FFF

There is a young girl who lives inside me. She is hungry for something that I don’t want to give her anymore. Bitch wants female friends. Where will I go looking for them at this age? She wants it when she sees it in others, in films, in books, in songs. She isn’t happy just seeing them, she wants them for herself and then eats my head all day all night asking me why I can’t give her that. It’s not that I haven’t tried. But there’s this whole caste thing. I can’t say for sure that it’s why all of my female friendships have flopped in the past but I do know it’s why they leave, it’s why I leave.

She doesn’t believe me. She gets the caste bit but doesn’t think it’s a reason – she thinks I do something wrong, that I mess things up somehow.

I am going to be a year older soon and am already tired. I don’t have the energy to sit and wonder whether things happen to me because of who I am or whether I let them happen to me because of who I am not. Also, no energy for so much self-pity. All the worst things in the world don’t happen to me because I am Dalit. They might have happened to my father, my mother, their parents. But not to me. Especially because they didn’t work their butts off to give me this life only for me to sit here and cry about not having female friendships. Fuck Female Friendships.

Having said that, because of how much they’ve had to lose to give me this, because I wan’t born into the life that they left behind, I am often stupid and ungrateful. I have a very warped understanding of what untouchability is and am sometimes too spoilt, too blind to admit that it is happening when it is happening. Kindness returned with a stamp that screams no thanks, behaviour that automatically corrects its posture to stand and bow down to savarna/male presence, gifts that are returned without explanation, intimacies that are withdrawn and rejected again, again, again.

Sample this – it’s also a kind of caste chutyagiri at display when people make it a point to perform their loyalties to specific people in front of other people. A memory comes biting from years ago – a student, of all people, stood tall at my table one evening and thought it necessary to tell me that his loyalty is to his friends and that he would be very upset if his friends were troubled in any way. This was after they had all been called out for being casteist gobi manchurians along with a few older gobis. I now giggle at his hulk moment. But over the years, various people have demonstrated similar ways of loyalty performance through speech-giving and other pointlessly, painfully cute gestures.

In school, I tried desperately to become a part of a girl group. I invited five of them home for lunch one weekend, they all agreed. The next morning, one of them disinvited herself saying periods. By evening, two other girls said they couldn’t come because that girl was not coming. Eventually they all pulled out saying she’s not coming so I also won’t come.

My mother was relieved. I couldn’t understand why.

It took me a while to figure out that it wasn’t their menstrual cycle which was in sync. It was their untouchability radar. When I encounter versions of this today, I am merely amused. I applaud their massive self-worth and move on with my life.

Everything I should have said to them continues to die inside me in volcanic sighs. I am now writing with borrowed rage, and in echoes that are comical to say the least.

Maybe it’s a good thing to not have friends at this age- you don’t have to worry about performing loyalty to anybody.

As I write this I am wondering why this girl who lives inside me is hungry for FFs. But then isn’t that the story I’ve always told? The one about Kottuncheri Devi, that little imp who tricks people into becoming friends with her so they will play with her? She hides their valuables and returns them only after they play with her. Can’t believe I am having this revelation now, when I am bloody 35 – that I have been kottuncheri devi all this while.

Advertisement

Thought for the day

Savarna joy is hilarious to see when due to their sincere efforts, two Dalit friends become strangers to each other.

Savarna tika uri* is just as hilarious to see when despite their sincere efforts, they can’t get two Dalit people to hate each other.

*tika uri – bum burn, a Savarna birthright.

Growing Out

Today I learnt that none of my friends from college are happily married. Almost everyone I went to college with is married, and/or a parent. These were things that elders always said would solve all our problems. You don’t know what to do after an M.A? Get married. Trouble in marriage? Have a baby. Tired of baby? Have another one. Tired of them both? Get one married.

Elders lie a lot.

And I’m glad I didn’t fall for any of it. As it turns out, the most miserable people from my past are not only married but also seem to think that not being married is the worst kind of punishment, and that telling someone they are going to be alone for the rest of their lives is an insult (giggles). Being married or in love has given them neither a life nor an escape from it. I am grateful each day for having grown up with them and grown out of them because if they were still in my life, I’d probably be like them.

I wish I had gone to a different college for my undergrad though. In *Main* College, where the Savarna spoiled brats ruled, there was very little space to find oneself, especially when one is so busy hiding oneself. The friend from college I blocked yesterday sent me a message from her husband’s phone today. It’s perhaps the only reason to get married

She said that I’m going to regret being alone, that she has a life because she’s got work to do (clearly) and that not everyone is lucky to belong to a family that has come up in life by looting people and taking bribes from others. (“I can now see it’s in the genes – no wonder you are this way”)

She obviously doesn’t know that it’s a casteist thing to say. She was merely repeating something she’d heard being thrown around in college by Savarna bullies. But it got me thinking about a whole lot of people who graduate in life with the luxury of never having to unlearn caste, and the luxury of never having to learn how to get a life, keep it, and most importantly – how to just be (alone, without, with, inside, outside)

I used to think that the reason I am no longer friends with these people was because I fell out with them. But it’s also that to be accepted by them, I had to be like them, laugh at the jokes made at the expense of my parents who had no idea that the people they welcomed into their home as my friends, mocked them behind their backs. This was a strange set of friends I had – they pretended to like me, basically called my parents quota parents, and attacked reservation at every opportunity they got.

But because so many of the people I meet today are either students willing to learn or adamant not to, and also twitter people whose engagement with the world begins and ends with the word ‘discourse’, I’ve half-forgotten that there is a whole world out there that only engages with people like themselves. And it’s almost comical that as a result of this, they will only know people like themselves for the rest of their lives and continue to mock people who aren’t like them.

More than anything, what seemed to upset them was that I’d moved on, found the ability to fight back with no more than three words, and didn’t seem to want to remember them anymore. I don’t remember them because a) They were horrible b) I was worse c) Thinking of them reminds me of who I used to be, which is the most powerless I’ve ever been.

The only good reason to think about them now and then is that it shows me what I was able to escape. In the very brief time I spent using three words for her dukh bhari autobiographies on WhatsApp, I saw that she hadn’t changed at all. That she was still the same person with the same insecurities. A true testament to any kind of growth is not when you are perfectly secure but when you don’t have the same insecurities you once did, or at least not in the same way. I am still an extremely insecure person but not about things I was once governed by. I am insecure about things that oddly enough, also liberate me. Not being as good a writer as my students, not writing, being an incompetent teacher, dealing with savarna people are things that I am insecure about. They occupy me in ways that make me want to do better, write more, write my way out of who I used to be.

But if I had to get married and have children to solve these problems, where would I be today?

Adulting, comrades, is not listening to adults. It also means ignoring people who are best ignored, even when they message you from their husband’s phone (this will never stop being funny)

A word I haven’t used yet but would like to have used on this post by now is the word heteronormative, which I learnt fairly recently so it’s not like I am some fancy-shmancy person, squeezé moi. It’s easy not to be friends with Savarna cabbages from my past because I don’t have to explain what it means to live a life that isn’t bound by romance, men, love, marriage, children, and caste. It’s easier because I don’t have to explain what it means to live days that bloom and make me feel alive because in it are women, teaching, writing, reading, eating, drinking, and remaining perpetually indebted to rumlolarum. But the bestest of them all is that I don’t have to explain what Savarna means. 

*Main* college: In Bangalore. Totally unnecessary to take its name. But rhymes with Main.

Growing Up

At one point in my life, the only thing I wanted to learn was how to be. What do you do when you feel a certain way, when someone goes out of their way to show you their disapproval, when you are misunderstood and there’s nothing you can do to offer clarification? This ate my insides for years together. Every time I thought I had grown up, something would happen and the way I responded confirmed that I had, in fact, not grown up.

Over the last year, I picked some battles, ignored the rest, allowing only my instincts to inform me. And I must say, I am a lot more at peace than I’ve ever been. I used to survive confrontations and the need to defend myself by using too many words in the past. This, as I have come to learn, is unnecessary. I now use the mute option on Twitter generously, the block option on WhatsApp liberally.

Today, I blocked a friend I went to college with. She unleashed a barrage of accusations that were both untrue and painfully long to read. I said what I had to and refused to be dragged into a conversation I had no energy for. A year ago, I’d have fallen for it, explained, over-explained, analysed, taken screenshots, sent it to other people for clarification, sympathy. I did none of that today, and I am happy. Before blocking her, I said two lines. That I hadn’t thought of her since 2012, that it’s been close to a decade, and that she must please, please get a life.

I’m sort of joyful that after years of whining about not knowing what to do, I seem to have found a way to deal with things that no longer bring joy. I am drinking to that today.

F for Flight. Friendship. Fight.

After years of living in rented houses marked by fish fried stealthily, by the many agarbattis left alight on window sills, by the swollen rooms that held their breath every time an owner turned up for inspection, and by houses denied to us for not being Brahmin; Amma & Appa built this home from the memory of what their & our childhood eyes were thirsty for.

Appa’s govt job kept him moving & as a result, we lived in many houses from Chikodi, to Raichur to Bidar to Gulbarga to Mangalore to Shimoga to Belgaum to Bangalore. But those houses were never homes – there were enough reminders of that. 

As a child, I was preoccupied by the mystery of Duplex houses. Friends in school had these & while I was let into their verandas & halls – I never made it upstairs. ‘Wait here, she’ll come down’ – they always said & I waited to watch her come down. Often another friend, who was allowed upstairs would come down with her & I grew hungry for swirling stairs & the tight friendship that stood on top – arms linked, walking down together. Duplex houses came with duplex friendships.

When I passed by these houses, I looked only at the top half, longing to steal a glance. I imagined being invisible, walking up their stairs, & opening doors to their bedrooms. Handicapped by my own thrill of finally being able to see what lay behind, I never could open those doors. My curiosity for learning about women’s rooms persists. I want to see not just where they work, play & sleep but also how. 

The duplex is a permanent condition of a secret, of something hidden, of something that you have to work up to see. And more than wanting my own, I was desperate to be part of someone else’s secret.

Our duplex was finally built after years of saving & borrowing, but my friends from Jain college were convinced it wasn’t hard-earned. It came from what they called ‘our money stolen by your briber-father’ They talked with such self-assuredness & street-smart confidence that I couldn’t fight. This became a running joke & since I didn’t know how to defend my home, I joined them & laughed at myself. I learnt that if you gave someone permission to laugh at you, you could become their friend. But there were rules – and the first one was – you could never laugh at them.

My anger arrived one day when a rich boy whose father also had a government job became their friend & there was an unbearably loud & dignified silence about his duplex. Where did that silence come from? Why was he given the dignity of not being laughed at? I thought it was because he was a boy. I understood the games that caste & friends play much later. They were experts at diffusing codes – who came from where & therefore deserved respect – who didn’t – who can you laugh at – whose father you should be afraid of – whose father you can make fun of.

I’ve never wished for a backbone as much as I did then. But it seemed like every time I got one just enough to stand up & scream, tears came too. And who wants to stand fighting & crying when you can sit and join them laughing? Even so, their merit was so hard-earned that a day before every exam, they came to me for help. I stopped doing this in my final semester & they never spoke to me after that.

I for Inventory. Intimacy.

One morning, I held a hot cup of tea in my hands after cutting 15 green chilies lengthwise. When the heat pulsating inwards began pouring outside, I couldn’t tell what was feeding what.

When someone who doesn’t want to laugh, laughs — I look for the line of anger on their face that suddenly hides. I worry the line will return when they are alone & I won’t be around to humiliate it into hiding again.

A friend once told me that it’s not possible to hold on to self-respect when one is in love. I felt  victorious & betrayed. Why though? It’s not like I am a mountain of self-respect when not in love.

When he drove, I liked looking at the folded sleeves of his red checkered shirt on the forearm. But I desired him most when he reversed the vehicle, and put his left arm around my seat to look back, his Adam’s apple teasing.

I get annoyed when I stand before the mirror at the end of a long day to find by bra strap peeping. Why didn’t my girls or aunties on the road tell me or better yet, put it back gently & tuck my hair behind the ear also? The only time I felt happy in convent schools was when girls would sing ‘Sunday is longer than Monday’ everytime a petticoat played hide & seek.

I don’t want feminism that takes away intimacy between women in bathrooms. Come, weep into my arms sister. I will hold you, you hold me.

When I was 6 & refused milk, Mouma pulled me to her lap & promised to show me one breast if I finished half the glass, and both if I finished the full glass, permanently ruining all possible hetero relationships for me. 

Even hickies are forgotten in hours. The warmth of chilies still hasn’t left.

P for Pleasure

On the last day of school, before we closed for vacation, I ran after a girl I really liked, patted her on the shoulder & hugged her because I thought we hadn’t said bye properly. I don’t remember if I cried because I was going to miss her or because I wanted her to know I was already missing her. When I walked back home, my body fought to forget how weakly she’d hugged back. And when I imagined the hugs she gave her other friends, I wanted to take mine back.

In college one day, I got terribly sick. The fever had fangs & I was shivering. She gave me her brown sweater which I took home. I didn’t take it off when I lay down. I slept with it & dreamed of her smell. The smell left the day she told me that I was too conscious of marks. I wanted to say ‘so are you’ – but my stomach swallowed the words.

She & I went shopping for bras in Shivajinagar. When we tried them on later that evening, I told myself that this was the only kind of intimacy I ever wanted to know. She taught me how to make masala bhurji. She made milky sweet tea. When we ate KFC chicken, she pinched me for not sucking meat off the bones properly. She once stayed up all night because the boy she was in love with didn’t call. I wanted to go to his house & beat him to a pulp.

She dropped me home after college everyday. She smelled of Lakme peach body lotion & I always caught a whiff of it as I sat behind her on activa. She came home one day to wash her hair because they weren’t letting her wash her hair at home. She was seeing her boy the next day so it was urgent. We stood in my bathroom & as she held her hair down, I sprayed water on it. The droplets fell on her neck & then danced by our naked feet. 

She held me when I wept because I didn’t know how to break up with an old love. She taught me how to use tampons & smiled when I told her I was terrified of them. We once spent an entire day drinking & talking about love, sex, & writing. Later that night, in the lift, we came very close to falling into each other but something held us back.

She wore backless blouses that made my fingers ache. She laughed like 78 parrots fluttering away from tree tops. Her lipstick rarely licked her teeth so I had no excuse to hold her face, pull her towards me, say ‘lipstick’ & wipe it off. One cold evening in Delhi, we wore dresses that tickled our kneecaps & danced to Beedi Jalaile. 

I felt seized by a pleasure that forgot weak hugs, double games, gritted teeth, heteroness & other savarna games. Finally here was a she who wasn’t afraid to fall, more shameless than anyone & didn’t believe in holding back. Later that night, as our toes touched under someone’s blanket, I concluded that no revolution is brighter than Dalit women grabbing pleasure. It is now my own thithi that I was so arrested by the moment, I didn’t do more.