Winds of Change

Submitted by: Trisha Roy

At the very earliest, it is my primary responsibility to clarify what I intend to speak about, and what exactly made me write it. Most of my literary work is abstract, for I am obsessed with incoherence of thought. It has no certain predefined form, no expectations to meet, and no rigid boundaries of thought, for I do not intend to give it a beginning, a body and an end. The best thing about literature, or for that matter, any form of art, is that it gives form to something which is elusive to the mind. When I sit down to write, I precisely have no idea where my pen will take me, and it is only when I give myself completely over to it, that I realise that a structure has indeed come up. I give the pen a dream, and the pen gives me the form. Similarly when a painter paints, he does not give the canvas a picture. He gives the canvas his attention and the canvas  gives him the picture. This is precisely what makes art in any form so beautiful, refreshing and magical in this otherwise mechanically manipulated universe.

Coming to the point, what I intend to say is that, the following piece of work was written with no specific event or case in mind, but just as a sum total of a lot of issues that had been gathering dust over time in some obscure corner of my mind. However, it was written partially in the aftermath of reading two books- first, the book called “A Thousand Splendid Suns”- an extraordinary book by bestselling author Khalid Hosseini, and second, a book called “The French Lover”, one of Taslima  Nasreen’s  lesser known books, not as outrageous as “Lajja”, but very enlightening when it comes to the female psyche or, for that matter, feminism itself, in its subtle shades. As must be pretty apparent by now, I intend to talk about women, and I intend to talk a lot!

Now, I am no feminist. Rather, a feminist in parts and pieces. For that matter, every woman is a feminist in her own right; so, that intrinsic feminism is obviously in my flesh and blood, but I am, by no means, a self-proclaimed  feminist. I do not call every man a chauvinist, and I do not hold men responsible for all the issues in a woman’s life. I am not here to scream about the plight of women in our seemingly progressive but intrinsically stagnant and impoverished country; I just have a list of small ironies that strike my face so hard everytime I think of myself as a liberated young lady from a liberated progressive society, where women are quotedly “marching ahead in life”.

Let me name the ironies then. We have been always claiming that “times have changed”. Yes, times certainly have, but who validates that change?? Yes, the jump from the kitchen to the conference room is apparently a massive change; the transition from the saari to the formal trousers is a salient thing too, but then, no change is real change except the change in perception.....and perceptions, mind you, haven’t really changed.

Who claims then, that times have changed?? For everytime I look at the newspaper, and learn of a Dalit woman stripped and marched in full public view in some obscure village in India, I know times haven’t changed. Everytime I hear of diplomats and foreigners being raped in the Capital, I know things are yet the same. Once when a male friend suggested a “pepper-spray” as an essential commodity for self-defense, I wondered how far we have come. Everytime I think of the Pakistani village girl Mukhtar Mai, and how her brother’s alleged affair with a high class Muslim girl, resulted in the price being paid by her “sentenced” gang- rape by the Zamindars, while her father and brother waited outside the room where ‘justice’ was supposedly being given, I realise that times will perhaps never change. Everytime I hear male drivers mocking at driving women, I am disillusioned. Everytime I read of a fatwa being issued on Sania Mirza’s short skirt, I am enraged. Every time I hear of IAS officers and diplomats being accused of domestic violence inspite of being at such respectable positions in the government machinery, I grow more certain of the futility of the lopsided progress of a country like ours. Everytime a young  girl like Aarushi is pathetically defamed by the media after her tragic death, I conclude that we are still as primitive as we ever were. Everytime a beautiful model like  hangs herself because her boyfriend refuses to marry her, and everytime the old father of an ugly young girl of marriageable age, almost sells his daughter at the hands of any prospective bridegroom, I stamp my helplessness with the stench of harsh truth. The stench of truth is indeed very unpleasant, choking in fact, but then, there is no avoiding it.

The crux of the story is that, some things in life are just trapped in a vicious circle. There is no escape, no redressal, and no hope. All that there is, is a mirage..the closer you get to it, the more you analyse it, the more disillusioned you become. There is certainly a metamorphosis from one form to another, and this superficial change fools us into believing that there is change. Perceptions however stay on- immutable, rigid, invincible and irreparable, and without perceptions changing, societies and civilisations never change.

Winds of change do not come easily to a country like ours. Sometimes, we have to put up a passionate and rebellious fight to let them enter our land, and we are probably not rebellious enough yet. So, here we were, and here we remain, with our eternal hopes of a change that has not come in centuries, but will surely come some day, because at the end of the day, it is good to remember that,

“The hands that rock the cradle, can also rule the world.”