Pseudo feminism, and the bastardisation of
feminism has bothered me a lot in the recent times. What has bothered me even
more is that how it has become the source and product of people’s
entertainment. A struggle turning into a laughing stock, pains me.
For a long time I thought I could not be a
feminist. Why? The reason is as simple as, my father was partial towards me,
following the apparent idea of “fathers favour the daughters and mothers, the
sons” People have told me it is true whether or not it actually functions that
way. The elders in my family till today tell me that I am my Dad’s favourite,
and not always in a good way. I should be proud, shouldn’t I? But what have I
done to be a favourite, born as a girl? I have always been guilty of the privilege
I received at home for being the girl. And that, I thought is the reason why I
believed, my brother and I will never get along. I wanted us to be treated
‘equally’. Believe it or not, I did not want to be the privileged one.
When I studied English Literature, I heard
the term Feminism for the first time. It was in my third year that I began
reading essays on Feminism. I realised then that I am not really the privileged
one. Favoured at home, when I want the TV remote or play computer games or cry
for a Barbie, certainly. I could then see the ideologies that form the favouritism.
It was then that I knew that all the unconventional dreams in my head since I
was a kid aren’t merely just in my head but there are actual people out there
who are fighting to make those dreams real.
I was in Class III when Kalpana Chawla
died. I had no idea who she was before the television screens flashed the news
of her sad demise. I asked my father about her, and she became my first role
model. I was given as much freedom a girl could be given, and a little bit more
while growing up but somehow my colonised mind had its limits to think children
in the West had more freedom than we would ever get in India. Kalpana Chawla, a
woman of Indian origin, going to the space was the most mind blowing act for my
eight year old brain.
Another quick background story, I longed
for sisters in a family where for the most part I had brothers who would beat
me up for quite some years following my elder brother’s orders. It didn’t
matter if I was older in age. My elder brother was the alpha and the younger
ones were scared of being in his bad books. Bhai
Behno mein jhagde hote rehte hain. (Fights
keep happening among siblings. So what? Those fights were in no way
affectionate. To me, it was the physically superior sex having the laugh of
their life. I longed for an army of my own, an army of my sisters. By the time
I got a couple of sisters in the family, we the twentieth century kids, had
‘grown up’ and somehow become non-violent.
It was around the time when I wanted this
army of girls that Sushmita Sen adopted a girl child without having to get
married. She got as much respect as I was capable of giving someone from me for
this act. She did not need a man in her life, and for the probably 10 year old
girl, that was the best thing in the world, also the most ‘unnatural’ and hence
a definite path to follow. Marriage still somehow was the thing that I had to
do unless I am famous (which I had no intention to be), but it was the first
thing in my bucket list to adopt a girl child at the age of twenty-five (Little
did I know that I might not even have a job by then, given my choice of subject
later.) and judge the man by his views on the idea of a single mother. Yes, as
a kid I did not know the politics of marriages and was sure that I will be
‘judging’ the man on his 'ideas and thoughts.' Ignorance is such bliss.
These stories still form the part of my
comparatively grown up life. As far as my memory permits, I think that I have
read Tinkle ever
since I learnt how to make sense of sentences. Who was my favourite character?
Janoo from ‘Janoo and Wooly Woo’, Wooly Woo being her pet dragon. Let’s just
say Janoo was as brilliant as Hermione Granger and she could pet a dragon apart
from fighting the notorious wizard! Have you seen Ash, Hagrid, and Harry deal
with Charizard, Nobert, and the Hungarian Horntail respectively! (How to
Train Your Dragon might
be an exception but the second movie in the series again proves my point.) Yes,
these are fictional characters. They are not real, and are exactly the reason
why I wanted to be like them.
The society, the family that I lived in
never gave me the vaguest of idea that I, as a girl, could achieve so much,
could be unnatural or more precisely now, unconventional. My parents told me I
could be anything I want. They also made sure that I had it in my head that I
won’t be married off to anyone if I wasn’t financially independent. I think,
that again is why I wondered in my teens, what if a woman chooses to be a
housewife and did not want to work. But again, I kept it to myself. I was
already way too free in my head and struggled to meet with reality, the
disappointments, and the crashing expectations!
So, when I read that there is a group of
people fighting for all my dreams, answering all my questions then why wouldn’t
I want to know about them? Why wouldn’t I agree with them that to set marriage
as any limit is a matter of choice of the person involved and not an ultimatum?
Why wouldn’t I want a life lived on my terms without having to be famous, warna
log kya kahenge? (otherwise what will the people say?) Why wouldn’t I
want to stand with those people trying to make my fantasies meet reality,
because it is after all possible, only, not allowed where I live!
Yes, the reasons behind the making of a
feminist here are silly, childish, and probably ridiculous. I longed for things, things that I was told I am
impatient to get. Needless to say, I have always been a so called
'over-thinker.' My personal experiences, in a time when the mind knew how to
wander, made way for me to see and understand the socio-political injustices.
Yes, it’s a personal fight, but when a group of five people fight with the same
cause, it no longer remains personal and here, we are talking about people from
all around the world. No, I am not going to define Feminism, neither the term
nor the movement. I am not going to say that, what I have always wanted is the
goal of being a feminist. I am not even going to mention how a fight of an
oppressed gender recognised the oppression of other genders. But I am going to
say, irrespective of the bastardisation, I am a feminist. From a curious to an
angry one at that.
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