An Exercise in Fear

"Sometimes when we write... it is easy to get carried away. Especially when we write about things that are close to our hearts and that matter to us. And from that writing, a vendetta emerges... things that aren't really there come to life and everything that's abstract and misty in your head, heart and mind-- is forever imprinted on your future."

- Jinal

A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.

- Emile M. Cioran

Oppression can only survive through silence.

- Carmen de Monteflores

There is a state that I've been having difficulty reconciling myself to.

Maybe it's because of who I am as a person - I'm not a hypocrite (well, I suppose at some point we all are), things should ideally be either this way or that, if I don;t like someone or something I just don't like them, and principally cannot have anything to do with them (which is why I refuse to watch any Russell Crowe movies, though I'm sure I have missed out on A Beautiful Mind). I need to make my own mistakes; I'm willful and rebellious and won't do something if I'm ordered to do it, or if I'm not satisfied by the reasons given to me, or if I don't believe in it myself. Which is why I only started watering the Tulsi plant in my house this year, and actually volunteered to wake up early and trace saathiyas on my doorstep during Dassehra and Diwali.

I know I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. I've seen and done things I never should have or needed to. Sometimes I did them out of rebellion, for shock value, for the simple desperate need to break out of a cloistered, protected, female existence, to be able to breathe in my own skin without the back-breaking burden of all my guilt-causing purported responsibilities of being a woman, daughter, sister, receiver and heiress of a particular family legacy of values, of 'modesty', of 'shame', of 'honour', to make my own mistakes. I frequently found it unbearable and unnecessary, and longed for an ideal world (like any teenager) in which I could be my own person, and not be traced back or be identified on the basis of my family, status, sex, gender, looks, education, the people I hung out with, whatever. I don't want to be an example for anyone but thinking, questioning, precocious youngsters, who will hopefully be steered by my ideals, though not always my intentions or actions, in the right direction.

My values and actions are just that, mine. I don't wish to be dictated by what society thinks or does, because it is frequently mindless, stupid and censoring, but at the same time I don't want it to negatively affect those around me, who are attched to me by bonds of blood or loyalty. It's not fair. They're their own people. I don't expect the whole world to follow my path, though I often privately think it'd be better off if it did, but I do expect to be left alone.

My willfulness and stubbornness has been more cemented now after 5 years of living alone than ever before. I know it's considered childish in a young woman, and forms an obstacle to a happy married life (read one that soaks up her husband's family values like a sponge and merges in completely with them), but I've just become... Angry. I don't want to be malleable or manipulable, just as I don't want to manipulate people. I don't want to pretend and not speak up and be considered 'impulsive'. I don't want to be in this vacillatory state in which I want to hold on to myself and not even know what 'my self' constitutes.

I only know that I don't want what everyone thinks I should want, just because they think I want it or that I should want it. I suppose I secretly want it , but on my own terms and in my own time. I'm fed up of hearing my elders' droning on about how "Life is compromise". I don't see why I should shunt myself WILLINGLY into the same life that they did, just because it's the only option they think every person and every woman has or should have.

You know, once upon a time I was a romantic, being fed like every little girl in India on a diet of fairytales, Bollywood movies and teenage love stories. I too wanted to give up everything and follow the man of my dreams about doing everything for him, sacrificing my identity and being a part of him and being loved and cherished like a princess no matter what material hardship we would have to suffer. I was, till a few months ago. That's when I discovered after repeated brushes with disaster, that one cannot trust anyone but oneself. We are all, including those we love and trust and look to for guidance, drowning in subjectivity. In half-expressed hopes and fears, in guesswork. Mostly fear.

It's mostly served to make me wonder what I'm living for. I, like any human being, have so much potential. I'm not an ambitious person by nature but I can be a perfectionist about things I care about - I only recently discovered to my surprise though it was told to me two years ago by my Professor Beth Darlington when I went to her, a Jungian analyst, with a terrible recurring dream I was having then. There are so many things I like. I never thought of a career because I had been led to believe I'd be married any minute. What was the point, I wondered, of setting myself up for success or a lifetime of work when others would set me up to make babies and manage a house? Not that I ever wanted to work all my life. I wanted to engage in creating change, of improving the quality of life in a public, rather than a private way, but I've always been ashamed to admit that most of it was simply empty words. I wanted my home to be a salon of intellectuals, of artists, dreamers, visionaries, lovers of life and its myriad offerings and experiences.

I still haven't found myself. The only thing I discovered was that I couldn't wait for some nonexistent prince to come along and decide who I was to be. I tried to preserve that malleability in order to facilitate the secondary socialisation I was bound to undergo once I got married - a whole new home, people, culture, lifestyle, values, way of cooking food, of praying, everything. I've tried to remain unschooled and unlearned in that sense.

I was a nice, generic sort of girl. I could chat enthusiastically with random relatives about nothing in particular. That's the sort of thing people like about girls. Somehow - and I don't know how it occurred - I suddenly discovered I dont like clubbing when people are around me, when I'm overwhelmed by a paranoia that unseen marital police are watching my every move. I stand frozen, and hence become terribly bored. After work and dance, I'm too tired to talk. I HATE indulging in small talk and what he did and what she said and how I felt and how weird is this. WHO CARES? WHY THE HELL SHOULD I BE CONCERNED ABOUT SOMEONE ELSE'S PATHETIC LIFE? WHY IS YOUR LIFE SO PATHETIC THAT YOU ATTACH SO MUCH IMPORTANCE TO SOME RANDOM PERSON'S ACTIONS? WHY DON'T YOU ALL STOP GOSSIPPING AND DO SOMETHING ELSE? WHY ARE PEOPLE SO DAMN POLITICAL? WHO AM I TO JUDGE? The guilt gets me every time.

I've wandered way off track. But what I am trying to say is that I've become, in comparison to who I was, hard-hearted, self-involved and unsympathetic. I simply cannot pretend to attach importance to what I deem to be the attempts of others to express affection or fill up silence. My threshold of tolerance has decreased. I can't decide whether I'm confessing this or simply stating it. All that I am is so not what an Indian woman is supposed to be. I can't be independent and look after everyone's needs while neglecting my own. I can't have opinions and then suppress them while admitting someone else's for the sake of peace and unity. I can't know I'm right and have to spend hours convincing egotistical men in gentle ways such that they make the right decision ultimately AND take all the credit. I haven't learnt to achieve that balance. And on every level, I don't want to or see the need to.

I know it's necessary. I know it's still a man's world and very few men will be able to acknowledge and engage with me on a truly equal footing. I know I'm not wise, merely sullen.

I saw this play last night, about a guy who agrees to a contract marriage with a rollicking tomboy, only to please his mother. The plan was to make the girls such a termagant that the mother in law would be fed up and ask her to leave and the guy could marry his girlfriend, a beauty queen, after a year once her term ended. However, the mother-in-law loved the girl for her strong will and rebeliious behaviour, seeing in her what she once was and what she longed to be but couldnt, and then suddenly dies. The boy, a singer, loses his musical abilities. The girlfriend tries to help him, but the tomboy wife manages somehow or the other, by insulting him, through various indirect methods and her unceasing loyalty, to get him to sing again. At the end of their year and contract, he discovers he actually loves her for her loyalty.

It was a beautiful play but showed some disturbing bits of reality. The tomboy slowly transforms into an elegant lady of the house like her mother-in-law, wearing traditional clothing and taking up her mannerisms and politeness, after her death, though she more constructively channels her strong will on her husband. What depressed me was this overshadowing of inevitability. No matter what I will, if I want to be happy, I shall have to transform. How to go about it in the most painless way possible is my big problem. I want to have my freedom of choice, because I know I won't abuse it. It's only with the restrictions that I break rules.

I wonder if I'm simply making a mountain of a molehill. I dont want to be a statistic but I also don't want to be hated. I want to fit in but also retain my own identity. I don't want to be a hypocrite but I want to stay out of any family nonsense. I don't want to be an overdressed mannequin for family status. I'm really really scared.

I just want to live in peace.

I want to overcome all of this.

I have often regretted my speech, never my silence.

-Publilius Syrus

Silence is the only language of the realized. Practice moderation in speech. That will help you in many ways. It will develop Prema, for most misunderstandings and factions arise out of carelessly spoken words. When the foot slips, the wound can be healed; but when the tongue slips, the wound it causes in the heart of another will fester for life. The tongue is liable to four big errors: uttering falsehood, scandalizing, finding fault with others, and excessive speech. All these have to be avoided if there is to be santhi for the individual as well as for society.

- Satya Sai Baba

"I saw the simple truth in life. And that is just one, nothing lasts. And what lasts, is not meant to be questioned or debated".

- Jinal

Hope overcomes fear and sorrow through faith. Biologically put, its called survival.