Necessary World
Yesterday, another screaming woman was held by her wrists, dragged away from her desk. Her screams don't form words but an animal anguish. Today two more follow. Soon, women are screaming on every floor.
It started with one. For her we prayed. May God make you competent, poised, accommodating, bigger than this. The second one we shook, threatened, admonished. Stop ruining this for us. This is bigger than you, it is all of us. And then so many followed that as they popped like white hot lamps touched with cold blue fingers all we could do was put our heads down and work twice as hard. Not them, we are not them.
The screams are in our corridors and in our sleep. The screaming women are dragged home and put in bed. Two days later, one of them returns, suckling her baby at the desk as she answers calls, her smile unflinching, making eye contact with all who pass her. The working woman can have it all, her smile said, but you may not dare avert your eyes from the discomfort of it. Others go home and start packing secret evacuation kits. They add what not - tins of food, band-aids, rope, sanitary pads, cups, bags of seeds. And then the why-nots - lipsticks, knives, CDs and glass bangles. In homes, in schools there is a hungry, sulking lull. The rent that has run for generations in the sheer, thin fabric of society is finally starting to rip in waves, like a tired work-stocking.
It continues. One day, a screaming woman being dragged from her desk digs down her heels into the rug and reclaims her wrists. With one warning look she throws everyone off at a dignified distance and walks out of the office but not before looking me in the eye. I tell this woman everyday that she should've been a comic, a quiz master, a filmmaker. She tells me back that I should've been a gamer, a tinkerer and an unapologetic poet. Woman to woman we slather each other in daily coats of should haves that we marinate in but never realize. I see them trail behind her as she walks out and leaves the door open.
The shiver in my body will not go, day or night. It was catching on, like a delirious fever. In the metro, in the streets, one could see women in threes or fours with fire in their eyes, rucksacks and babies on their backs, whispering, arguing but determinedly walking away. Within three days, a dozen sweatshops lay empty with the wind blowing a ghoulish whistle, spinning the wheels of the abandoned sewing machines. The next week, they were burnt down. The resistance to the women’s evacuation was starting to catch on. But it was matched blow for blow and with unexpected force and creativity. We have been conditioned always to underestimate the strength in our bones and our hearts but there is nothing mass hysteria will contain. The ear splitting war-cry is never far behind the unheard lamentation. Last evening, as we were leaving our desks we heard it coming from the streets.
It was as though all the omens humankind whispers about evil women tumbled into one. The red sunset aligning with a blood moon. Hounds crying, wailing cats. Milk turning sour, fruit ripening and falling to the worms. The echo of anklets in empty corners of the house. Twisted bedsheets, beds unmade, slippers in crooked lines, knives crossed on the kitchen counter and salt spilt on the floor. Vermilion bottles and mirrors smashed on dressing tables. Chanting from every corner they marched out of their homes. They laughed as they cried at the names thrown at them. Indeed they were witches, banshees, whores. Bruja, High Pristess, Black Widow. Dhumavati and Chhinamasta. What of it? Old carried by the young, young swaddled by the old, their belongings on their steel spines, the women began their exile from the city. Their songs rang in the streets. The little ones jumped and danced, kicking off their shoes, letting their hair fly out of tight braids, watching their mothers and aunts in awe, surprised that today the rules of bodily conduct applied to no one. Understandably, since it applied to no women. In the heart of the crowd was a void that swallowed all shame, guilt, disappointment and clamour thrown at them from the windows of their houses. The song of sisterhood was growing louder, louder than the curses that came from the curb. The violence was met with fearsome defense. Claws out, there was no shame in tearing off your clothes in fury if not tearing the skin off of the skulls of those who have trampled on your spirit for years. But the women were not looking for revenge as much as a way out. These were women I knew and stories I had heard so many times that somewhere they were mixing up into one loud din of injustices.
By now, I was watching from my apartment window. Behind me, somewhere very close, a kitchen fire was spreading. I ran in one room and then another, still avoiding the stream of people, mostly women and now others that was trickling out of the city. I heard a beam crackling above me, coming loose, knowing I had to run out and soon. I heard someone call my name from the crowd. Looking around, I saw my friend from work. “Come!” she cried. In her cry there was a promise. In her outstretched arm covered in splinters and scratches, was reassurance.
That if I joined her I could be a tinkerer and build the sanitary waste disposal system I had dreamed of that was shelved by our corporate 5 years ago. And if I joined her, she could be a humorist and filmmaker and stories of menses, placenta, trauma and moonlit feasts would flow in the mainstream. We both so badly wanted to heave these dreams from our hearts and into our future, our environment, our songs, our narrative. So I took her hand because I didn't want to wake up in the stony silence of the next day thinking I should have. Walking with the women gave me hope - the women will build their huts, the women will build their grid, the women will build their community kitchens, the women will build their economy, the women will build their world. Its doors will be open but always fiercely guarded. This world will be enough. This world will not be utopic but given the times it is an inevitable world. A necessary world.
