to grudges, if we could be generous and not petty, and  if we could be a little accommodating than demanding, the show might be a bit more enjoyable to all of us.

Ps: People, please be generous and not scathing with your comments because I have written this great difficulty, hoping against hope that I can restart my blog and fish out my old vigor and passion. 

Picture Courtesy: 1. Photograph from Mainichi Shimbun/Reuters

A tsunami wave crashes over a street in Miyako City, Iwate Prefecture, in northeastern Japan on March 11. 2. A photograph of a rose flower in a plant that I have nurtured for over a year now.

The Need for and the Danger of Slutwalk

A few years ago, I overheard a couple of feminist friends talking about surrogacy and the need for a more nuanced debate in India, and how a superficial engagement with the issue, without any deeper understanding, could easily pave the way for even more subjugation of the already marginalized women in third world countries. The issue in question was how some people, even liberated upper class women viewed surrogacy as a mere choice, without contextualizing it in the neo-liberal economy where market forces only exploit and strengthen the already structured inequalities in the system, though on the face of it, choice, liberation, and freedom for all seemed to reign supreme. At that time, thanks to the patience of the two feminist friends, I understood the need to contextualize any struggle, and think before jumping into any bandwagon of any ‘radical’ struggles.

The Slutwalkers of Canada

It is one such context that one needs to place the rather ‘radical and revolutionary’ struggle called the slutwalk. Prima facie, the visceral rejection I feel for the term is because I think the word is akin to Gandhi’s harijan, which completely lacked any empathy for the struggling masses and sought to blunt the politicization of the dalit people, thereby paving way for a long-term subjugation with the ‘happy and proud’ consent of the victims! Secondly, what’s the slutwalk all about? It’s quite simple (rather simplistic!), ‘you have no business to touch me, irrespective of how I am dressed, and even if I am dressed like a slut.’ Fair enough.

The Sex Workers of Kolkata

Then, what is the point in dressing ‘like’ a slut? Let’s just look at India? Who is a slut? How many of us have actually seen sluts? I have interacted with a couple of them from the devadasi community (the community of women segregated by the bloody brahminical caste system to do just sex work for upper caste men), and they were not different from any of the other women. Only that they did sex work for a living, while the rest of us did office work for a living; there was no other difference except for the difference in brutality that the class-conscious patriarchy had dealt with us and ‘them.’ And, today, the women organizing slutwalk, without taking into cognizance the brutality of patriarchy and its oppression on women who were termed sluts, seem to embrace the very word and even want to flaunt it! And, these are women who don’t do sex work for a living, but somehow want to embrace the identity; how convenient is that?

A Sold Cow

For years, people have been fighting tooth and nail to just legalize this damned profession, with no success, and now, people are fighting for a cultural legalization of ‘slutting,’ or at least shall we say a cultural acceptance of being a slut, or may be being dressed like a slut. And, how do they plan to achieve it? By walking in hordes in skimpy clothes, which in their skewed view is of how sex workers are dressed! Wow!
It’s not without reason that one begins to think that a hypocritical society can only produce hypocritical and selfish struggles! The slutwalk India doesn’t come into existence because women in Kashmir were raped by the armed forces or strong women like Thangjam Manorama were brutally assaulted by the Assam Rifles, or not even when women on city roads are habitually sexually assaulted, irrespective of the clothes one wears, but when a Canadian policeman shoots off his mouth! What about the policemen closer home, who constantly taunt, harass, and even murder women? How is that there’s no such outrage? Do these women (the slutwalkers) feel more in solidarity with the western (read white-skinned) women than our own women, who do cringe, cry, and even commit suicide when harassed and termed a slut? Perhaps, there’s a simple solution: women come out and accept the term slut and in fact look at it as a liberating experience to be called a slut and do sex work in a market where the consumers are predominantly men. Is this the limits of one’s imagination or understanding of women liberation? This is perhaps the death of imagination, or a more sinister, neo-liberal-market-economy-dictated imagination!

A 'taken' woman

After moving to Chennai, I have seen some struggles by working class women. Truth be told, as a feminist, it did unsettle me to see women or young girls dressed in the so-called ‘decent’ clothes, in a way that makes women conscious of their bodies all the time. In those struggles, I have seen girls adjusting each others’ dupattas or saree pallus so that nothing ‘untoward’ is visible. Even women who are part of democratic struggles haven’t exactly escaped what for many of us is a flippant issue (shame at one’s own body). This is the place where there is need for, if not a slutwalk but the awareness of the way patriarchy creates shame in a woman for being a woman and the need to break the shackles of modesty that patriarchy ‘clothes’ women with! And we need to not only break the ideas of modesty, but also markers of patriarchy on women, such as the magalsutra (thali), the damned sindoor (vermilion ), the toe rings, etc.

We need to also identify how the market keeps bringing back these as fashion statements and women actually take to these as if these really make them look good! And, again look good for whom? For men! Perhaps, more than slutwalk, what we need are perhaps some lessons from history about how the sindoor came into existence; how sold out cows were marked on their foreheads with the vermilion and today the taken women (married) women have a vermilion marker on their foreheads!
I believe more than a slutwalk, what we need is for women to create a shared space that unites all women who are pummeled every day by patriarchy in a myriad of ways and break the roots of patriarchy and identify its ever changing colors and deal with it. But, can all women across classes and castes be united, without giving up the privileges of class and caste?
If the answer is no, and that the slutwalk is being organized only to represent the aspirations of a certain class of women, then don’t claim to represent ‘all’ women or even the women who do sex work for a living, especially if you do not share their world view even by a decimal point. So much, yes so much work needs to be done before we could see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, especially for the Indian woman, and the slutwalk will only lead them into an even more darker tunnel that is conceived by the holy matrimony of patriarchy and the market.

Ps: Image courtesy: 1. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbcworldservice/3512785840/in/set-72157617862244116/
 2. http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/166482/20110621/slutwalk-capitol-hill-neighborhood-in-seattle-women-in-provocative-outfits-capitol-hill-neighborhood.htm
3. http://www.india-forums.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1708019&TPN=9