Pocket Change

every time we meet
pieces of change fall from your pockets
getting entangled in sheets
dropping behind headboard
slipping under mattress & into pillowcase
when you leave I hunt for coins
collecting them in a jar
waiting for it to one day
be full

love letter

you will never know because you've always been plastic and planted to the bottom of the fish bowl as i swim around you in tight circles in a way that makes you believe that that is my only ability - swimming round and round and round. you won't notice as my circles get bigger and the water more turbulent. you will be busy trying to stay rooted in an ever swirling world. i will swim larger and larger. until one day we both realise there is no glass. this isn't even a bowl. you will find that there's no need for a little plastic castle in the fluid vastness of the ocean. you might even search for me because what's a plastic castle without a fish bowl-dwelling fish? but try as you might to retrace each memory you will never know how it happened and when i became gone.

http://harley-jay.tumblr.com/post/106865102476/facetiousfigment-little-plastic-castle-ani

No This Is Not Rape (Trigger Warning: Sensitive Material)

The Mahmood Farooqi rape case has been immensely triggering for me.
Not just because the facts are so similar to what happened to me about a decade ago but because of the unfortunate discourse that's followed Farooqi's sentencing to a minimum 7 yrs in prison.
"Why didn't she resist?"
"Why didn't she go to the police immediately?"
"Is it rape if he goes down on her?"
"Is it rape if it's less than 4 minutes long?"
"Is it rape if she's white?"
"Is it rape if he's bi-polar?"
"Is it rape if he apologises?"
"Is it rape if his politics is widely acknowledged as progressive?"

There have been a string of rape apologies I've read under the guise of 'widening the debate' and 'inviting nuance', some by people I call friends.
Each piece twists my insides because they take me back to a time when rape-apologies weren't things others said to me but things I said to myself.
No, this is not rape because he's not inside me, I told myself as he pinned me to the bed. No, this is not rape because I've smoked a joint, I thought as I screamed stop for the nth time. No this is not rape because he's having a bipolar episode. No, this is not rape because I'm his houseguest. No, this is not rape because look! someone's broken through the door within minutes and lifted him off me. No, this is not rape because everyone in that house is pretending nothing happened. No this is not rape because he is widely loved and I must not destroy him.

I told myself this isn't rape as I ran home and then stayed there, unable to come out for the next 7 days. I told myself it's not rape as I quit my job and sank into a confused state. It wasn't rape for the next two years that I went underground, receding from the world. It wasn't rape when I finally went to therapy and it wasn't rape that made me spontaneously start crying every time my boyfriend & I got intimate. It definitely wasn't rape that stirred it all up again eleven years later when the Farooqi case came up.
Eleven years.

All this time and for me, it wasn't rape at all. Until the woman Farooqi raped showed me it was. Because every forced sexual act is rape. Lack of consent is rape. Taking away a woman's agency and right to her own body, her own safety is rape. I must repeat this to myself every time doubt creeps in and I wonder if it was indeed rape. So must we all, repeatedly until we get it.

Do read this Kafila piece, which succinctly breaks down the legal and feminist aspects of the case and judgement: https://kafila.org/2016/08/14/the-mahmood-farooqui-rape-conviction-a-landmark-verdict-j-devika-nivedita-menon/ 

Bikini Wax

At the lowest point in life, when I was in extreme physical pain from a back condition, Sunita from the neighbourhood parlour was someone whose kindness helped me make it through the haze of pain. She understood why, despite extreme agony, I would hobble over to get my eyebrows threaded or arms waxed. She didn't judge my need to indulge in such grooming rituals just to feel normal. When she noticed I couldn't sit up for more than 2 minutes at a stretch she invented new ways to thread, exfoliate, soften, condition and wax.

Since then, our friendship has grown. We continue to meet once a month, when she comes over, all-professional, to deliver 'parlour' services. I am healthy now and have my own place. I've had a significant romantic relationship and remain unmarried. She got married a year & a half ago, late by her family's standards. Within the first year, she suffered a heartbreaking miscarriage and came to realise that the man she'd married was less life partner and more petulant man-child.

Whenever she comes over, we hang out for a bit - me in my ganji and shorts, her chatting away as she heats the wax, knowing where everything in my kitchen is.

She tells me that a few days back she found herself at a bus stand at 8pm, not wanting to go back home to her husband yet unable to return to her parents because they would only send her back. As she rips out the tiny hairs on my calf, she declares that women in this country can rely on no one, not even their own parents. I ask her why she didn't call me from the bus stand.

"I thought you were traveling for work - don't you travel a lot?"

"I do, but you can still call."

"The phone works outside Delhi?"

"Yes, it's called 'roaming'. You can ask your mobile company to activate it. Anyway, I don't travel that much anymore."

"Oh, then I should call you."

Then like always, she recommends that I get a full body uptan treatment done. "I will do it nicely. You see how your skin will glow after that!"

"I don't want it Sunita. I barely have patience for the basics."

"But bhaiyya will like it."

There is no bhaiyya in my life anymore. She doesn't know this because I haven't updated her yet. Instead I launch into a lecture about how I don't care to go through hours of treatments for bhaiyya. Any bhaiyya who enters my life will just have to deal with me as I am.

"I'm waxed and threaded, Sunita, that's about all I can offer bhaiyya."

She giggles and then gets serious.

"It took me a year to realise it, didi, but I can't rely on my husband for anything. As long as I'm happy and laughing he's fine. He'll take me out for shopping or ice-cream. But when I suffer, he can't handle it. When I lost the baby, he moved out to go live with his sister."

Then she says, "It's good you are not married didi. You did the right thing."

Over the years I've known Sunita, I've heard this line many times. Earlier, she would say it as a kindness. "It's good you didn't get married." I imagined she felt bad for me because she knew how others perceived unmarried women our age. Now when she says it, it's as if she's proud of how my life turned out. So I don't tell her how lonely I feel sometimes and how my gut wrenches in the middle of the night because I miss being held so damn much. Instead, I listen as Sunita tells me about her other friends at the parlour, girls like her who wouldn't give up their jobs for all the husbands in the world. Girls, who would sneak out at lunchtime to cheat on their 'karvachaut' fasts because "When have our husbands ever cared enough to fast for us? The day they bother half as much as we do, we'll skip the samosas." She tells me about the elaborate labyrinth of untruths they spin to avoid the wrath of their in-laws. It sounds a lot like the lengths I go to to avoid relatives fixated on undoing my single-status.

"Ok didi, let's try something new today. Bikini wax."

"WHAT? No!"

"Just see how bhaiyya will love it, didi."

"I don't care what bhaiyya will love. It's too painful."

"Oho, the way I do it there will be no pain."

"Yeah yeah yeah. No thanks."

She looks exasperated. She had me pegged for an adventurous woman and now I've disappointed her.

I don't know when it happened but at some point a hairy bush became not-normal. When I realised it wasn't a passing fad and that 'everyone was doing it' it made me angry. Burning hot wax on my shins was one thing but my crotch?! That was going too far. My politics wouldn't allow me. My fear of singeing my cooch absolutely forbade it.

But here is Sunita, bored by my tedious politics, unimpressed by my fear. Is there some arcane code of sisterhood she's invoking because it's beginning to feel like I just might let her come at my vagina with hot wax dripping off a butter knife.

And HOLY SHIT it hurts like a motherfucker.

"You SAID it wouldn't hurt. STOPPPP."

"I can't stop now. That would be silly. I can't leave you half-done like a chicken."

"I DON'T CARE. STOP."

"Shh...it's the first time you're doing this, no? That's why it hurts. You see how good you will feel later. Especially when you get your period."

"Sunita, you're being ridiculous. OH MY GOD WHAT SATANIC TORTURE IS THIS."

"You know didi, I've opened up a secret bank account. I'm going to put all the money I make from this job in that. I won't tell my husband."

"That's so great." I whimper. I hate her so much.

"Bas bas bas...ho gaya. It's almost done."

Whenever Sunita says something is 'almost done' I know that something terrible is about to happen. And so, as a last ditch effort I scream out my confession:

"There's no bhiayya anymore! He's GONE!"

Sunita looks up at my face. She looks just the right amount of sad. And then she grins.

"OhO! It doesn't matter didi, who needs bhaiyya? Now turn over. Let me do your bum."

Like A Motherfucker

Kids Are Funny

Dear Amit Shah,

I want to tell you a funny thing that happened at this place where I work in Delhi. It's a small library and on Mondays I go in to hang out with the members (mostly kids between the ages of 4 and 18), help them check out books and every so often read books aloud to them and have chats.

Every Monday is funny, because kids are funny. Even when they're not trying to be. They have a funny way of observing the world that grown ups built. I'm convinced they've got a whole standup routine running in their heads about the absurdities they experience on a daily basis.

This Monday was no different. Actually it was. Half a world away, an angry man had opened fire on a nightclub full of people, overwhelmingly from the LGBTQ community. They were just there for a good time, but by the end of the night 50 of them didn't make it out alive. Because of that angry man with a gun. So we spoke about it, funny kids and grown ups.

Why do we fear the things we don't understand? What kind of responses do we have to the fear? Do we have a choice in how we respond? Do certain groups of people deserve to live more than others? The funny kids and grown ups decided to make a list of all the different kinds of people that are targets of hate, mockery, disrespect & oppression. The list was long and had all kinds of folks in it: weird shapes & sizes, weird skin colours, weird family names, weird ways of dressing, weird choices of romantic partners, weird ways of speaking, praying and eating food. Just weird, you know?

Finally, when the list was complete the grownups wondered: If we choose hatred as a response, what would happen to these groups?
Kids: They'll all be killed!
Grown ups: If they all disappear who'll be left?

***silence***
And then an unsure but gravely serious voice offered: "Mmmm...Modi?"


I told you, Amitbhai, kids are funny. You should come hang with us.

Love,
AS

 

Damn Girl, Your Feminism Is Showing

I can’t speak for other professions but being feminist in Indian television is a weird science, practically inexplicable like quantum theory. In TV one can, at the same time, be and un-be a feminist. One can, simultaneously, benefit from & destroy the very foundations of feminism that generations of women (and some men) built with blood, sweat and tears.

…which is precisely how my boss prays I won’t speak as we walk into the conference room to present a “wow kickass jhakaas idea for TV program” to a group of suits.

Subconsciously I brace to be institutionally ignored by men in positions of power. If you’re a proper feminist, you’ve read up on all the ways in which you can be disregarded and made to feel small in such situations – you’re talked over, sometimes you’re loomed over by big-dick body postures and very often you’re subjected to half-smirks as dudes pretend to listen.

Where people sit at such events is key. My team is represented by myself and two men. One of them is my boss and he, automatically, takes the seat that would put him at the head of proceedings on our side. The other side is represented by three men and a woman. So far so #everydaysexism.

But then a slight woman with a big presence walks in and introduces herself as the high chair priestess. She parks herself bang in front of me, across the conference table, upsetting patriarchy's seating chart. She's a marketing suit and she takes lead (yes children, if you thought your television was made by creatives birthing sexciting ideas, think again – the head honcho is always the salesperson looking for profit). Off we go.

I don’t need to turn towards my boss to know that he’s straightening his back to up-talk our company and the work we do. She listens for a second and starts looking bored. A mousey guy to her right interrupts my boss and says, “Yes we know your work. Tell us your idea.” It’s over to me now.

I’m so excited, I tell them, to be presenting an idea that’s part humour, part emotional drama and always ‘life-positive’. Off we go, let’s present the fuck out of this. Three slides in. What wow. Such amaze. Look at their rapt---

High Chair Priestess: “I’m going to stop you right there. I think we’ve got the point.”

Me: Umm ok. (Initiate Sequence – Control ‘HELLNAW YOU DINT JUST INTERRUP MAH GRINDIN’ Face.)

HCP: This is great and all but it’s not right for our channel.

Me: Ok…?

HCP: There are women in each of your episodes.

Me: Yes.

HCP: And your anchor is a woman.

Me: Tr00 dat home gurl.

HCP: Our channel is more inclusive of other genders.

Me: Oh yay, like the whole spectrum of LGBTQ? (This was more a ‘face expression’ than actual words.)

HCP: No, I mean – shows that everyone can watch. And feel happy about.

Me: *nodding head vigorously* You do mean LGBTQ! (Again, face-expression)

HCP: Have you seen that Brooke Bond ad?

Me: Nuh-unh.

By this time, the world around us has dissolved, like in West Side Story, and there’s just me and her in the room looking meaningfully into each other’s eyes. 

and mouths a little less agape

I can hear background dude-murmurs (‘yesyesyes') every time she says something. But not once has she made eye contact with anyone besides me. She ignores the men, she assumes the big-vag body posture and she resolutely interrupts any dude who pipes up from time to time. I’m a little bit in love with her.

HCP: There’s a young couple. And she asks him to make chai. Her mother in law comes in and there’s this cute tension you know because she expects the daughter in law to make tea? But then she takes a sip and approves of her son and daughter in law. Like that.

Me: Huh? (Initiate Sequence – Remove CONTEMPT from face)

HCP: We are not looking to push women’s programming. Or be perceived as ‘male-bashing’.

Me: But but but these are fascinating stories that happen to have women in the lead. We’re talking about women who do great things. There’s no male-bashing at all.

HCP: Exactly, there are no males.

Me: (Initiate Sequence: Control ‘BUT YOU ARE IN THIS POITION OF POWER BECAUSE OF GREAT WOMEN WHO CAME BEFORE YOU AND DID GREAT THINGS. YOU ARE A WOMAN WHO’S DOING GREAT THINGS’ Face)

HCP: If we get a branded slot like ‘L’Oreal Presents’ we’ll explore this further. Thank you for coming in. Keep in touch.

*****

I reel out of the room, not quite sure what happened. I’m still high from having HCP engage with me so completely, to not be talked down to as is the norm. I’m appalled at my own desperation to not come off as a ‘card-carrying feminist’. I’m shocked at how this woman, whose talent & determination has allowed her to rise up the corporate ranks, is doing her job so well that it destroys any chances of non-cis-male narratives making it to the mainstream. I’m even more aware of how the ‘market’ is patriarchy’s bitch.

******

My boss is incredibly supportive. We’ve bombed, yes, but he believes in the idea and immediately starts making a list of other places we could pitch it. My other colleague is mostly quiet.

Then he says, “I’m sorry to say – and don’t take it the wrong way – but women in channels are like this only.”

Me: Like what?

He: Poor listeners. They interrupt constantly.

Me: So do men, yaar. All the time.

He: No they don’t. Not like this.

Me: Sigh. Ok.

He: And, anyway, did you see her body language?

Conversations With Boys

-->

Mid Life Problems

Just as it’s time to leave, he leans in and asks like it’s a secret, “Are you happy?”

I lean back. My brow knots up. “Wrong question. Ask me if I’m excited about the future.”

“Are you excited about the future?”

“Yes. Even if the happiness comes & goes.”

 “Hmmm…”

“You? Are you excited about what’s up ahead?”

“I don’t know. I’ve checked all the boxes – degree, job, marriage, money. I expected something more than this.”

“More than what?”

“More than…vanilla.”

“Talk to your wife more. Be vulnerable. You’ll be surprised how meaningful it can make your life to share like that.”

“I think I’ll start a band.”

 ******

Reminiscing

They meet after more than decade but one might say they’ve never met before because this is the first real conversation they’ve ever had.

And she says, “I used to be so scared of you back then.”

He looks surprised: “Why??”

“Oh I was scared of everything in those days.”

“No no. I’m pretty sure it was me. I used to be an asshole.”

 ******

Body Issues

He texts me from an out-of-town wedding: “God everyone is *so* fat here. The women are cows.”

I text back: “I’m fat too. You seem ok with it.”

“You’re different.”

“Why?”

“You change. Your face changes.”

“In bed?”

“Yes.”

*****

Insomnia

She is half a country away from home and from him. It’s a lonely hotel room, where the TV only plays Tamil channels. She has an early morning but sleep won’t come.

“Why not?” he asks on the phone.

“I have trouble. Insomnia.”

“I can sleep anywhere, any time.”

“Lucky you.”

“I’m going to help you sleep.”

“Best of luck. You won’t succeed.”

“Oh I will. Are you in bed?”

“Yes.”

“Comfortable?”

“Yes.”

“Listen to the sound of my breathing and breathe deeply with me.”

She inhales and exhales with him. For a good ten minutes.

“Are you asleep?”

“Mmmmm…no.”

“Ok. I’ll keep trying.”

 ******

The Turning Point

I dream of forevers with him.

But he says, “I’m only going to be a chapter in your autobiography.”

“Impossible. Only one?”

“Yeah, I’ll be the one after the assholes. Just before the love of your life.”

“You’re the love of my life.”

“No. I’m the turning point.”

******

Wah, mazaa aa gaya!

The Diet

Doctor, can you help me shed this weight?

Oprah says it’s all the feelings I ate

But it might be the opposite

I didn’t

Digest it all

I heard my voice the other day

Played back to me

It played so different from what I’d hoped

It was crushed under a house

Reaching out

As if

It knew it had a chance

Still

If I open my throat out a little more

Sound out

Round out the words a little more

Maybe I will hear myself

And feel my weight

Instead of eating these things to remind me

I am here

I exist

I am heavy

click them heels, you wicked thing, we know you're in there

Every Goddamned Morning

Moments from your past are picked up and thrown back at you, unsolicited, unwanted, unasked for. Moments that may or may not have been significant to your story but in their popping up, take you back.
When all you've been struggling to do...
In the books you read...
In the prayers you pray...
In the act of war you perform with your will power...
In the resigned surrender of your heart...
Is to return to the current, to stick your feet in the moment, to not look left or right or up or down or even straight ahead or directly behind - to be okay with the hysterical blindness it brings.

Your goal is to know that 'this-here-now' is not a trap, even if it feels like it. That it is the looking back, the sudden recurrence of a feeling, a look, a whispered breath on your neck that's the trap.

And so, every goddamned morning - would you please stop?