Tag: Promises

Patriarchy and misogyny

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

I casually throw these words away in friendly conversations with my people. Sometimes jokingly, sometimes desperately trying to hide the hurt with a joke. I understand I am not entirely fair in throwing these words around so easily. But, it just makes life a bit easier to hide under these blanket statements than pinpoint this person or that incident.

Patriarchy. We are all victims and survivors of it. Men, women, others. Young, old and ‘lost in the middle’. You, me and them. But often, the grand layer of privilege helps you look beyond it. Privilege of money, people and freedom lets you move forward and leave it all behind. But yet, once in a while, it creeps up through tiny crevices and hits you before you know it. Misogyny soon follows and drowns you in a pool of guilt and helplessness. That’s not to say we are bunch of helpless clueless beings. But when the blow comes from unexpected directions, it’s only naturally you fall and struggle.

Very evidently, this blog has been all about me and my experiences and how I perceive life. This is also one such, but I am unusually hesitant to write this down. It brings me shame and sorrow to quote people from my life this way. But I need this to be off my chest. So here it goes. Fair disclaimer: none of these is immediate family/friends. Phew!

  1. Doesn’t matter what you achieve or do. A woman is a burden to the family. ‘It’ needs to be unloaded onto another family through marriage.
  2. You will be defended and protected because we care about you. But only as long as you abide by the ‘rules’ we lay down for you. Else you are an outcast. An immoral woman.
  3. You may be 30 or 50. You better check with ‘family’ before you decide what to do with the money you earned. Oh this credit card? No, that’s not for you. Why would we waste our time trying to sell it to you!
  4. You may be on the right track, driving abiding to rules of the road. Bang! But that accident is all because of you. Why did the men of the house ‘let’ you drive?!
  5. Okay, let’s say the mistake is on both sides. But now if we go to the police, it’d be ‘uncomfortable’ for you. So let’s just say your male family was driving, and not you. 17 year old teen boy would also be okay, just not you.

The list doesn’t end, but let’s just stop with top 5 for now. So is the blame all on the world and none on me? Absolutely not. There a lot of times I have played the ‘woman card’ and got of annoying insurance/loan representatives. Many times when I have been over protective and unnecessarily worried about a female family member or friend. I have enjoyed a childhood favourite movie overlooking the spewing misogyny. It’s one step at a time to break this century old thoughts and ideologies. One step at a time.

The Wait

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

Until I come, you said.

Until I die, I said.

The wait was a promise,

For you, for me, for us.

Time wouldn’t wait, nor

Would the world around.

As everyone and everything,

Embrace change and transience,

The sea of change stood still,

Waiting at the shore, for

You and me, for us.

Until I come, you said,

Until I die, I said,

Until you be, the sea said.

Superannuation!

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

“Dad, how do you spell rimpersement?” “Dear, I thought you knew. Make daddy proud about his little girl! Don’t be silly and stupid like this. Anyway, r-e-i-m-b-u-r-s-e-m-e-n-t.” “What’s VRS and CRS daddy?” “Where did you hear them now! Voluntary and compulsory retirement from service.” ” Why don’t you take them dad! That means you’ll no more have to work and can stay with me at home. You could drive me to school, we could come back in the evening and pick up mom. And you know the best part? I could skip the after-school nursery! That lady is so…” “Dear, that’s not gonna happen now. If I quit, who’s gonna get you all the stuff you want? How will we pay your school fees? The books..” “Oh daddy! I am so stupid. I’ll study and get a job, and then you take the VRS thing then?” “My sweet little thing! It’d be time for my superannuation then!” “er..your what?” “Honey, let’s keep that for a while later. Now walk fast, so that we don’t get caught in the rain.”

….

How much time passed by, after that one little conversation! Nobody ever knows. Nobody ever knew what happened to that sweet little girl and her daddy. Over the years, things changed. Drastic, dramatic, diplomatic. All kinda changes had come over people, places, things, but memories. Next to change, I think memories are the one other thing that doesn’t change. It either stays or doesn’t. So her memories, or his memories, were now lost in the deluge of the new striking events, that has brought their lives to this moment.

So now is when he retires. Filling out the PF forms, he had obvious difficulties. He didn’t care enough to ask for help, she didn’t bother to offer help either. As he was filling them out, the moment of silence loosely hung on a thread. And the thread was so broken, and words so came flowing in, when the mother and the rest of the family joined the father and the daughter. He was almost done with a nominee field left out. And he asked, “Sudha, what’s Bhavya’s DOB?”. Her world just crashed right in front of her. Why was he asking mom about her sister’s date of birth? Is she going to be the nominee? Why not me, she thought. It wasn’t about the money. Now that everybody earned shitloads of money, nobody cares. It wasn’t about the authority either. But didn’t she and he have a pact? A superannuation-slash-VRS pact? When he finally promised to be with her, spending more time with her. And when she could finally reach out for her dad, at all points enroute being daddy’s pride! And now, all of that’s gone? Misunderstanding? Miscommunication? Mis-what? She just missed that one pact she had hoped to exist. The one that she was sure would be kept. Why do people change like there was never a past? Like, there was no history that they shared with the others in their present! She died a little inside, but casually sat there, right opposite to him, with no emotions.

….

Could Sudha be right? Did I unnecessarily make a fuss about the whole retirement thing by calling the return-back party at home? She seems too burdened with the chores. But then, did I have a choice. I so wanted my little girl to be here with me, while I retire and step out of my office. I have finally made enough space and time for her in life. Perhaps, Sudha was right. I shouldn’t have wanted her to come. She seems so uninterested. She’s right about moving on, from daddy’s little one to the woman she has become now. You make me proud, dear. But I would have been a lot more happier, if only things were slightly different. And if we could still get back to our old VRS pact! Or did that already slip into our cold mask of oblivion!

Yet another marathon!

~ Soumya ~ 1 Comment

All geared up for yet another 30-day blogging challenge! This time with a friend, with whom I shared all of my school-days writing passions! Like, only I’d understand what she was attempting to say to the world and vice versa. We both sucked in what we did. But funnily enough, we never got tired of trying again and again, to improve and prove to the never-pleased critic in both of us! Is it too common to find people who’d put in infinte literary activities in their New Year to-do resolutions? And actually take the pain of cross-checking with eachother, if the literary ‘resolutions’ are being kept! Well, you just found us. Its like, we’re good at almost nothing else but playing with words. The not-yet-pleased critic says, we’re not even good at this. But as ever, we aren’t tired of trying again and again. To you all, who are supposedly the ‘vivid readers’ of my blog, check out my blog-mate here. Read, comment, criticise. (Compliments are also welcome!) 🙂

Hope the co-blogger does the same, as a token of forgiveness to me for sharing the link and publicising the blog! Seriously, why would someone have a blog if there aren’t any readers!

Official flag off to the marathon!

Happy birthday to me!

~ Soumya ~ Leave a comment

Nah, it’s nowhere close. My birthday is way over. But looking back from this precise moment, that was one of the only best thing that happened to me recently, making me want to find goodness in every other thing! It’s like this one good day, promising you to give more, making you want more. I had cake! Yay! (Doesn’t matter I shared it with the cousin, whose birthday falls the same day! That WAS the fun after all!) I had midnight birthday wishes! Again Yay! I had wake up calls. Again Yay! I even had a total surprise birthday ‘mug’ with my photo in it. Gifted my cousin-childhood_friend-buddy-my-lechu! And yay is just not enough there! And the surprise birthday card, which technically was the only one this year! And not to forget, I had two full big yummy ‘chocolat’y ‘silk’y heaven, all for myself! Besides all, I had a surprisingly relieving conversation with an old pal! She didn’t talk much. But whatever little we spoke, the spirit of it stays alive to the moment and gives me a all-new drive to life! And there I said ‘Same to you’ to devi akka when she wished me! We missed it all these years perhaps! As if it wasn’t enough, I have aniecenow, born with me, 21 years delayed!

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Birthdays have been more good to me in the past. Much better than this years’, where I was away from family and loved ones. But this one seems more special. May be coz it’s the 21th! May be coz it’s the one surviving 2012! May be it could be so many other things. But most of all, I think it was special, coz it was the only good thing, in a long time now. The most beautiful flower is the one that blooms in the face of a catastrophe! Symbolising survival! I survived. Yay!

P. S. Oh wait a min! Did I forget to mention the new Olympus 620! All thanks Vidya! Amma and appa just flipped me out this time! 🙂

The awkward moment!

~ Soumya ~ 3 Comments

That awkward moment when you see this or hear that or realise something out of somewhere! “That awkward moment!”. This is my ‘that’ moment when I awkwardly understand that so much time out of facebook and yet this one ‘awkward moment’ thing would just not go away from my mind! It just kept echoing, “Is this my awkward moment?”, almost every idle moment of life. Until I finally realised it. That awkward moment when I realise, after living thru almost a month into the New Year, I have not turned a page, read a line or wrote a word yet! How could it be I didn’t even a read anything from my latest book fare extravaganza!

Its not like nothing’s happening. The New Year was too eventful. That 24 hours seem too insufficient to do anything at all. Too man resolutions, the struggle to keep them running and so many eventful things! Come on let’s list it out.

1. Pooled in ‘needy’ people like me who needed that one extra push to get things done. Keeping track of eacother’s resolutions and to-do’s, its going good as of till now.

2. Restarted one of the best things from my past. Diary writing. Really treasuring the spirit, holding on to it stronger.

3. Met with a minor accident kinda thingy, which did somuch harm. Disturbed my routine morning walk for half the month. And shook my unshakeable confidence with two wheelers! My hands still tremble. Its gonna take some time, I guess.

4. For the better, contested in college election and won with a huge majority! Now a member of the union, that was almost unbelievable, considering the politics involved. Might even write a separate post on that, one of these days.

5. When all else fails, there’s family and FRIENDS. Started watching the TV series (too late, I know!) and falling in love with Phoebe!!

Now these are big things that happened in the past month of my life. I wonder why I didn’t share anything. May be, the diary is too much replacing the blog. Or maybe, my words are failing me yet again. Half way thru this post, I had a draft saved. My cousin read thru and said, “What a crap! This is so not you!”. See! May be that’s it. Not in form, anymore. Too young to give up already. So let me give it one more chance. A 30 day challenge on the blog, with a cousin. Didn’t lose the first day itself. Good enough, for somebody out of their usual performance scale. 😀

P.S. Writing down stuff in points was always a near impossibility to me.But yay! Here on my 101th post, I did it!

Shrinking mind!

~ Soumya ~ 2 Comments

Do I look like a ‘shrink’ from any angle? Do I actually look like some human god who can curb away all your sorrow? I find it ridiculous people confide in me. Not irritated. Just amused at the very idea. When I say people, the list is sufficiently wide and endless. I dont know if that’s even the reason why I smile so less to people and frown all the time.

She’s on her way back from Bangalore. Its extreme cold there and she was shivering and had to see a doc there. One cant get out of home till ten in the morning coz its snowing all the time. Its her sister staying there. Her sister is working and hence busy. So she goes around to meet up once in a while. Her husband is also busy. So she goes around all by herself. She was too afraid to travel alone. But once everybody started teasing her, she pushed away the fear and began to travel alone. She lost her kid. Life is more or less empty now. Vidya is her name. Except for the last sentence, all the previous ones were her answers to the questions she might have wished me to ask. The five hour train journey was intermittently and effortlessly made engaging. I should have known better to maintain my indifference and never take away the headset from my ears.

I’m not callous. I’m not insensitive to others’ grievances or pain and agony. But being pricked doesn’t feel good. Everytime someone talks to me, I am itched to talk to someone too. Someone atleast! Thinking of the fact it is, I lack an ear. That’s too valid a prick as well!

First time, I’m regretting something that I wrote. I shouldn’t have written this. I really shouldn’t. Most of you who read this, have talked to me and I perhaps helped you vent. I’m not counting back and seeking redressal. All that I meant was, I need someone to talk to. The way I stood for you is not a comparison. Its just a prayer!

The Jan 1st post!

~ Soumya ~ 1 Comment

Jan 1st post. Posted on Jan 2nd. Does this say anything about me? Well, it does. And I’d rather choose to keep it to myself. I had this wonderful resolutions of one post a day for the new year. I even had awesome strategies to boost myself and squeeze some precious words of wisdom from myself. Simple yet strategic. I’d choose an event of the day and write about it everyday. Life being so eventful for me (got the sarcasm??), I’d never run out of topics too. Ironically though, a very eventful day finally leaves you with little or no time to relax. Let alone, lie down on ya bed and search for the most apt words to beautify your post. It just gets as messy and as eventful as the day itself. And that leaves with you such awkward moments of titling posts like these!

But its fine. I’d find some means of getting past that obvious irony! Eventful days are what I love in the end. Yesterday was one heck of it. The new year was indeed awesome. From most trivial to the grand astounding things I’d have ever wanted to do! All in a day! That truly is one heck of a feeling! Of all things, the one thing I dont want to miss sharing is the inexplicable feel if breaking the awesome rules pushed down your throat! Got to sit by the door for an hour long train journey and that was “awesome”! To get thru the feel of jumping down to the inviting river, to fight back the slamming door, and finally, to avoid the pestering stares from the unavoidable crowd!! That was one thing I’d have essayed about yesterday. But today, that’s outdated na? And its not like I didnt write anything at all. 🙂

Waiting for tomorrow. For something to push me into writing. Resolutions are kept. Promises are given. Atleast this year! 😛