FYI-(If you’re a Mrs. Hall Kind)

Dear Mrs. Halls of the world,

I come from a country, where if a woman get’s raped,teased, troubled (by men), the general attitude of the authorities around her, is that it was her fault. Sometimes blatantly, and behind the closed doors of some very dingy closets, I see men and women talk about things. Reasons they believe the girl was raped.

>Why was she out there late?
>Why didn’t she take someone along?
>Who asked her to be so reckless?
>I’m sure she did something to provoke him. And lastly, (my favourite),
>What was she wearing?

I love these questions. They tell me who I’m around. See, these are the closets that need to be opened and aired out. Who cares about anyone’s sexuality? I want to know if I’m spending my time with another Mrs. Hall of the world.

Your letter to that little teenage girl made me laugh, because yet again I found that not only do I have to fight haters like you in my own country, there’s a whole world of people like you out there. Now this lead to feeling angry, angry that there are so many of you, that women have to wade their way through before enjoying some sense of dignity in being just them- human beings. But as is with some of the stages of grief, I soon began to feel sad. I’ll tell you why in just a bit.

Mrs Halls, if you were trying to teach your children [read: children, not sons] how, not to be vain, how not to pay too much attention to the way they look, how to find unaesthetic beauty in the people and things around them, I would have sighed and shared your post and wanted thinkers like you to reach a wider audience. But you’re not doing that are you? You’re instead throwing light on little teenage girls with barely developed breasts and judging them for being happy, free and discovering their own little ways to feel beautiful. You see there are so many Mrs. Halls out there in the form of men and women forcing girls into labels of sweet, dainty, bold, boisterous and slutty, that girls don’t always know what it feels like to be just them- without the labels. You’re telling us all the time how hard it’s going to be for us to be loved if we’re not who the world of Mrs. Halls like you think we should be, that we’re caught between discovering ourselves through our own internal compasses, and turning into little Mrs. Hall puppets (This time Made in the USA).

But fuck that.

Let’s talk about the real things here. I find it funny that you would think pouting and being sexy is wrong. Seriously?
You’re talking about raising men “with a strong moral compass, and men of integrity” and those are wonderful aspirations. But how strong are your sons’ moral compasses going to be if you’re teaching them that girls who don’t wear bras and like to take self portraits are indecent? Don’t you see what you’re doing here? You’re telling your children [yes your daughter too] that it is going to be okay for them to disrespect these girls because you don’t think they’re worthy of any respect anyway. What sort of moral decisions will they then take as men? Or will anything they do (that is disrespectful toward a woman who doesn’t think she has to wear a bra and please all the Mrs. Halls of the world for their approval) be justified by this very virtue of a compass that you are trying to instill in them?

There are so many things wrong with what you have said, that I wouldn’t know how to begin. So I’m just going to get to what makes me sad.

I feel sad for your children Mrs. Halls, because they are going to (if you succeed in raising them as boys and girls who cannot think for themselves and make their own decisions) grow up to be big people with little brains and even smaller hearts like you.

I feel sad because they are going to walk around with these judgements as adults, and I feel sad for the burden of these judgements and labels that they will have ready for use, the minute they see girls and boys and women doing things their mamas and dadas taught them to be wrong.

Since I read your post, I too pray for the girls who will love your sons, for they will always be seen by your sons in the tainted light of your perceptions. I hope your sons find strong willed women who will teach you that levels of “purity” can be measured in oil, gas, milk, I don’t know.. weed? But people are not commodities to be sifted and made pure. But if you want to go Osho on me, then I say your thoughts, your words and if your words are a reflection on your actions, they’re all prettyyy good contenders for being “impure”.

I feel sad for you because I don’t think you have any idea how your “God” is going to receive you. I’m pretty sure you think God is a HE, and you think HE believes you to be pure in thought, sans the actions, then I would love to believe that you have another think coming.

And lastly, Mrs. Halls of the world, I feel sad for you as women, because what I see, is a woman who has no idea how to love herself. Truly love herself. You are obviously a victim of your own knee-deep perceptions, and I feel sad for you, that you have probably never discovered what it feels like to love every inch of your insides enough, not to let people like yourself affect you.

I hope you have the courage to see beyond your judgements and shallow perceptions. I hope you have the courage to love. Respect. And Accept- NOT by your own standards. But just as living beings.

Oh, and since I LOVE selfies myself, here I am, fresh out of bed, bra-less and how! Pouting my way to sultriness. HERE’S TO YOU MRS. HALLS of the world. Eat this. And remember, I will ALWAYS fight you.

She Doesn’t Know it Yet

A contribution for the Weekly Writing Challenge- A Thousand Words

Once around the carousel, so she can see the people- big and small alike pour into each other in one big smudge of black and grey and pinks. Once around the carousel, to let her dip her head back breezily, palms firm around the handles and just the clouds above her; melting into magnetic blotches of blue and white and wonder.

But she doesn’t know it yet.

She doesn’t know that soon, she will hear for the very first time, the sweetest modulations of the EADGBE oozing so provocatively out of a stranger’s closed door, that for the very first time, she would know what love is. She doesn’t know it yet, but she is going to spend the rest of her life in prayer: in a symphonic homage to the sound of those strings, the tug of those chords and the freedom in those voices.

She doesn’t know it yet, but the body that she hasn’t even come to understand yet, won’t be hers for the longest time. And not until she makes it hers. She doesn’t know it yet, but she belongs to a world that cannot fathom her individuality. A world where she will be judged, and tested and tried for stepping out of the limbo everyone seems to like to dance. She doesn’t know it yet, but more often than not, she will judge herself, and others like her without the slightest effort. She hasn’t been made familiar with the cosmetic gunk of patriarchy that she belongs to…Not Yet.

She hasn’t discovered the joys of travel yet. She has no idea how much her feet are going to want it. How her heart forgets to beat at the thought of all the earth her toes haven’t even dreamed of treading on yet. She doesn’t know how proud she’s going to feel the first time she buys herself her very own knapsack. She doesn’t know how the ocean’s going to fill her heart up with the moon whom she will slowly and reluctantly sigh out in a whisper of deep deep love and longing, with every tide, every setting sun, and every single time she leaves her place of silence. She doesn’t know just how much she’s going to love silence.

She thinks this is it maybe, or maybe she hasn’t begun to truly think yet. What she’s going to find when she starts to think her own, is how much she longs for still waters, trees reaching out to the skies they adore, cold winters and heavy rains. She doesn’t know just how much she both loathes and loves the very greys and blacks and pinks of this aging city that she sees spinning around her.

She’s going to learn soon, that there’s a lot of standing up to do. And too many painful moments she will have to ignore. She is going to learn soon, what being violated truly means. She is going to be poked, and prodded and undressed so many times a day by a million eyes alone. And if she’s lucky, she will never be touched by the blind savages that house those eyes.
But she isn’t going to be that lucky. She is going to be touched. Touched by men who don’t know her. Men who don’t know where she has been and what it’s taken her to come this far. She is going to be touched by men who don’t care who she is. On the bus, on the street, in a crowd, while she’s walking her pet, any time she’s out. With their eyes, with their hands, with their body language, their elbows, their shoulders and their pride.

She is going to live in fear within the rancid blanket of violation everyday, that for the longest time, she won’t even realise it.

She is going to have dreams. SO many dreams. But she won’t be taught to go after them. She will instead be bathed in stories of young girls in waiting and young princes’ wearing their boots out with adventure. She will be dressed in tales of rescue and dependency. She will most likely never be taught the beauty of interdependency. She’s never going to be taught the need for action! To literally GO OUT THERE and get what she wants, the boy or girl she wants, the love she wants, the job she wants, the money, the friends, the adventures. None of it. She will instead learn from those stories to sigh and wait. And maybe have someone come take her on an adventure.

But she. If things go right. Will want to have adventures of her own .

She will probably not learn that it is okay to touch herself. Not for the longest time will she come to find that she is just as entitled to urges and wanting to be satisfied as any creature walking this quickly paling planet. That her body is her own, not a chaste temple to protect, not a flower, not an object that she must hide. That her hair can be as long or short or wild as she’d like it to be and no book no testament no holy scripture can ever tell her how she should dress, behave or feel.
She is going to learn to associate feelings of guilt and shame and false notions of morality with thoughts of happiness, pleasure, success, dreams and other selfish ideals like putting herself first.

She hasn’t yet discovered just how much she loves food. She hasn’t yet experienced the titillating little lover affair her hungry pallet can enjoy with something as unshackle-able as aromas. But when she does, she’s going to feel like she owes this exhausted planet of opinions a justification for every bite she takes.

But if all goes right, she won’t really give a shit.

She doesn’t know it yet, but so many things are going to happen to her and the world around her. She doesn’t know it yet, but her body’s going to change and keep changing; she is going to have to accept the power that comes with complete ownership of it. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to be a mother one day, of the billion zillion gazillion dreams she lets herself conceive of. She doesn’t know it yet, but she’s going to be fighting so many battles without ever realising it. And just like the centuries of women before her, she is going leave behind a little rebellion, a little revolting and a lot of revolution for the little girls who come after her.

All this- if things go right.

So I’ll let her be for now.There, on that carousel, lost in colours, and pictures and wonders of thought-less alchemy. I’ll let her be for now.

Because soon her world will change. And through all the perceptions and ideologies that she will be dressed by, she will come into her own one day and find herself.

She just doesn’t know it yet.

An Open Letter to Rakhi Kumar- Beyonce is great Role Model

Your concern for the well being of little American girls is respectable. Yes, child trafficking, is a painful fact. And Prostitution is not the most sort after occupation but hey (survival is a bitch and if you’re left with abusive parents and no education, sometimes, you don’t have the choice and you know what THAT DOESN’T MAKE THE PROSTITUTES BAD), Take that up with the men who PAY to have sex with these little girls and women. You know how they say “once the buying stops the killing will too” well Go Figure. But then I’m sure you would rather be of the opinion that all wild and free animals be caged for their own safety of course, and so should all little girls be kept safe- in respectable clothes clothes that don’t make them look sexual. Because I guess somehow, it’s not an intelligent enough thing to do?

Well this is where I get to the point- Beyonce is a GREAT role model for young women like ME. You know why? Because she tells me that I don’t have to care about people (very much like you) who will brand me for fully and completely loving myself and my body. She teaches me that I can dress the way I want to and that I shouldn’t have to feel bad about it if I like to express my style through smaller, tighter, translucent clothes. She tells me that there will be truck loads of women (quite like you) who wont blink an eye lid before branding me as asking for trouble without ever raising a finger at the man who was never taught that a woman’s body is not HIS. But HERS and HERS alone to do as she pleases with it.
You see, you may not understand what Beyonce is doing, and quite rightly put by you, she has been misunderstood. Only someone who thinks a woman’s body is for sale would believe that she is selling her soul to the devil by wearing that “sheer see through body suit with nipples on display”. What she’s doing is telling every girl not to give a fuck about people (quite like yourself). She’s telling girls who have to literally fight their way through societal perceptions and notions of what a woman should be, before they can even breathe a single breath of freedom to be just themselves, she’s telling us girls and women to be free. And to free ourselves from thoughts and opinions of people (so much like you). Because you see, men will buy sex, buy little girls for sex and lets not forget rape them too, no matter how old they are. No matter what they wear. And no matter what they do or don’t do. You see, don’t talk about the people who “lure young girls” into wanting to become like someone. Talk about the system that would even “*want* to lure a little child. Are you telling me that if Beyonce stops dressing in such a “demonic” fashion little girls will not be trafficked and raped and sold? Really?

Beyonce is a GREAT role model, because she is bold, she is a business woman and a singer and because she unlike some people (like you) would never brand another woman for doing what she believes in.

I would never want children, because I would have to bring them into a world that is filled with people (like you). But if I ever do have them, and they happen to be daughters, I will take them to a Beyonce concert and an Andrea Gibson show, I would talk to them about world politics and the Dalai Lama,I would speak to my daughters about being gay and straight and tell them that it is ALRIGHT. That NO ONE gets to tell them who they choose to love, and HOW much skin they need to show to be respectable because respect has nothing to do with the cloth you have on or NOT for that mattter.

I would show her all the toys there are and let her pick what SHE likes, a dollhouse or a set of hot wheels, and most importantly, I will teach her never to brand another person. I will introduce her to Nietzche and Muhammad Iqbal and tell her all about the agnostics and religions of the world. I will walk her through the struggle of women through the ages and show her how she gets the rights that she does, and I will tell her, NEVER. NEVER. To let another human being tell her that there’s something more important than honesty, and being true to oneself.
And then, I would tell her to live free. And never brand another human being and be a ROLE MODEL to other women by being herself, and proud of it. JUST LIKE BEYONCE.

Oh and PS: The nipples you can’t seem to get over are a costume, just because they look it, don’t make them real.

PPS: What happens to the little boys who get trafficked and raped? Who would you hold responsible for that? Lil Wayne?

On this Planet

To be a woman on this planet, is not to stand together in the true essence of the spirit of humanity. But it is, to stand against. Against perceptions, against ideologies, traditions, customs, rituals and thought patterns. To be a woman on this planet, is to stand, but stand against the brute force that is man. It is to tower over his ego and come out unscathed, with all the power and might she can find within and without. To fight her fears, to stop her patterns of submitting. And to fight the idea, that he, is to be feared

To be a woman on this planet, is not just to push through the sound of his heavy voice and the raise of his bulky arms. But to stare at him in the eye saying “fuck you, I’m not afraid of you, and whoever taught you that I should be, went really fucking wrong”.

To be a woman on this planet, is to fear the atrocities of a man. To be the soul bearer of a moral conscience. It is to be born into a century and more of conditioning. Sometimes knowing, sometimes completely unaware.

To be a woman on this planet, is not just to live up to her own ideas of herself. But to live up to the ideas of the world. Of how she should be. How she should behave. How much she should aim to achieve. How well she understands that her little dreams are alright, but she should know when to quit. To be a woman on this planet is to become everything she is made out to be. She is like a stone doll for sculptors around, in various fields and domains; everybody is an artist here, usurping the right to chisel her, jab her, change her to everything they believe she should be. And then, to be a woman on this planet, is to live up to those ideas or feel unaccepted. Unwanted, and unseen.

To be a woman on this planet, is to remain a blank page. So she may be filled up, by all those who proclaim their authority over her. To be a woman, is to be told what to do, and how. Is to learn to master one particular domain.

To be a woman on this planet, is to be prepared to be blamed, for the children going wrong, for not having enough time, for being instinctively bad. To be a woman on this planet, is to get used to being addressed by words and terms that hold negative connotations on many levels. It is to understand that he, well he can be all he wants, because they will be themselves. But she? Well, she must be handed a guide book to follow reverently.

To be a woman with dreams isn’t always to chase them just because, but it is to be a woman who is allowed to have them. To have someone let her chase those dreams.

To be a woman on this planet, is to cross many barriers, fight many stigmas and break many hearts to feel close to herself. But the hardest truth of being a woman on this planet, is to have other women bring her down. Mar her, term her, bracket her  judge her and break her by the very thoughts, traditions, customs and patterns that they have been molded in.

Though we are all coetaneous, beginning at the very same time. To be a woman on this planet, is to sometimes strive, and frightfully so, for the grandest truth of our existence- that the difference stops at being just human.

To be a woman on this planet, is to rise up not to be bigger than. But it is to simply rise up. And to do this, without an ounce of shame.