Tag Archives: Womanhood

You may not *need* a man – but what if you *want* one?

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Over and over, women are being asked to choose careers and not ‘choose men’. To pursue careers and not ‘pursue men’. In effect, society is telling women that they must not ask for, want or need to be loved by a person of the opposite sex. 

It is strange indeed, to urge a human being to deny their very human need of love and companionship and physical intimacy, and replace it with a career instead. It is stranger to think that the need for achievement is a replacement of the need for love and belonging. 

In the picture below, which carries a small excerpt from my book The Reluctant Mother, I have mentioned the Pyramid of Needs given by American psychologist Abraham Maslow. The other picture shows the actual Pyramid or Heirarchy of Needs as described by him. The need for love and belonging is *separate* from the need for achievement. And the need for love and belonging comes lower down in the pyramid, making it more basic than the need for achievement. And yet, *both* these needs are UNDENIABLE parts of human existence, and one cannot be a replacement for the other. 

The need for love, affection and belonging is so basic that it is among the first needs of the infant- to be loved and cared for. The need for achievement and independence starts making itself felt at a young age, when the child wants to do things by himself/herself, to feel a sense of accomplishment.  Adult needs are but an extension of these childhood needs. 

Love gets expanded to include sexual fulfilment after puberty, but no matter how much modern life may try to separate sex and love, in the end most people want to have a stable intimate relationship with someone they *love*. That is what we all *ideally* want- regardless of whether we are men or women. We don’t want an endless string of casual relationships all our life. In the end, most of us want a person with whom we can feel comfortable and safe and loved. 

Traditional society kept forcing women to choose love over achievement, thereby denying that the need for achievement is a HUMAN need – not a male need. Men, however, did not have to sacrifice dreams to have love- they could have it all. 

Modern society now, is telling women to choose achievement over love- but men are not being told to pursue careers instead of pursuing women- they are pursuing both. Men still get to have it all. 

So how has modernity changed anything for women? It has merely replaced one lopsided ideology with another. It has merely replaced one form of sacrifice with another. It changes nothing. It still allows men to have it all and keeps asking women to choose ONE. 

Yes, it is absolutely essential to teach girls that their *survival* does not depend upon a man. That their *self-esteem* does not depend upon a man. That their *self-worth* does not depend upon a man. But don’t tell a girl that if she wants a man to love her and cherish her, she is ‘oppressed’ and ‘backward.’ It is a very *human* need to want love. 

And this also brings us to the very core of the issue- why are so many women rejecting the idea of love in the first place? Why are so many women disillusioned with love? 

Because men have not been taught to be *WORTHY* of a woman’s love. Men have not been told that they need to *earn* a woman’s love. 

When a man is physically or emotionally abusive, society shrugs and says ‘men will be men.’ When a man cheats on his partner, society shrugs and says ‘men will be men.’ When a man is controlling and dominating towards his partner, or when a man is irresponsible and does not carry out his share of responsibilities, it’s the same – men will be men. Whatever terrible things men do in their relationships, they are excused with the help of a sweeping generalisation – men will be men. 

In effect what we are telling women is that the very *definition* of a man is someone who is abusive, unfaithful, cruel, heartless and controlling. Or irresponsible and uncaring.  

Why, for heaven’s sake, would a woman want such a creature in her life? If women are then being asked to not want men, it is essentially a call to not keep an abusive, unfaithful, controlling – or irresponsible- person in their lives. 

As long as we keep condoning unpardonable behaviour by men, as long as we keep saying ‘men will be men’, we are contributing to a society in which relationship structures will be devalued and dismantled. 

What we *need* is to change the definition of what it means to be a Man.

When Masculinity gets identified as kindness, gentleness, compassion, love and shouldering equal responsibility, when a man being soft-hearted, polite and respectful towards a woman gets defined as the pinnacle of manliness, when a man sharing home responsibilities and parenting responsibilities equally is not considered an anomaly, when we can see a man deeply and faithfully in love and say that *this* is what it means to be a man, only then we will be able to create a culture in which *both* men and women can rise to the stage of self- actualization- in which *both* men and women can have their needs fulfilled- and nobody has to sacrifice their need for love to fulfil their need for achievement- nor will anybody have to sacrifice their need for achievement to fulfil their need for love. 

In an *ideal* world, choosing a man and choosing a career would not be two contradictory options for women. That is the kind of world I want to see. 

The Book is here !

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Do you remember this: Waiting for the Story? The story is here !

Your book is finally available – The Reluctant Mother: A Story No One Wants To Tell.

Yes, I said ‘your’ book. It’s not a typo. This book, in fact, belongs to all of you. You are the ones who witnessed the journey of this blog, walked along with me, listened to me spell out my deepest fears and stayed with me in my moments of despair. You heard me out patiently, and encouraged me and came back for more. You showered this blog with attention and care.

In particular, fellow blogger Kathi Ostrom sparked the idea for this book, by telling me right at the beginning- many years ago- that this story needed to take the form of a book. It is truly heartening, is it not, to witness a small act of kindness turning into a huge gift? Thank you, Kathi, for your little kindness that became a huge gift for me. And thank you, all of you, who kept coming back to this blog, cheering me on. This book has totally been possible because of you all.

Here is what the book’s back cover says:

The Reluctant Mother is a book of rage.

Rage at being alone in your pain, having your conflict belittled, and your struggles trivialised. It is the story of a young woman who seeks to find herself in a world that constantly tries to define her and who she should be.

It is the memoir of an anti-mother. The woman who doesn’t fall in love with her baby at first sight but discovers love along the way.

This book is for anyone who feels overwhelmed by the idea of ‘ideal’ motherhood. Be it a woman or a man, one way of confronting trauma is to know that you are not alone in it. To know that someone shares your story and understands your emotions and guilt that accompanies feeling anything other than ‘perfectly blissful’ about motherhood.

It is at once heartbreaking and poignant as it is hopeful and comforting. This is the story of one woman and yet the life of many. It reveals how tradition and modernity, faith and reason, pleasure and pain are all so intimately interwoven for women that their true sense of self is inevitably one of contradictions.

The book’s biggest strength lies in its rawness and honesty. Nothing but the truth stands here.

The book is available for pre-order on Amazon India at this link https://amzn.to/3CnWUwn . The paperback will be available in bookstores in November, and the Kindle version will also be available soon after.

To my readers and fellow bloggers outside India, I must apologise for now, but the e-book will be available very soon, and the paperback may also be available in other countries in a short while.

Watch this space for further updates, and do subscribe to the mailing list to have posts delivered right into your mailbox. Remain up to date with the latest events!

Once again, heartfelt gratitude to you all, and I hope you enjoy the book as much as you enjoyed reading the blog.

Janice Pariat and me: the varied lives of writers

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Janice Pariat, author of Boats on Land, Seahorse and The Nine Chambered Heart, in one of her instagram posts, talks about a writer’s life as being characterized by retreat.  ‘Long periods of silence. Of aloneness. Of deep listening. Of noticing seasons.’

‘A writer’s life is stark, humdrum discipline,’ she says. ‘A writer’s life, no matter how individually disparate, involves retreat. And always, resurrection.’

Those are beautiful, true words.

But in many ways, also ironic.

Silence, aloneness and retreat can very often be privileges not available to every writer.  
For some of us, silence and uninterrupted moments of retreat are rare. In a life punctuated by domesticity, motherhood, and myriad mundanities, this is not what being a writer looks like. 

For the writer who is also a caregiver, a nurturer, the writing life is defined by working deep into the quiet of the night, exchanging the comforting arms of sleep for the enticing embrace of the muse. 
Snatching moments of quietude from the midst of an endless barrage of innocent young questions flying at you with the speed of curiosity.
Writing inside your head while listening to an elderly parent’s complaints about their life. 

This, then, is also often what the writing life looks like: surreptitiously stolen islands of solitude within a volley of sounds.
The ‘immanence’ of a writing life that is punctuated by domesticity, and caring for children and the elderly – as spoken of by Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex. 

At first, I thought this immanence was limited to the lives of women, who have to squeeze spaces and moments from life for their art.

But then I read Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, and realised that the immanence of mundane life, of domesticity and the demands of making a living, extends beyond the concerns of gender. It envelops every person who is either a nurturer or a provider–even if it is only for himself or herself. In other words, the person who has to make a life, while also making art.

“People don’t do this kind of thing because they have all kinds of extra time and energy for it,” writes Gilbert, ” they do this kind of thing because their creativity matters to them enough that they are willing to make all kinds of extra sacrifices for it.”

“Unless you come from landed gentry,” she adds for good measure, “everyone does it.”

Very interestingly, she gives the example of the famous Herman Melville, who wrote a ‘heartbreaking’ letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne, complaining of the lack of time, and how he was pulled ‘hither and thither by circumstances.’ He longed for ‘the calm, the coolness, the silent grass-growing mood in which a man ought always to compose.’

But then, Gilbert points out, Melville never got that sort of environment. Yet he somehow managed to write Moby Dick.

This is how writers find themselves forever caught in a state of immanence, surrounded by the clutter of life’s responsibilities and demands. “And yet they still persist in creating,” remarks Gilbert. “They persist because they care. They persist because they are called to be makers, by any means necessary.”

That, precisely, is how even within that immanence, we create our spaces for transcendence.

This ability is perfectly encapsulated in the Sufi understanding of Divinity.

Seyyed Hossein Nasr writes in his life-altering book The Garden of Truth: “The Supreme Principle is both the absolutely transcendent Reality and the absolutely immanent Self, who determines the ultimate reality of human beings, and defines what it means to be human.”

It indicates that the Divine Essence is, at all times, both immanent and transcendent — merged with the Universe and the life forms in it, yet at the same time somehow beyond it, with the universe ‘mysteriously plunged’ in it.

The writer from a family responsibilities, nurturer or provider background, then, curiously becomes a reflection of the Divine. She, or he, becomes both at the same time: immanent and transcendent. 

In this then, I agree with Pariat, that a writer’s life involves transcendence. But for some, that transcendence is purely internal. The ability to withdraw within yourself, the swirling mist of your own thoughts, even in a crowd. To be able to cocoon yourself from the rush, roar and clamour around, and be one with the silence within. Weaving through the hustle and bustle of family, day jobs and domesticity that defines life for some of us, this is our path of transcendence.  The ability to be beyond, while being within. 
Immanent, yet transcendent. 

You made this dream come true!

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In my last post, I wrote about how the dream and desire of having my book published saved me and motivated me to have faith in the future. Have faith in life.

That dream is going to be a reality. Very, very soon.

My book, The Reluctant Mother: A Story No One Wants To Tell is being published by Hay House, which as you all know is a reputed international publisher.

So today, I am here to thank you all – every single one of you from the blogging community, and readers from outside the community- for staying by my side on this journey, for sharing my joys and sorrows, for reading and commenting here and letting me know that I wasn’t alone.

First and foremost, I want to thank Kathi Ostrom Gowsell, who was the first person to suggest, way back in 2013, that this story should be given the form of a book. We may live on separate continents, and may have never met each other, but I feel connected to you in a very special way, Kathi. Thank you for being you !

Other bloggers- mothers and fathers- other writers and readers, you have all been such a huge part of my journey.

I cannot tell you all, how much it has meant to me over the years, to read your comments here, and to get private messages from so many of you, asking me to keep writing, telling me that I was brave to write the truth fearlessly, and telling me how much my voice resonated with you, for it spoke of the stories of your lives too.

There are no words to describe my gratitude for the love you have all showered me with- especially those of you who told me that I was your voice- for I was speaking of the truth reflected in your lives too, but you couldn’t speak out because of all the judgements and restrictions the world heaps upon us all. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me the strength to speak this truth and take this dream to culmination.

The launch of the book has been delayed for a bit, owing to the pandemic, but do watch this space for the happy announcement, and I promise that you will be the first to see the cover as soon as it is launched !

Meanwhile, here is a picture of the first page of the book, of the final draft PDF version, and merely looking at the title on the page before me, fills me with gratitude and joy.

There is a word that I have taken from Paulo Coelho’s book, and quoted it in my own book. I shall just end this post with that word:

Maktub!

It is written.

B-R-E-A-S-T (and a biopsy)

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Breast.

B
R
E
A
S
T

Careful, don’t say it loudly. The female anatomy must never be spoken of.

Except of course, when it is spoken of as an object of male desire. When the male describes the female body in every detail, defining the object of its gaze the object of its lust- then it is alright for the female body to be spoken of.

In pornography, in erotica, in male fantasies, in locker room jokes, in boy talk, in every thing that has to do with men, it is alright for the female body to be discussed.

But the woman must never speak of her body. She must never speak of her

Bee
Arr
Eee
Aayy
Ess
Tee.

No, she must never say BREAST.

She must never speak of her body in relation to herself. She must never speak of her body as experienced by herself. She must never speak of that body in terms of its utility to her, in its familiarity to herself.

She must never speak of its illnesses, its wounds and its pain. She must sashay and only let that body speak of beauty and of sex. She must never reveal the body’s scars and its aches.

B
R
E
A
S
T

No you must never say BREAST.

You must not mention loudly that there are three painful stones – one lump and two cysts- in your Breast. You must speak of it in hushed tones lest anyone hears you speak of your body in relation to yourself.

B
R
E
A
S
T

But I will say Breast. We will say Breast.

We will reclaim our bodies from the eyes of men, we will reclaim them and speak of them for they belong to us.

We will speak of our breasts in relation to biopsies, we will speak of our vaginas in relation to episiotomies, we’ll speak of our uteruses and our ovaries and we’ll speak of our backs and our slipped discs and our PCODs.

We shall speak of our bodies and their wounds and their pain, we shall speak of our bodies as experienced by us.

B
R
E
A
S
T

I shall say Breast.

Don’t tell me to hide illness for I shall not hide anymore.

I shall speak of the doctor injecting anesthesia and the thick biopsy needle piercing my breast, taking out tissue bit by bit, punching in punching out again and again.
‘Does it hurt’, No not yet. But it will. When the anesthesia wears off it will hurt. Your breast.

It will hurt and it will hurt.

And I shall not hush and I shall not hide. I will speak of the bandage that covers my breast.

I shall speak of my body which is a battlefield and not the object of your desire.

Yes I shall say BREAST. We shall say BREAST.

Because our breasts belong to us. Not to the men who desire us. Not to the children who feed on us.

Our bodies shall be ours and we shall reclaim them. We shall stand solemnly and hold each other’s hands and we shall feel each other’s pain and then we shall say, without a giggle or a whisper or a hint of shame, we shall say

B
R
E
A
S
T

BREAST.

{ I wrote this poem yesterday, every word and every line, inside my head while lying on the operating table in full consciousness, watching the doctor perform a biopsy on me. }

Movies: Men love action, women love romance. Think you know why? No, you don’t!

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(I break my narrative yet again, because this is something that just had to be said.)

Wonder Woman

So I finally got a chance to watch Wonder Woman (yeah, I always watch new movies way too late) and oh girl, am I thrilled! It is absolutely mesmerising to watch Gal Gadot aka Diana, Princess of the Amazons, unleash her raw power and true grit. Watching the movie made me realise a few things though—namely why I have never been a fan of action movies and prefer mostly romances. I just thought I didn’t like all the fighting —until I saw this woman kicking, punching, lassoing and sword-fighting away to glory. And it suddenly dawned upon me that the reason I—and perhaps most women— do not enjoy action movies so much is because 99 per cent of all action movies only ever have MEN taking part in all the ‘action’.

Think about it.

What makes a good movie —or any good story— tick? How much the audience/readers identify with the characters. When you watch a story unfold, you identify with at least one person on the screen—mostly, you identify with the protagonist. For that brief span of time, you are transported to the screen, you are the person experiencing it all—and you vicariously partake of all the pleasures and pains unfolding before your eyes. That is why women prefer romances—because the protagonist there, the focus of the story, is always a woman. However, in common discourse this is projected as: women are only interested in love and romance.

Not true.

Women are interested in adventure, intrigue, thrill and action as any normal human being, but one look at the ‘regular’ action fare you get on the silver screen (and the small screen too) and you’d know that women would find it hard to relate to. It’s actually not the ‘action’ that puts us off—it’s the fact that every single time, it’s always a man commanding and carrying out the action. Yes, women definitely prefer peace to war any day—but hey, when it’s about being the hero and saviour and fighting evil and injustice, women absolutely love packing in a mean punch.

A pity then, that our choices are so very limited.

All the way through Wonder Woman, I found myself jumping up and down in glee beside my very amused husband, and almost screaming—“Go Diana! Woohoo! ”

Yes, we love it when women throw the punches and absolutely decimate the baddies.

I remember whooping with joy many years ago when Keira Knightley clashed swords with cursed pirates and sea-demons in Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End. And I can never have enough of the way she and Will got married right in the middle of slashing up the baddies together!

Keira fight

But I was severely and utterly disappointed by the post-credits scene in the very same movie—where Will returns after 10 years on the Flying Dutchman, and Elizabeth has been waiting for him, bringing up their son all this while. I swear I felt my heart sink right into my shoes.

All that spunk—all that valour—all the sword fighting and dealing with pirates, demons and sea –monsters—all of that for nothing? No, don’t get me wrong. It’s not the child-rearing part that I had a problem with. Nope.

She got married, she had a kid, great —but nobody said she had to stay right there and give him a super traditional upbringing, did they? His dad was Captain of the Flying Dutchman, for cryin’ out loud! And his mom was King of the Brethren Court, lest we forget! She could just have brought up the boy on a ship, having adventures of her own and being the remarkable, doughty woman that she was! But the message we got instead was that once you’re married and have a baby, you really needn’t involve yourself with anything other than said baby.

But now I am beginning to digress. Where were we? Yes, women in ‘action’.

Women enjoy it when women protagonists ‘do the stuff’. When my husband introduced to me the popular TV series “The Arrow”, my favourite protagonists almost all the time were the fighting females —Sarah Lance aka the Canary, Laurel Lance aka the Black Canary, and most of all Nyssa Al Ghul — the daughter of Raas Al Ghul, Chief of the League of Assassins — but above all a shockingly lethal fighter if there ever was one. It was a real delight to watch these women in action. (Of course, Felicity was a great character too, but her fight was more of mental and digital warfare rather than throwing actual punches.)

Among my favourite kick-ass women characters though, right at the top stands the character of Teresa Lisbon from the hugely successful HBO series The Mentalist. Even though she’s not the central character—which is a man, Patrick Jane, The Mentalist himself—yet she’s not reduced to the status of merely a love interest. She’s a super tough cop—the Chief of the California Bureau of Investigation, a smart, fearless character who knows how to fight like a woman. Yeah, I said fight like a woman, because “fight like a man” kind of defeats this whole post—it indicates that only men can fight.

Again, the remarkable thing about this series was that they didn’t have to show the hero Patrick Jane as a super-macho guy, just because his leading lady was a tough-as-diamonds (why don’t they use that phrase, though? Diamonds are the toughest substance on earth!) cop who really knew how to use a gun. He, on the other hand, never even carried a gun. His super strength was his mind– the punching, shooting and capturing part was well taken care of by the lady.

Eventually, of course, Patrick Jane and Teresa Lisbon declare their love—and then comes the part where, for the first time, I felt really annoyed and angry at Jane, because he suddenly begins asking Lisbon to quit her job as an FBI agent—which she had by then become. He kept saying he didn’t want to ‘lose her’ given her high risk job and the fact that he’d already lost once a woman he dearly loved. Which felt entirely pathetic to me, because she had been a cop and a detective long before he even met her. And all these years that he’d been hunting the psychopath serial killer who murdered his family, she had been his partner and closest friend, always taking the lead in this high risk job. And now suddenly when he declares his love for her, he wants her to throw away all she has built up in life just because he’s insecure about losing her? It made me hopping mad.

Thankfully though, Lisbon was a woman after my own heart and she refused to budge. My most favourite, absolutely cherished scene from this series—and in fact my most cherished scene from any series or movie ever, period—is that of Lisbon in her wedding gown, in typical law-enforcement posture and fearlessly holding a gun at another serial killer.

lisbon gun
A smart man isn’t scared of loving a strong woman

That moment, to me, symbolises the very essence of my womanhood: she doesn’t necessarily have to reject love, she doesn’t necessarily have to reject marriage, she doesn’t need to reject femininity either—but she refuses to let go of her passions, of things that are important to her; refuses to let go of who she truly is. She dons the sleek and classy wedding gown, but as soon as the baddies appear, she gets all-out in cop mode—whipping out her gun and confronting the psychopath. Even though there’s a whole law enforcement team there, she doesn’t sit it out just because it’s her wedding day. She remains true to herself and her work, her duty.

That one moment will forever be the essence of femininity to me. Femininity is not about being a damsel in distress—it’s about being a damsel that can remove distress.

And that’s who we fantasise about being when we find doughty women in action onscreen.

This reminds me of exactly what I felt when I watched Jean’s character blast out her mutant powers with full force in the climax of X-Men: Apocalypse. Every pore of my body felt like that woman who is trying hard but frustratingly failing to harness her true powers, that somewhere in me those forces are all accumulating to rip out in one great explosion of fearsome power.

X-Men_Jean_Phoenix

Whether it’s saving your home or saving the world, we vicariously fulfil all our dreams of superhuman strength and fighting power through these characters. But when those characters are only men, we can just salivate or drool over them as fantasy love interests! (Or just appreciate them as interesting characters.) We can’t actually identify with them —obviously.

So here’s my last word on the subject.

Movie makers, you’ll be opening up a whole new demographic if you just create more intrepid, fearless ‘women in action’ characters. That way, you’ll know that it’s not just the romances that draw women in. We love action too— only you’ve got to have the right person doing it.

Feminism v/s Fairytales- Part I

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“We are becoming the men we wanted to marry.”

— Gloria Steinem

This post has been far too long in the making — four months to be precise; and has changed titles three times, always a little shy of perfection—until about twelve minutes ago, when I was driving my son to school and the perfect title just glided into my mind, fitting in there with a pronounced click.

Feminism and fairytales. There has been far too much of a discourse about this, far too much of fairytale-bashing in the halls of feminist fame. And the die-hard romantic in me couldn’t reconcile herself to it.

And then I read this line by Gloria Steinem—the one I’ve quoted above.

Every time I read feminist authors—or even just quotes from feminist leaders, I feel a sense of solidarity. The power of the sisterhood, so to speak. But when Gloria Steinem says that we are becoming the men we wanted to marry, I get a stupendously severe sinking feeling.

Really? Is that what we want to achieve? To become MEN?

No, I do get it. I get what she means to say. I get the context of the time and place that these words were spoken in—times when the only ambition for women was to marry a ‘suitable’ (read ‘wealthy’) man and live a life of basked glory. So what Steinem really means is for women to possess ambitions over and above marriage, to actually earn their own glory and fame.  To rise and shine, to be all those things they want to be—instead of merely looking for those things in the men they wanted to marry. I get that those words have led us to where we are right now—where a woman leading an independent, successful life is not an aberration. I get it all.

But what I witness now, in the time and place that you and I live in, is that feminism is becoming more and more about women becoming men. ‘Femininity’ is becoming taboo. To be successful, you must be like a man—that’s the subconscious message being sent out. And that makes me sad, not to mention intensely furious.

I haven’t yet watched Aamir Khan’s acclaimed movie Dangal— where a wrestler dad turns his daughters into champion wrestlers. It is actually based on a real life story— of the Phogat sisters, three of whom have won gold medals at the Commonwealth Games, while the others have won medals and accolades in other National and global championships. My sister went for the movie and came back gushing about it. But when she came to the part where the wrestler screen-dad Mr Phogat chops off his daughters’ locks because they were using their hair as an excuse to get out of wrestling, I felt hugely uncomfortable. There it was again—to be successful you must be like a man.

dangal

Part of my discomfort stems from personal reasons, I must admit. My long hair has been a very, very important, distinctive part of who I am. But then, there are lots of women who like to keep their hair short, and there’s nothing wrong with that either.

What felt entirely wrong was that it appeared like the dad forced the daughters to renounce their femininity—so that he could turn them into the sons he never had. (Apparently, in the beginning the movie shows that the family had an intense desire for sons so that they could take the wrestling tradition forward.) But ultimately it leads the women to success and glory—so all’s well that ends well. And everyone goes home clapping.

I would have actually bought that theory, too, if not for the little fact that this past year, Sakshi Malik, an actual female wrestler, brought home an Olympic Bronze for India—and she hasn’t chopped her hair off at all. What’s more, PV Sindhu, the Olympic Silver medal winner, hasn’t chopped off her hair either. In fact, there have been five women in all who have brought home Olympic medals for India: Karnam Malleswari, Mary Kom, Saina Nehwal, Sakshi Malik and PV Sindhu—and none of them has close-cropped hair. Deepa Karmakar who came whizzingly close to a a Bronze medal in the gymnastics category last year doesn’t have cropped hair either. And our very own home-grown Tennis World Champion Sania Mirza is the pinnacle of femininity: long hair, nose-ring, uber-cool and always stylish.

The reason I have chosen long hair to illustrate my point is that long hair is perhaps the most marked of feminine attributes. And by choosing hair, I want to point this out: you don’t need to renounce your femininity to be a feminist.

All the above mentioned women would surely be defined as feminists—breaking the mould with their endeavours. Sania Mirza famously even wore a T-shirt that proclaimed “Well-behaved women never make history.” The thing to be emphasised, though, is always this: feminism isn’t the opposite of femininity. You don’t have to be ‘like a man’ to be strong and successful.

In fact, when we make ‘manly’ attributes the standard of success, we are actually upending the years and years of protest and battle against the belittling of women. We are subliminally spreading the message that ‘womanly’ attributes are worthless and signs of weakness: that femininity cannot lead you to strength and success, only masculinity can. And that, ironically, is the reinforcement of patriarchy—presenting woman and womanliness as possessed of far less value than man and manliness.

Feminism evolved to give women their rightful place in society—so long denied to them. In effect, therefore, to be a feminist is to embrace your womanhood with pride, to wear your femininity like a badge of honour. In trying to be ‘like a man’ you’re merely succumbing to the kind of society whose greatest praise for a daughter is that “She is the SON of her parents.” That is to say, in transforming from daughter to son, she has reached a higher level of evolution.

That kind of mentality is precisely what feminists have vehemently opposed, but when we try to “become the men that we wanted to marry,” I am sorry but we’re playing right into the hands of the chauvinist brigade.

In the stages of evolution of a society, where misogyny is widespread with things like female foeticide being the norm, it is understandable why you would first need to prove yourself to men, just to show that not only are you equal, you can also be better. But as we move toward greater evolution, it is important for women themselves to value their womanhood, and not fall into the trap of woman-shaming.

In essence, what we need to become is the kind of woman we want. Let no one tell you what is womanly and what is the meaning of being a woman. YOU, yourself, are a woman—and YOU get to define what that means—not a man. So if your inner woman finds expression in short hair and wrestling, go for it, by all means. But if your inner woman loves both— long hair and wrestling— let nobody tell you that it can’t be done.

And if your inner woman loves all traditionally womanly things— long hair and cooking, for instance, that’s perfectly fine too—let no one tell you it’s something inferior.  The only thing is to be strong enough to decide for yourself and stand up for yourself—and for other, weaker people. That is the essence of a strong woman.

To be fair to Mr Phogat, though, I watched his interview on a TV show a few days ago, and perhaps by some cosmic coincidence, he was asked the ‘hair’ question. His reply was mighty impressive, I have to admit.

“Looks are fine,” he said. “I get that you want to look beautiful. But when you have done something substantial in life, when you have stacked up your achievements, only then you must focus on your looks.”

No arguments with that, Mr Phogat. No arguments at all.

{Stay tuned for Part II where we will actually discuss Fairytales.}

Keep Bleeding, I Keep Keep Bleeding Love

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Guy: “I love it when we’re all on the same cycle, we all get to be passive-aggressive and fight.”
Shira: “You’re not even a woman!”

— No Strings Attached

Keep bleeding love NSA

One of the first movies Sajjad and I watched in a theatre after we got hitched was No Strings Attached—you know, the Ashton Kutcher- Natalie Portman rom-com that’s the cutest thing to watch — I mean who can ever forget that ‘period mix’? One of my favourite dialogues from the movie is the one quoted above, spoken by Guy who ‘isn’t even a woman’, and my favourite scene the one where Adam and Emma sit on the bed with “keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love” playing in the background.

From that movie onward, Keep Bleeding Love became a subconscious period-anthem for me—forevermore. It’s like a background score that keeps playing when someone speaks of that time of the month—or whenever it brings the blues with it. Yes, I have background scores for almost every moment in my life: the funny, the romantic, the dramatic. (And very specific background scores for every villain in my life, too —echoing full volume in the corridors of my mind every time a villain appears.)

I have been contemplating this post for many months now, writing and deleting and rewriting. Going ahead with it wasn’t an easy decision, even though as a friend once remarked, “You’ve owned up to much bigger things in there.” True, that. But talking about menstruation isn’t easy. I don’t mean for the Twitter-Instagram metro-dweller high-life set but the small town, Aligarh-Allahabad-Muzaffarnagar-what-have-you kinds of societies where even pregnancy is something to be embarrassed of, let alone discussing your period (collective gasp of scandalised aunties!) But you can’t have a womanhood blog and be completely silent about this major, defining part of what it means to be a woman.

I was 13— in the 9th standard at school— when I read this book called Girls Speak Out by Andrea Johnston.  I got it at the Scholastic Book Fair held annually at my school in Aligarh. Reading that book was perhaps one of the most defining moments of my life. I was just browsing through the racks, running my eyes over scores of books figuring out which one I’d like to buy, and then this title caught my eye. I flipped it open, picking a page at random, and my eyes fell on a paragraph that went, approximately, something like this:

Why is it that most girls are taught to feel ashamed and embarrassed about their periods? If this were something that happened to boys, there would probably be celebrations and ceremonies around it, hailing the onset of ‘manhood’ for the boy—for isn’t that what periods actually signify—the onset of womanhood? Boys would be lauded and congratulated for coming of age, and they would brag about how much they bled and for how long. But it’s not. It’s not something that happens to men, and so it isn’t something to be proud of. Everything associated with women’s bodies is taboo.

Those are not the exact words, but a summarisation of that page’s contents as best as I can remember. And then I turned to the next page, which elaborated a theory so completely enthralling, it changed my perception of menstruation forever.

The female monthly bleeding cycle, said the book (my words, not direct quote), follows the rhythms of the moon. It follows the 28-29 days pattern of the lunar month, connecting us intimately, inseparably to Nature, to the Universe. It connects us to the cool light of the moon, it makes us special. (Even a bit ‘loony’, you know, from lunar. But that’s my addition.)

I cannot picture a better image of the female body’s rhythm every month, nor a more magical way of looking at yourself.  Up until that day my opinions on menses were much the same as the average bleeder— moaning, groaning and looking at yourself with embarrassment or even disgust. But Andrea’s witty observations about how men would have celebrated it hit home. Case in point: in Indian Muslim culture, the young boy’s circumcision is colossally fussed over, and people are actually invited for lunch or dinner to celebrate his initiation into the religion. Think about it, what is (traditional) circumcision? It involves your genitals, an agonising amount of pain, and a whole lot of blood. And it isn’t even a ‘naturally occurring’ phenomena. But it’s related to boys, so you can go ahead and celebrate it. No need to be embarrassed.

It isn’t that I became a ‘feminist’ when I read that book—which, by the way, I would recommend to every woman, young or old—but that I found someone whose thoughts supplemented my own. I wanted to feel good about myself as a girl, to feel proud of it, but didn’t quite know how. Didn’t have the words, the framework to define it. And with Andrea, I did.

As for the feminism, I was born with it.

So, from that day onward till the present moment, I have followed Andrea’s advice and made the moon-phases special. In any way, however miniscule it may be. Watching a great movie, painting my nails, trying out an elaborate hairdo, getting a salon session, gorging on Ferrero Rochers, eating out at a great restaurant or even praying quietly, if that’s what I felt like. I know this has been a bone of contention in recent times, the barring of women from ritual prayer during periods. But honestly, I don’t see what all the fuss is about. You don’t need a mosque or temple or prayer mat or rosary or idol or diyas to pray. What is prayer? It’s a connection with the Divine. Simple. So you can just sit comfortably on your bed, close your eyes, focus on your breath and pray. What’s stopping you? If anything, the absence of ritual prayer seems like a good thing to me, because you’re already tired out from the cramps and the pain, why should you have to go through the rigorousness of obligatory prayer? Seems more like a boon than a bane—but that’s just my opinion. Of course, I know the resistance is to the whole mindset of women being considered ‘impure’ or unclean during the phase. But that won’t change in a day—you’ve gotta be the change.

So to come back to the feel-good things, I consciously conditioned my mind to think of periods as a good thing, a happy thing. And I tried to pass on this thinking to every girl I knew—especially my sister. Yes, I know, the cramps, the weakness, the dizzy spells make it all very difficult to be happy about. But this I can absolutely vouch for: when you do things you love, it takes your mind off the pain.

But more than anything, the sensitisation of family— men, especially — is too important to be overlooked. To treat this thing as normal. Not embarrassing.  I still haven’t figured out how to explain this in the right way to my son when the time comes, but I sure will. The human body needs to be respected—whether male or female.

And your periods need to be celebrated, with dollops of cheer. (Though there is one thing I hate about periods: the week long celibacy! But that’s a different matter altogether.)

And so, gals and guys, when I first came to know of the #HappyToBleed campaign in the not-so-distant past, I couldn’t help but break into a super-smug smile. I’ve been happy to bleed since almost two decades.

You don’t need to hold up a placard or a sanitary napkin to be a part of the change. You just need to make other women feel good about it.

Keep bleeding love, honey. Keep, keep bleeding love.

KBL 2