Almost an year has passed since the thoughts rustling through the corridors of time have been brushed and arranged. Sorry (to myself). For quite sometime now (or maybe since returning to The Homeland), a bitter feeling started making it's existence known somewhere deep inside. Call it uncertainty or weakness or fear or simply fatigue. Of what? That answer tip-toed into the chamber of secrets only recently. Fear, baap re!
Why, you ask, I fear? Because I am only a woman. Wait...let me rephrase that- 'only' a woman in this vast ocean of eyes that are always lurking alongside, mocking behind or lie in wait or just see me passing by to receive some unknown pleasure. I don't know what exactly. I am seen, judged, adjudged, commented upon, discussed and commonly concluded for being easily available. I cannot walk free in a land blessed with liberation and republic rights since 68 years. I should not/must not raise my voice, for those ears would listen and they sure wouldn't consent to what I opine. Those mouths that ridicule my being say the truth and I should only agree. No other way out, mind you.
Yes, I know that most of you would infer that I am acting like an extremist or wait... what's that word? Feminist, sounding positive. Maybe, but I am forced to narrow my eyes and view these dusty corners of my life take such important place in my life which surprises the blazes out of me.
What has given shape to these abstract musings is a movie that I saw- NH10. I don't know if I should say the movie is good or bad. But let me tell you, it is honest. It surely puts out this alarm or that panic a woman might have felt walking down a lonely street or waiting amongst strangers (men!) in a truthful and blatant way. What made me hold on to my chair was the utter brutality of all. This implicit arrangement that woman is property of a man. Not of the husband or the father or the family, any man would do. She is meant to bend down and if she resists, attack her with a blow to her abdomen, bring her down to her knees (where she belongs) and push some rat poison down her throat. Because that is what she deserves for being a rebel, rebel in the eyes of man, again any man would do.
I think what I wanted to express is that I don't feel safe. Sometimes, when these feelings overtake me, I want to stay confined to my walls and windows. I feel lost and exposed at the same time in my own home country. What a shame! I wish I could cuddle myself up and be lost in a world where I am allowed to be me, simple. Spread out your wings and fly, sure no problem! Read and write and re-read and re-write, is that even a question? Be a woman, well.. you are and O so wonderful!
This has been said and conveyed a numerous amount of times by so many of them around, what a woman feels here and how they have been wronged. I am not saying something new. But someone somewhere out there hasn't heard it yet, it seems. So, I scream again.
