Freedom is all of this too
(commissioned by Goethe Institut, New Delhi, India)
Eating for one:
All the recipes she knew were passed on in proportions that served four. The rules had been set with one cup of bengal gram, half a grated coconut and a lifetime of eight bananas in the fruit bowl.
When guests arrived the proportions were increased in quarters, halves and more.
So when the children left and he died, she made food that lasted too long. The fridge collected her despair in dabbas of leftovers. And there was that lingering scent of rotting bananas. The scent of being alone but not knowing how to.
It took her a year to learn to cook for one. A year to learn to live for herself.
Janki stands in the balcony in full view of roadside romeos:
The balcony is forbidden, lovers and perverts lurk under its jaw.
To wander into its boundaries Janki has had to carry a red plastic bucket, heavy with wet laundry since she was 16.
One evening she steps into the balcony without her red bucket and with a cup of tea. She leans all her 65 years against the railing and looks down at all that she’s missed.
No one stops her — the balcony is forbidden to young women but a refuge to the old.
Leaving the family Whatsapp group:
She has left in a huff. She has left in a yellow highlight.
She has left hate, misogyny, jokes about wives, about women, 1783 forwards about religion and 33 taunts about her choices in life.
She has left the family Whatsapp group
She will not be saying good morning to babies drowning in flowers at 7:15 am.
She has withdrawn her support of the ruling political party. She didn’t even have to cast a vote.
She has left the family Whatsapp group.
She has made a point.
The freedom of Britney Spears
is fodder for public debate/drama/discourse/conspiracy theories and one upcoming bestseller. But what kind of freedom is it and is it even freedom? Everyone wants to know.
As I watch her dance wild eyed in a frenzied twirl not too different from dervishes in its intensity, as I watch her eat cake off the floor her face smushed in its cream, as I watch her writhing in a sexy red jumpsuit even as comments explode under her begging her to tell the truth, to show them the real Britney, to be finally free…
I think, who can be freer than a woman who has stopped caring?
Being angry in your own language:
The feeling of letting your rage take the shape of a crude, ugly, poisonous word you know from having felt its sting in a language you associate with affection, history, culture, your very sense of being — is oddly freeing.
Ashwami walks her dog at midnight:
My friend Ashwami walked her beautiful, strong dog at midnight and told me she felt no fear. That night, with her dog by her side she thought, this is what it must be feel like to be man.
