Yet again.

At times a problem-free life starts to appear problematic. God just eased that problem giving me something gravely bothering. Yes, normalcy has varying forms. Thank You God. But really i would still value victories equally even without these obstacles. Really. For once. Let me have it easy.

I empathize. Its me.

My sister got married the year i joined the law school. I was one semester old then, and having started with family law i used to threaten my brother-in-law, how i would book him for dowry demands and domestic violence if he does not yield to my sister's wishes (primarily being ice cream, chocolates and likes) Never having however worked with an NGO working for women in such oppressive relationships, and having a rather submissive and docile brother-in-law i have never known how it is in such a relationship. I m facing currently a lack of words to express this and a lack of courage to admit whats coming next may be.

I am yet to see, know a woman personally who has come up against her husband saying he was violent, cruel demands dowry etc. I agree i have read cases and loads. But as even my heart wept for them i wondered why all the aunties i know who are in such strained relationships and those thriving only because of their high tolerance and may be physical endurance, haven't yet raised their voices.

As i pondered, i realized how even i might not open my mouth in such a case- shoving all the knowledge, 'feministy', right-awareness learned in the college in to drain. Somewhere we as women, have to agree that we cannot see our husbands, boyfriends being accountable in public for something close to wrong which they did, and just to think its a wrong against oneself that he might be requried to answer, just forces one to believe that everything shall be fine. What i m saying might not be a cause novel to the domestic world and which in fact might be the reason operating for many who grin and bear, but i emphathize with them. Its true i would not keep quiet as my husband drives me out of house at midnight, but may be i would if he shows mildest of repentance or eagerness to save the realtionship, even for a second. In fact knwoing myself, i would try to save the relationship may be, initiating even, if there isn't any repentance . It is more than non-impulsiveness, its more than saving 'his' face, its more than kids, if any. The reason is more i think, somewhere, in the acceptance of the fact of one's being a woman. I don't expect being hit by my husband, but i would not be taken aback if i already knew when i got married that he was an angry man. Its revolting, disgusting. Its sad yet true for me to admit that i will continue in such a relationship, may be this is because the surety of the fact that if i am with the person i am currently with, such a situation which pits my self respect against my being as a woman would always remain hypothetical. For reasons more than one, and for reasons which remain inexplicable, i m sure i shall endure for long. And real long before i claim my rights.

PS: I really don't know why i placed this picture here, may be because she too might never claim her 'rights' to an unbashing husband, like me. Yes yes, i m being stereotypical, deciding on looks, but please let me be this one time.

Uninhabited Home.

I had started building it early.
In my 13th summer, had felt the wetness
Cursing self I had sighed.
My second was X, not Y
Lagging behind by an alphabet to cost me five life-worthy days a month
Beginning of survival with cognizance of periodic blood loss
Nevertheless called for celebrations somehow
I roared at the social imbecility and eternal function crave

Still wondered at the Divine mechanisms
Till the complexity was taught –
That my within was tortuously confusing,
Dormant fertility had awakened that day, I reckoned
Motherhood in me curled its lips in to a smile
If sewing teddy could cost a droplet of the red
My baby could of course ask for all
I sang odes to the aching lowers, embarrassing laundries and otherwise inactivity
A final one to the second X.
My baby’s first abode, I painted imaginatively
Repainted once more

Reconstructions of the haven continued
As my fertility got legitimized
So were celebrations in my eyes
Marital joys ancillary as they seemed
I was eager to barter a pain for another
For the life shall be caused meanwhile
At least so I thought

I kept renovating, priding my femininity
Without a reason I discovered
As my own complexity jibed at me:
The barter is not that simple
You thought ‘blood-money’ was all
One sixth of lifetime seemed painfully futile
The thoughts in rest, laughable
I still keep living, painting and re-painting,
A part of me which could only be
An uninhabited home.

(PS: A word of thanks to Daddy who doubly assured that lines in a poem need not always rhyme.)

At(tempt) to Define Temptation.

When the range of chocolates named Temptations came in to the market, I thought now they have captured the human feeling and named the product most appropriate to be so named, but then now i feel there are situations better exemplifying how it feels to be tempted~

Say when you are late waiting for a bus and an auto walah without breaking the eye-contact with you goes around the place in a periodic motion.

Or may be when you wake up in the morning with a pleasantly painful pimple having a yellow head and your index finger's and thumb's fingertips almost impatient to squeeze the fluid out of it.

Or may be when you see a really senile man with a pagdi on his head and multiple wrinkles on his face in a city bus and you feel the camera from your backpack pressing against you and you are wondering if the man could raise a hue and cry on being clicked or may be is independent enough to use his lathi against you.

Or say when it gets itchy at wrong place and wrong timings!

Or when you just stop yourself from calling a friend-turn-foe cousin of yours an 'asshole' before your parents!

Sigh, there are so many temptations that go unnoticed and all that comes to mind is an erotic (and now chocolaty) connotation of temptation (or may be it is me only, the pervert me who thought like that till today!) -unless companies like Cadbury forcibly capture 'temptedness' in a chocolate bar may be. May be we as humans will appreciate the tiny temptations more when Mahindra launches autos called Temptation, or we have a pimple cream/ itch cream named temptation, or Nikon's new camera model is named Temptation....

Beer and The Fairer Sex.

I m an alcohol virgin, not out of ideology may be but because of lack of chance i have never even had a taste of it, however, that's not something i portray as a virtue! In spite of having a medico in my family i m pro-alcohol when it is in moderation and am comfortable with the notion of social drinking. What i detest is however the hypocrisy of men regarding female drinking which is why i intended to write this piece.

We are all now broad minded. Drinking does not raise eyebrows anymore. I have friends and cousins who drink and its NOT a taboo to me, but when my brothers, guy friends and boyfriend still holding the beer can preach me that i should not be drinking, a part of me wants to turn a liquor baron that instant (as if liquor barons are the one who drink their guts out, but just wanted to use something that sounded extreme!) or may be Devdas... This prescription of non-alcoholism for women you are connected with is the meanest form of duality! You want their shoulders when u are in ur alcoholic worst (read HIGH) but want to keep them devoid of the pleasure: be it of drinking, of socializing over drink or of the subsequent high feeling and the feeling of being taken care of when high! And why so, coz drinking women are taboo? No u did not care when ur office colleague (a woman) drank to nose in the party..coz she wasn't ur girlfriend, ur best friend, ur wife, ur mother ur sister? right? Women in relations, consanguinous or conjugal or semi conjugal should not drink. Period.

That still being comparatively a problem closer to home, the behaviour you get having ordered for beer is even more ridiculous. Wearing a bindi you are not supposed to order for beer. I don't have too many personal experiences to share, but reaction of the pan wallahs when my best friend, who happens to smoke, asks for cigarette is just too corroborative. Raised eyebrows, contempt-filled eyes, disbelief at how someone in kurti and jeans, so homely looking, over-clad in a duppatta ask for a cigarette! 'Let my sales dip (not really) but i wish she wasn't smoking' kind of look which i have seen often actually forces me to believe that men in general also are still uptight when it comes to tolerate a cigarette between the fingers of a female being or may be a beer glass in her hands....We are the nurturers, the care-takers, the situation sambhalo ones. Hence booze is not our cup of tea!

More than breaking my alcohol virginity for the sake of 'lets try it once' it is this hypocrisy which propels me to have in my life at least a few socially embarrassing moments of extreme drunkardness.....to give the 'concerned' men in my life a little jolt!