Darkness swirled round me. This was a bit different from the darkness that had been my friend for long. This was the kind that seemed final, seemed enveloping, seemed complete and impenetrable. The dark that I had grown up with was different, it sucked hope out true, but there were always breaks in it through which light permeated, cheered me up. It was the kind which numbed you but didn’t overwhelm you.
I am Priya, a woman of modern India and this is my story, a story that may be of every other woman in India, or just maybe a bit different. Born in Nagpur in my maternal uncle’s house, I grew up in the sleepy city of guwahati, the city of kamkshya, the city by the majestic Luit. Guwahati is a city of contradictions, an ultra conservative society in religion, yet a society which is the only one which celebrates menstruation through the ambubachi festival. A society which influenced by the matrilineal khashi society in neighbours Meghalaya ha the baidos or sisters revered immensely in every aspect of life, yet a deta or father celebrates more in the birth of a lora or son than a chuwali or daughter. But isn’t the story of every daughter of India, worshipped in someone else house as a Kumari, yet murdered in your own home, in your mother’s womb itself.
My father a government servant had a transferable job and soon I was in delhi. Delhi of the lutyens and parathe wala gali, of lajpatnagar and sarojini market, but also where men and women swore on their mothers and sisters with abandon. Madi and behndi cusses, I soon learnt were more punctuation marks than actual swears. In fact one of my classmates at school once said, it’s the swear that made up the personality of the statement. Laughing at the joke amidst my friends I wondered why it was that the personality of the statement improved by abusing a mother, sister or daughter and never a father brother or son. As a student of statistics, and later working in software testing I have come across a term RCA-Root Cause Analysis. If I ever went to an RCA of the darkness that is enveloping me now, it probably is this acceptance among us women that we are subject to men that we are an object in a man’s life, and more importantly our participation in enforcing this on other women.
Lady SriRam college and then ISI helped me sharpen my mind, but even growing up amidst men mediocre and below par, I grew up accustomed to the feeling of being a prey and a prize on some man’s household that roads of Delhi and society circles enforced on me. The feeling of freedom that my spirit flew with when I was solving problem, when my supple mind wrestled to find a bug in the software I was testing, was short-lived, and soon this glimmer of light was shrouded by the dark as I would step into a Delhi street. The smirk of that school boy, yet not sprouting a beard, as he checked me out was the same as that of the hungry beggar my father’s age ogling at me even as he begged at my car window on the signal. A sense of being leeched was ever permeating, like the feeling of stench that envelopes you when you go to the fish market, horrible to start with but soon become dull till you barely notice it. Accepting and moving on to being looked at as a subject to be conquered, maybe through intellectual suppression, maybe through brute strength, or maybe the humiliation in a man’s bed, is an everyday affair. Accepting that I was an object of display today in my father’s household, tomorrow in my husband’s, and in between desired by all and sundry who saw me as an object, just an object made of flesh and bones. Yes, an object that over millennia been shown of, been acquired through the mutual agreement or by force, been given as gifts, been purchased as slaves, and discarded of when gotten bored with. It is this acceptance which has dulled us to go on accepting more when we should have stopped the first time.
Married off in an alliance decided by the elders of my family, a happy bride at 25, I went from my father’s house, leaving behind my life as his princess, hoping to be the queen of my husband and king. Yes I accepted that he was my king, and hence me his subject. So when he wanted to claim me through his loins in bed, I blushed and complied, when I was asked to touch his feet and fast for him I happily agreed. Yes, I the object did not object even when he pushed me and I hit my head on the mantle, after all he apologized and said he didn’t mean to hurt me, but the next time when he slapped me even then I was silent, even though he didn’t apologize, and did mean to hurt me. Why didn’t my mother in law tell me it wasn’t right, instead of saying that men had warm bloods and do these things and as woman it’s ok.
My son grew up the apple of my eye, and my daughter was not a princess but the queen of all she surveyed from the moment she wailed out the first time coming out my womb and declaring that she had arrived. I taught my daughter how to become independent, how to dream and yes at the cost of a few war wounds inflicted by her father for my insistence to let her fly with her dreams even against his wishes, I ensured she flew without the shackles that often held me down. Me the object did my best to polish her as best as I could, both of them in fact. My children both engineers pursued careers of their choice, and the darkness seemed lighter just for the moment.
I had just woken up from sleep tonight thirsty when I heard some noises coming down the hall, whimpers protests. Walking down I heard my daughter in law crying even as I heard to my horror sounds that could only be blows. Opening the door, seeing my son hitting his wife, I realized that in bringing up a daughter with freedom, I had forgotten to put the shackles on my son that would stop him objectify his wife, someone‘s daughter a girl with dreams like my princess. Even as I rushed in between the two of them, the darkness my old friend gave out a resounding laughter at my failure, even as he started to envelop me from the killing blow that was destined for my daughter in law. The object that I was I knelt in submission again, this time not from acceptance of being a subject or object, but from the realization that I had also conformed to enforce this.
