BLANK: because Feminism is Running Rampant

I don’t get it. I’ve lost my muse. I'm facing a clichéd writer’s block. I have no idea what to write about and I must write for that is my identity. I've been behind on my reading and I came across something in a book by Ayn Rand in chapter 3 of The Romantic Manifesto and this got me thinking…the scene goes like this…if one were to see a beautiful woman with a slight blemish we would ignore it as a minor affliction but if one were to see a painting of a woman with a blemish it would be a corrupted piece of art derogatory to human experience, Is not the point of art and literature to make reality more bearable? Then why do we shrink at the sight of imperfection and shout out with indignation. 

And what if it were opposite, we see and read perfect and imperfect images only to realize they are but fiction, nonexistent in our lives. The Fountainhead, perfection in the form of Howard Roark and yet when we look around us we realize they don’t make men like him…this may seem typically feminist but its true. And for some weird reason it shouldn’t sound weird as no where in works of literature has such a perfect image of a woman been drawn up that a man is disappointed with the reality and in most cases an image that is real is presented and so what you see is what you get. 

The scriptures and texts which talk of dedication, bravery and chivalry in men succeed in objectifying women. Compared to alcohol which makes you sin, equated with clothes meant to be discarded and given a secondary position of helping run the household the so called imperfections in women have been highlighted to such an extent that we now take a sadistic pleasure in creating an image of men that don’t exist. And trust me when I say Ayn Rand is the best at it. 

No White Horses. No Knights in Shining Armour. No fairytales. No Bollywood or Hollywood heroes that come charging on a Harley Davidson or drive a Porsche and hold doors open or take you for long drives in the moonlight and expect nothing but a Thank You. My pessimism here shocks even me but I have been privy to secrets that have altered my belief not only in ‘boys’ and that’s what they are but also in humanity. 

19^th February 2014. A boy calls up his Ex-Girlfriend and insults her for no fault of hers.

20^th February 2014. A boy calls up his friend and insults her for being a friend of the Ex-Girlfriend.

21^st February 2014. A group of boys call up a group of girls and insult them simply because they can.

22^nd February 2014. The Ex-Boyfriend walks up to his Ex-Girlfriend and slaps her.

23^rd February 2014. A seventeen year old girl’s belief in humanity, love, infatuation and most importantly friendship is shattered.

24^th February 2014. She couldn’t care less!

You take us for granted. You take our dreams and aspirations to be figments of imagination. You take our silence for accord. You take our lowered heads for shame. You take our respect for servitude. You take our service for duty. You take our forbearance to be our weakness. You take our elegance to be fragility. You take our lives to be wax in your hands.You take our stories to be your words. You try to break us.You even try to make us.

You see, the image that you and I  create in our minds is shattered by us and our experiences, and at the end we (women) don’t care. We let it go, We move on and I think that is what creates the “imperfection” in us. We forgive and pretend so well that we have forgotten.  But it’s there, eating us from the inside.  The grudge grows and unlike you we deal with it, time passes while we get spent. We stop belief from crumbling, faith from dying and perception from changing because they, the supposedly superior sex can’t and won’t be able to deal with it and I wait for the day they see the real us and what we are and can be… for not knowing whether to acknowledge us, thank us, beg forgiveness or simply stare …they will be blank.

In Search of a Silver Lining

“Most people lose the ability to see silver linings even though they are always there above us almost every day.”
It seems four days ago i was on a bus. A bus which transported me 13 hours later to NOWHERE. I  picked up my baggage and papers and started walking and kept walking because the only thing remotely visible was a skeleton,a skeleton of a building. I still walked on, reached a room- so this room basically a storage space for four girls exhausted,excited,enraged,estranged and most importantly unknown to each other. The lizard on the wall clicked its tongue, the cricket behind the curtain cricked away and all we said was Hi!
Gracious to the T we offered each other our help and then proceeded to those spaces that would be our platform for role play, debate and in a way to learn some and lose some. Is it really that easy to ignore the dust, the heat, the mirage and the mosquitoes? Turns out it is. We forgot our surroundings and started concentrating on what we had to do and that was probably, proving a point.
So three days, two communiques and one memory later i looked up into that dust and saw something ... maybe a mirage,  maybe reality, maybe a cloud waiting to burst, maybe a thought gathering dust attracting subtle matter to it,maybe a dark shining outline. A Silver Lining.
They say when we talk of world damnation and Indian hypocrisy it makes us wise, knowledgeable and confident why then did we succumb to tears in the heat, in the cold air of the bus, in the arms of waiting family and friends.  These issues may depress one but at the same time they open before us an array of choices...make your friends, find your allies,write your drafts, negotiate with the unmoving opponent and then smile, speak and do exactly what you originally planned to do.
Suddenly those that we met over these three days became as important as those we already knew. A law student who looks like a celebrity(scary alike), a girl who shares half your name and another who shares half your food without knowing anything about you. The seniors you only dared to smile at now walk up to you and hug you in those corridors where you sheepishly say Hello! Those Chairpersons we made WhatsApp groups about (according to them, not really ) stand outside a bus and ask you why you're silent at 11:45 at night and ask the same at 4:30 am,you offer another brownies and then spend an hour getting all nostalgic on the bus! The tide turns and the rain falls, the earth gets that rejuvenating smell and we?
We move a little closer, one step at a time to that shining outline. The trophy shines bright, the college seems welcoming, your friends jump up to greet you, the city reeks of civilization then why is it that all you actually want is to hear that sound of those machines beside the skeleton, the cricket chirping, the people arguing,annoying and trying to talk to you. In the search for new horizons or in this case the old ones we lose track of the clouds that stood right above us, the ones with a silver lining. the moments where what and who we were didn't matter all that mattered is if you were ready to dance with an abandon and sing with your soul, converse with your spirit and live with all your might. Where those strangers became friends and lifted the veil of pretense of our faces so that we could see that glitter above us, that glimmer in the distance. I reached home and that's Where I wanted to be.
We were so shrouded with disappointment that we took off in the search for a silver lining not realizing that it was right above us, those strangers became each others secret keepers,the chivalry was kept alive, the medicine came a little late , the journey took a little long ,realization still is hitting, we still are walking- a different direction but we wont stop. we keep looking for a silver lining.
Lucknow, Friends,a New Identity,an anonymity,a simplicity, a little audacity and some help...I found my Silver Lining! Turns out it was there all along! It was Us,the city,the conference,the people and That dark looming cloud that showed me the glimmer!