Personal
Being woman
These past weeks have been emotionally taxing. I am not quite sure how to explain why. I cannot put my finger on what’s bothering me, but something surely is. It’s established fact that we live in a world made for and by men. It’s no secret that patriarchy is alive and well. And this is a source of infinite trouble. Let me explain. I have a job. A full-time job that makes demands on my time and mindspace. At the end of the work day, when I wind up and head home, I park work aside and then start thinking of home. What do I make for dinner? Do I have vegetables to last me the week? Is there milk in the fridge? So many questions. So much planning that it leaves me with no energy to focus on things I want to do. The biggest casualty over the last few years has been my writing.
And then I see others, mostly men, tell me they go jogging, work out at the gym, train for a marathon or pick up a new hobby and I wonder where I am going wrong. Why am I unable to even read a book or write a blogpost with any amount of consistency when others are out there, conquering the world, setting up parallel careers, running extra miles to train for a half marathon and investing in the stock market? Do I lack the capability of being more than a corporate employee? And make no mistake. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a corporate employee. There is nothing wrong in having a 9-5 job that pays the bills and being consistently good at it. But this sense of inadequacy stems from somewhere.
This gets worse when people I speak to learn of my academic credentials, my language skills and my writing. “What the hell are you doing in a bank? This is not where you should be,” they tell me. Then where should I be? Why do others get to decide where I should be and what constitutes success for me? Why this expectation of me to go above and beyond?
When I sat down and thought about it, I realised something important. Most of these people who ask me these questions, who make value judgements on how much I am doing with my life, are men. And no matter what we say, many tasks are still gendered. Running a household is still very much a gendered task. Women carry the mental load of running a household, even if it is a single person household like mine. For some reason, women give a lot more emotional energy to maintaining the house and making it a home than men do. Maybe it is social conditioning.
When I think of my own parents, or my ex, I realise that my mother and I ran the house almost all the time. Making lists, sorting through groceries, chopping vegetables and prepping them for the week, organising the kitchen…it was all us. When Amma passed away, I took on that role almost unconsciously. On the other hand, when I left my marital home, it took a while for S to realise that I was doing all this and start doing it. He had to wake up one morning and realise he ran out of sugar to take on this task of planning and prepping. He has learnt over the years and today, I am sure the mental load on him is equal to the one on me in running our respective households. Sadly, that is not the case with most men I know. They never really get around to doing any of this because there is always a woman around to take up the job: mother, wife, girlfriend, partner or even sister. And unless this changes, women will continue to perform that emotional labour of keeping a household afloat.
The point of this rant is simply this: if you are a woman, be a little kinder to yourself when you drop the ball on something. It’s ok to be imperfect. It is ok to hold “just one job” and do nothing else. It is perfectly alright to sleep in on a Sunday morning and do absolutely nothing, even if that means the kitchen stays dirty for a while longer. This epiphany is the result of a day of rumination and self-loathing. But that’s a story for another day.
When the music died…
People express themselves in different ways. For some, it is words. For others, it is music. And for yet others, it is art. For me, it was always words. I have always been a writer of some sort. A little over 17 years ago, when a good friend encouraged me to start a blog, I was reluctant. As always, I wondered if what I wrote was good enough for public consumption. I was full of apprehensions and self-doubt. But I still started. And many years later, I realise that writing has been my lifeline.
A similar, but very different creative outlet is music. I am no musical genius. Most of the time, I cannot even hold a tune properly. But, I love to sing. For years, I sang. I never held back. Not that I performed in concerts or sang professionally, but I did sing. I sang while cleaning the house or cooking. I sang when folding laundry. I sang in the car. I’ve never been able to drive without music. It’s a distraction, it’s what keeps me going. Not being a fan of podcasts and audiobooks, the next best thing was music. And when I drove, there was nobody to judge or criticise my singing.
But slowly, over time, that changed. I don’t quite remember when or how. I don’t know when the singing stopped. But somewhere in the seven years I was married, the joy of singing went away slowly. So slowly that I did not even realise it was happening.
When I think about it now, I think it started with a word here or there. An occasional snarky remark. A throwaway comment about my song being technically weak. Somewhere between the stress of keeping a failing marriage alive and trying to find meaning for my very existence, I stopped singing. I’d still listen to music. Of course it still kept me company on drives and at home. But I stopped singing along. It’s been five years since I left that house and that family. I have tried restarting several times. But something has held me back each time. Is it fear of criticism? Is it a trauma response that I completely shut down? I don’t know. This is something I need to address. And I am speaking out at length for the first time. Maybe this will prove cathartic. Maybe the music will come back into my life. Just maybe.
The process of writing
About 15 months ago, I published something. Not on my blog. Not on twitter, which is the only form of reading anyone does any more. I put myself out there and published a piece of writing that was never meant to see the light of the day. I did not think, because if I had, I probably would have hit shift+delete on the entire folder. I looked up Kindle Direct Publishing and put it out there for people to read. I wanted it to be free, but Amazon does not let you do that. So, I put a minimum price to it.
Fifteen months later, I got some feedback. Feedback that I did not expect or anticipate. I got what I can only call constructive, even if it did not feel quite so constructive when I received it. “You got me invested in the character and gave me nothing in return,” he said. It felt like an attack on my writing. Like he had unreasonable expectations of me. I wanted to defend myself. I wanted to tell him I’m not Margaret Atwood. That my story was a simple one. One of love. I stayed upset for some time. But then, you cannot really create something if you are not willing to learn from those experiences.
When I think back to the process of writing, I realise some very important truths. My story could have been better. The narrative could have been tighter. I could have said the exact same thing in 4 pages instead of 14 or 24. I could have been brutal in cutting out unnecessary embellishments and pointless storylines. In hindsight, there are a hundred things I could have done that would have made my book (for want of a better word) more readable. But I also realise that when we write, we invest a part of ourselves in it. We tell stories inspired by our own experiences and observations. But what we fail to realise as writers, as creators and as artists is that our characters are different from us. When he told me that my protagonist disappointed him, I took it to mean that I disappointed him. That his estimation of me as an individual had somehow fallen because of his response to my writing. And in that, I am completely wrong. While my protagonist may have some similarities with me as an individual, we are actually different. And unless I learn to dissociate myself from the characters in my book, I am never going to be able to put myself out there and write another one again. Nor am I going to be able to take that criticism that comes with the turf.
What I understand today is that I need to be happy that I actually put something out there for people to read and comment on. That it may not be perfect, but it is a part of me that I cannot deny. While I have let go of that piece of writing, I need to retain the lessons if I am to ever tell another story in my life. But isn’t that what life is about? The process of learning and unlearning. The ability to hold on to the lessons while learning to let go of the emotion.
Today, I have grown. As a writer. And hopefully, as a person too.
Coping…
Three months to the day, tomorrow…three months since Appa passed away, and I still feel like he is going to walk through that door any moment asking me something ridiculously irrelevant. Some memories never cease to exist. Worse are those memories that were once sweet and have now turned bittersweet. I put words in black and white today for catharsis. A catharsis that has taken a long time coming.
A month ago, as I lay breathing heavily at the end of a gruelling workout under the open skies, I saw stars. I saw the Great Bear and Venus. I saw a crescent moon overshadowing everything else. And in its shadow, I saw the pleiades struggling to be noticed. In those 30 seconds, I relived a lifetime with Appa. For it was he who taught me to identify those stars. During those innumerable summer power cuts, he would lie beside me on the terrace of my grandmother’s house, counting the stars. We would play a little game. How many of those stars could I identify? I would struggle. I would swat him on the arm playfully complaining that he was never helpful. And he would laugh, and say, “You will thank me for this one day.”
And then I remembered other things. Playing hangman with him while trying to guess some obscure word he thought up. Or playing a guessing game with numbers that I don’t even remember right now. At other times, he would discuss books. Books he read growing up, those he wanted me to read. Or he would patiently explain what “escape velocity” meant while I struggled to understand science fiction. I remembered those days when I would beg him for more chances to play those computer games. Games that needed restarting before I could play another one, thus taking away my chances at playing a little bit more. I remember climbing on to his lap as a 12-year old trying to gain access to his computer.
Much later, as I picked up my first Tamil book, I remember him patiently explaining the meaning of words I had never even heard of, to try and understand the text. As I struggled to make up my mind about studying engineering, I remember him sitting me down and telling me patiently, “I don’t care if you want to be a barber as long as you are the best that you can be.”
I could go on, but as I write this through a haze of tears, I can only wish we had a few more years together. Of all the things he could have taught me, it’s his words about being the best I can that I still hold dear. He is missed and will always be. I just wish I had told him more often how much I loved him. But above all, I am grateful that I had this much time with him and a relationship that’s as special as I could have hoped for.
A writer’s journey…
The last four weeks have been intense for more reasons than one. So much has changed. Practically overnight, I found myself without an anchor. I flailed around for support where none was forthcoming. But I guess what doesn’t kill you indeed does make you stronger. And it did. I did not rise from my ashes like a phoenix. I struggled. I cried. I’ve needed long conversations, medication, therapy and more to get me back on track. But I survived. I guess my success rate for survival is 100%. And so far so good. But the past month has also been one of introspection. Of what I want and what I don’t. It’s made me think back to the years and months during which I never wrote.
As I mentioned to my therapist a few months ago, it wasn’t a slow, gradual death. It was as if someone had reached over and turned off a tap. And then I died. With every unspoken word, I died a little bit on the inside. And then one day, my soul seemed to have left my body. I still existed. I lived my everyday life. Cooking. Cleaning. Laundry. Dishes. Movies and friends. Everything but what I really wanted to do. Everything but writing.
The block lasted three years. And then the words came back. They came for a reason best left unexplained. But come back, they did. I may not write as much now, but I know it not for lack of words. I know now that I can say what I want without fearing consequences. I have finally learnt to shed the baggage that came along with marriage and relationships. I have finally learnt that who you are on the inside never really changes. And I am ready. I am ready now to stand my ground and declare to the world that this is who I am. I am still anonymous to most people, but I am no longer averse to meeting people who know my name and also my twitter handle. I no longer want to hide behind the veil. Because I have no reason to.
So here I am, wanting to start a new chapter of my life, leaving behind all of the insecurities and worries that have characterised my life for almost 7 years. May the next decade be fulfilling and happy, not just for me as a writer, but also for me as a person.
