Condemned

The night is dark...
                             dank...
                                      silent and cold...
The plantation crops stand still;
the crickets whirr
                            and for miles around
Everything else lies still.

But hark!
In one of the tiny sheds...
In the dark and the cold
                           amidst swaddling rags,
Witness
the birth of a helpless soul.

A kerosene lamp greets the babe...
                            into an otherwise uncaring world.

No doctors, no nurses...
Just an old neighbour with a blade.
No hospital, no ward...
Just a mat for a bed.

No blankets nor warm clothes...
Just rags and the cold.
No high-pitched wail...
Just a tiny whimper,
a resignation to the fates.

For the tired mother, there's no joy
                         her first born's female...
The tiny rivulet of joy
                                   is lost...
                                               dries...
                                                          shrivels...

In its place
                  a sea of helpless anger
and frustration grows.
The mother sees her daughter's fate
                  no better than her own,
nor any of her kind.

For she is of upcountry stock
                  and being Tamil is her fate.
And unto her daughter
                  she could bequeath nothing...but
a life of suffering...
                             violence...
                                             hunger...
                                                            sorrow...
And finally death.
Blissful, welcomed death.

How to break out...
                  is the anguished mother's cry
To end this awful fate of
                                       poverty...
                                                      malnutrition...
                                                                             slow death.
A monstrous fate hanging o'er them
The future of the plantation child.

The future of her new-born child
                    a daughter of the plantations...
Condemned to a stateless being
                    and rearing yet more stateless.
A fate so cruel -- it has turned
                    a free land into prison.

To break this fate is her mission
                    but tears, prayers and submission
Are all in vain
                    They are of no avail.  

Copyright Malathi Raghavan 1985-86

FOR SALE

For sale the farmer advertised

the best bred of his stock.

And so he spread the news around.

The news travelled fast.

From far and near the buyers came

to see his red roan cow.

"Her pedigree's unimpeachable", he said.

"There's no doubting that

in the prime of life

giving gallons of milk,

many calves too she will bear.

Yet when she's old

She'll have so much beef

An army she may feed.

Her skin is of the softest roan

no factory can refuse…"

And so the farmer prattled on

the quality of his stock.

My son's of age the farmer thought

the eldest of his brood.

And so he spread the word around.

The news travelled fast.

From far and near the brokers came

of brides-to-be to speak.

"She's a homely type", one broker said.

"I assure you that

of flawless skin, the divine shape,

a house too she can keep.

A pleasure to behold

Yet ever so strong,

many robust sons she'll bear

of talented mein, with house worth lakhs,

jewels and farmland too she'll bring;

no thinking man'll resist…"

And so the broker prattled on

the quality of his stock.

"Why is this so" a daughter asks,

"that we be bought and sold?"

And soon she passed the message around.

The news traveled fast.

From far and near the women came

to see what could be done.

"We'll meet with hostility first," said one.

"We should recognize that

With bricks and bats and this and that

 they'll try to keep us down.

 We're human beings with brains and mind

and not just household slaves.

No more for us as dressed up dolls

and beings to bear more heirs.

We're through with being just mindless beings

whom man cannot resist…"

And so the women vowed to rise:

No more would they be stock.

By Malathi Raghavan 1984-85

My mother's extension

My mother and I,
We grew up together;
We wish to conquer the world together;
We learn to live for one another,
So as to fill the gaps in each other's lives,
Such that the whole of our universe has fewer holes.

My mother is mostly left behind by the swiftly changing outside world,
And so I choose to be the colorful rainbow above her unpaved road.
While she has lived in one city all her life,
I've flown across countries and moved from one city to another.
Since she cautiously diversifies her mainly homemaker life
I recklessly concoct unusual career paths and hope that she too can enjoy the view.

She was relegated to being under-educated,
I make up for it by striving to be over-educated.
For every year of education that she didn't have,
Her value in the marriage market soared.
For every year of education that I do add,
My value in the marriage market drops.
The age at which she wanted to add a missing career slot to her family life,
Is now the same age that I want to add a missing family slot to my career life.

With her effortless air of charming sociability she attracts helping hands to her side;
With my contrived air of proud self-sufficiency I drive away annoyingly poking noses.
But sometimes she confides in me that she could do without some meddling folks;
At those times I confide in her that I could do with some more caring souls.
There are days when I watch, wait, and get exasperated at how crowded her life is;
In turn, somedays she watches, waits, and gets her heart broken at how lonely my life is.
And then we cry.
Together we cleanse our knotted souls;
And through the tears, we smile.
Then we remind each other
To be strong,
To be confident,
To believe in our own lives,
To trust in our own fates,
To practice patience while we wait for what's missing in our own different ways.
But alone and separate, we are not;
We each are assured by one another.
The cord, it seems, was never ripped.

As in a circle, we know not
Who begins, who ends;
Who asks, who receives;
Who sows, who reaps.
We merely strive to keep that circle unbroken.
Her dreams, I live;
My dreams, she lives.
We live both our truths and our lies.
Both half-happy, half-sad.

If two happy-halves make one happy,
Where do the two sad halves go?
"Modern math and logic are beyond my comprehension," is all she can offer.
Then I get angry in that special way reserved only for a daughter.
I complain that once again I am left alone with the puzzles and the fears.
Without moving in space, I manage to trample the maternal heart.

Did I say we grew up together?
That we learnt lessons in the presence of one other?
But yes, I meant the lessons of life.
Unlike those that are taught to me inside four walls,
Unlike those that are printed in books,
Unlike those that are strictly formulaic,
The lessons of life, those we are allowed to learn without being separated.
So together, she and I, we are still searching for the answer
That we are sure is still out there, somewhere.

In the meanwhile, there is Mother's Day
To remind me of her selflessness and sacrifice;
To remind me that my mother sustained my life at a time when I most needed her.
At a time when without her there couldn't have been a me,
She did not wake me; she did not leave me alone; she did not send me on my own.
And so I sigh, a dark, heavy, guilty sigh.
Because when I look deep inside me, I know that even now she has not sent me off alone.
She has, in fact, bundled in me all of our ancestors' hopes.
And these as my badge of honor, I am blessed to wear.
Within my heart I am gifted with all their dreams
In loneliness, I gently unwrap them to soar high and fly.
In me she has collected the reservoir of all their tears
That I may, when I thirst, have a fountain to drink from.
In every vein of my body flows their blood;
So, when I hunger I am assured of my nourishment.
And from every pore of my body oozes their sweat.
It is in this way that I wrap myself with their fragrance.

So my mother, in her own wisdom, and love, chose me as her extension.
To carry with me to these far-off lands a part of our ancient self.
Do I spread my wings homeward or plant my roots downward? -- this I know not yet.
But today, I am content to merely think of my mother, who is far away,
And of all her own mothers.

(C) Copyright: Malathi Raghavan 2000

The Ethics of Aesthetics

The caption says, "30 unique photographs from 1959. Christian Dior in Moscow."
 
And somehow these photographs make me sad, sad, sad. Audrey Hepburns strategically inserted into the pages of 'Soviet Woman' for the sole reason of breathing life into the Hepburns alone.  No give; just take.  

Perhaps not as obviously stark and troubling as malnourished, bow-legged, rheumy-eyed children in remote villages serving as backdrop extras, but the ultimate effect belongs in the category of deprived people serving as props to sell a lifestyle that they could not attain at that time and in that space.  

The cringe-worthiness is made worse when I wonder, 'Did they know exactly what they were doing? Or did they not?'  

Which is more troubling? 
  

Two sides of a coin, yes?

Those who don't believe in divorces
Are forced to get one.
Yet those who yearn to be free
Of a mistake
Are likely to stay imprisoned.

That's not strange enough, you say?
OK, how about this?

Family, friends, social support,
All prerequisites for a good marriage. 
So how come
Family, friends, social support
Also propel one to step into a good divorce?

If undisputed truths of the world were told, tell me:
What chances does an orphan have
For anything? 

The world would be a lesser place without these books and movies.

Iranian movie: Border Cafe
If you want to understand how 'benign' masculine protection turns into insidious control of the feminine, how social structures ultimately protect the economic interests of the patriarchy, why women's issues have no boundaries, how dry, difficult and dense political science can be conveyed effectively through cinematic art, why Iranian movies occupy a special place in my heart, then you have to see this (not-so-recent) movie, 'Border Cafe'. Story-telling at its best.


'The Wandering Falcon' by Jamil Ahmad.
This book is a precious gift to this world!  I wasn't aware that I could find common grounds and identify with some of the simple yet richly complex characters from the Pakistan-Afghanistan-Iran border region, but I do.  I don't think anyone could have resisted being in the shoes of any of Ahmad's characters.  Such is the power of his stories and story-telling ability. 

The language--lyrical; the writing style--beautifully brief; the writer's heart--always tangible.

Please pick it up if you haven't read it, but don't look for reviews online.  All the ones I found give away too much of the book' structure and details of the story.  Reviewers who cannot write reviews without spoilers in every sentence need to be left wandering in the desolate lands of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.  You need to enter the world depicted in this book without knowing anything about it.    

The story of Ahmad's book seeing the light of day is a story in its own right.
  

Our Lady of Alice Bhatti by Mohammed Hanif
What a stark and audaciously biting novel about human strengths vs. vulnerabilities. This book is testament to Hanif's ability to turn tragedy into comedy for just as long as it takes you to swallow the bitter truth about nations and humanity. The deeper message about the limitations of all semblance of order in this universe (especially the hospital universe), however, lingers on long past you put down the book. I respect that he bravely took digs at stingy Caucasian nuns willing to let brown people starve. I love that his absentee fathers can write soulful petitions when necessary. I agree that tender love lasts only as long as viciousness, with or without reason, stays away. I am not quite sure why we rushed through the last scene abruptly or the timeline of what exactly happened above the hospital roof, but, perhaps, short, swift novel ending is metaphor for how quickly everything comes to a close if you are an Alice Bhatti in this world.

There are numerous themes in this book -- class, caste, religion, misogyny, poverty, marginalization, sickness, hospital management, physicians, professionalism or lack thereof among physicians, police power -- but the ones I picked out in the previous paragraph are not necessarily in order of importance or coverage in the book. Above all, the book is about how unconnected women learn to survive, live, thrive in a patriarchal society. If they make it past survival, that is.

The book is not all raw and stark; there are layers of nuance. And you will come to know a bit more about a little known demographic -- Pakistani Christians from the sweeper class/caste.


'In This World' directed by Michael Winterbottom
Last but not the least, watch this docudrama that will leave you with an idea of the tenacity and maturity that some children have as a result of being born on the other side of the fence.  

Moving mountains

About thirteen years ago, in an online discussion group that was set up only to discuss literary fiction, I talked about the aftermath of a rape of a fellow student some years earlier. I knew not to name the student or 'out' her in any way, but I used my feelings from this incident to contribute to a public discussion. I believe I tried to make a point in the context of an ongoing discussion about the helplessness and unfairness experienced while being a young, unprotected, unconnected female.

I was no less passionate about this topic then as I am now because I know what it's like to negotiate your own way in this world when you come from a family where the men are either absent or uncaring and the women are fighting their own respective devils. I know about the unfortunate misunderstandings that happen when you anxiously search for a father or a brother in most men you meet while young -- the good ones wisely stay out of the picture, the wily ones hardly think of you as their child or sister.  I know what it feels like to be touched prematurely--when you are not yet ready to be touched--even by the guy on whom you have a crush: It feels as revolting as when his brother and his father decide they can touch you inappropriately too.  I know that when you question the 'why' of it to older women--Indian women, kind women, well-positioned women--you should never be surprised to hear at least a handful of them tell you that it is the job of a child to be safe and that it is irresponsible for the women in the family to encourage or allow any naivete in their children.  So when I had a chance to share my insights, on behalf of faces known and unknown to me, I communicated what I knew by using the unnamed student's more recognized, more defined, yet less understood experience in life.                    

But I was chastised through the back-channel by an Indian woman teaching English in an Australian university. She accused me of garnering sympathy for myself at the expense of the student whom I was careful not to identify. The briefly narrated incident from my past was presumed by her to have left me, the young observer, unaffected. Her disapproval of me, which I now understand as a power play, was executed in that unique, ruthless way perfected by older, composed, established Indian women when chastising younger, less articulate, more unsure women trying to find their place in this world.  Power play or not, back then I was too insecure to understand it and, instead of demonstrating defiance, I wrote the most emotional piece of publicly apologetic poetry I have ever written in my life. Then I proceeded to lose three nights of sleep and several months of self-respect, and, as an additional self-imposed punishment, temporarily buried the writing voice I was hoping to find within me.

Today in India, it appears as if things are suddenly quiet different.  A gruesome rape and murder of a young student on a moving bus by a gang of men who left her (and her injured male friend) to die on the side of road has finally lifted the lid off of this long-simmering issue of rape in Indian society. Discussions about rape are no longer confined to one's own solitary mind but happen out on the wide, open streets. Students, many of them first-time protesters, rallied spontaneously in places as significant as Raisina Hill. Sometimes the crowds at these gatherings represented diverse groups that have previously rarely had a chance to come together.  Press coverage focused on rape statistics and opinion pieces by activists and the overall effect of the coverage itself, as some worriedly pointed out, even bordered on the sensational.  One of the most thought-provoking articles I have ever read on this subject was written by a rape survivor.

I can only hope that the Indo-Australian professor is watching, listening and resigning herself to the thought that she can no longer bully unpolished, talkative, young women into self-censorship and silence. She may have the language and authority but they come with the experiences--sometimes not their own, but borrowed. And they will find a way to craft all those experiences into longer-lasting, meaningful stories, whether she approves or not.  Indian women, along with their men, are moving mountains. Those not helping them should at least get out of the way, lest they be crushed into the dust.