Literary Yard

Search for meaning

By: Tulika Bahuguna

black-curtained

“How do you always wear it? Oh darling, whenever I see you I’m filled with pity!”
She smiled at her old colleague. It was not new. It had become a part of her daily existence; people looking at her when she walked into the staffroom with her head covered with her scarf. She did not mind it now, she just smiled.
“But tell me, how do you keep it covered always?”
It had come very naturally to her (for she had had six years of experience in answering such comments on her) to have responded with deep sense of peace and nonchalance—“the way you keep yours uncovered all the time!”
“You mean to say it does not bother you?” exclaimed the proto-feminist. She was a self proclaimed proto-feminist who claimed to have led the women’s rights movement in her college even before the word became fashionable.
“It does. When I fail to tie it properly. It keeps bothering me then”. She smiled and responded.
“You have such a lovely face. Such beautiful bangles! I think your heart wants to live. Your desire is to look beautiful. Why do you curb it?”
She smiled again at her colleague. Her career as a lecturer had already introduced her to the vulgar sense in which the term feminism was used. She never told anyone she was a feminist. The word had lost its meaning. These days it meant only being a rebel and too in conformity with what was understood as being a rebel. You could be a rebel but not in the way you liked.
The day she joined the college, one of her colleagues asked her about her conversion to Islam. It had disturbed her. To convert to Buddhism or Jainism was agreeable. But what added to the discomfort was not that she had converted but that she had converted to Islam, that too after knowing, studying and teaching literature. What was more? She was a practicing Muslim!
“And, is it in line with your ideas of freedom and liberation?” her colleague asked reluctantly.
Then, she had tried to reason it out. Yes, she had answered, foolishly, thinking that people around her were actually interested in answers. She had been a bright student. She understood it soon. Soon after one of her teachers told her that she was ashamed she ever taught a student like her to whom three years of literature taught nothing about oppression and patriarchy, a girl who had not yet learnt that women in general and Muslim women in particular had to stand up against this oppression. She had cried then. Cried bitterly. She had not understood that even if a woman decides to make a choice, it had to be a forced choice. It had to be dictated strictly by the norms that the intelligentsia created for her. Where was the real oppression? She was a student then, still learning.
“What use is education then? Is it education? Are you educated if you still believe in practices like sati and Purdah! Imagine! One kills you in fire and the other with lack of air!”
She had not felt air tighten around her. She had not felt heat burning her body. She didn’t know what was it that they meant to tell her. More than her, she felt, it was they who felt the discomfort. She was still a student, still learning.
“My dear, it is your orientation! You are being made and taught to believe that you like this piece of cloth around you. How else do you think they manage to get you to do this? Will you ever do it if they told you that it made you look like a bundle of superfluous cloth?”
She smiled. She was unsure if orientation worked only in one way. She was sure it could work the other way as well. Everything was orientation, was it not? Wearing clothes, shedding clothes. How did it matter? She was learning still.
A colour between sea green and ice blue. What do you call it? Turquoise is it? Or is it cyan? Whatever. A colour between sea green and ice blue with aquarium blue print on it. It was cotton, the fabric. She bought a meter for twenty rupees. Another one for her. A cotswool fabric with shades of purple and pink. Not the jarring pink but a rare variety or orchid pink. Soothing. Fifty rupees a meter.
She wore the blue scarf to college that morning. Could you still call it blue knowing it was somewhere between a green and a blue? She didn’t want debate it. It spoilt the beauty of things. She just let it be! Somethings have to be beyond disputation.
“You look nice today. I like that colour on you especially with that print.”
She smiled.
“It’s a nice blue”
“Is it blue?” remarked another colleague. “I think it is more towards green, isn’t it?”
She smiled. She did nothing. She just smiled.

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