Mid-October and Delhi wakes up to sunny mornings. I’m getting ready for college and can sense the blues of the sky enveloping me gradually. Wearing my grandmother’s saree today signifies a gradual evolution in how I perceive myself. The reason why I look forward to some event or the other in college to drape her sarees is because I no longer view myself as a girl, but as becoming a young woman.
I proceed to tie my mother’s watch on my wrist. The handing over of a tangible object like my mother’s watch from 1993, which was gifted to her by her mother upon qualifying for the board exams, and further handed over to me, allows meaning and memories to be inscribed by the object. Just as the dynamic of my mother and I will persist and evolve through time, so will the significance of this object.
I am on my way to college, with my jhola resting on one shoulder, and responsibilities on the other. My feminist joy lies in knowing that my jhola was made of two discarded Rigzin Butik carpets by the women weavers of Changthang, who view weaving as a symbol of collectivity and cohesion. Customs of the Changpa tribe prevent them from playing ‘Chollo‘, a dice game only to be engaged by men, excluding women from decision-making. To reclaim power, women weave that dice into their textiles.
A space of solidarity, sensitivity and sisterhood
Guard Didi at college waves at me with the widest smile and exclaims “jhumka mast hai” (earrings are pretty). If your spirits are dampened after a draining class, watch her smile and witness how the drowsiness diminishes for the rest of the day. “How does it feel to be in a college dominated by women?” my friend from Hindu College asks me. I pause for a while and resort to silence. For I know that nobody will understand how liberated I’ve felt unless they experience it themselves.
Leisure for me is a time to know the women around me and to be known. It accentuates those aspects of our lives which get subdued in the face of the roles we occupy. Where do our thoughts take us when we are not expected to be anywhere, in the breaks between classes, in the long stretch of the metro ride from Vishwavidyalaya back home? When we think about feminist battles, what doesn’t strike our mind is the need for an undisturbed space and time for women to be who they are, express what they feel, through ideas, clothes, hobbies, eat what they want, sit how they want, without judgements that ask us to conform to a norm.
Surrounded by free-spirited friends who make the ten minutes of having cheese maggi at Nescafe worthwhile, protected by two security guards who also happen to be women, I feel nothing short of empowered. Nikita and I sit under the tree in our college’s Tech Park, and she tells me that “with kindness, empathy and love, we can change the world. That we must always follow our heart over our mind.”
Snigdha and I sit on the bench near Nescafé while she pets the cats on our campus and honestly shares what she feels about everything under the sun with me. Kashish and I are hot-headed and brutally honest. But she’s also non-judgemental, which is what draws me towards her. Brick by brick, cemented together like the walls of my college, we’re becoming fonder of each other.
My teacher in the Visual Communication and Photography class tells me that there is a sense of introspection and interiority to the pictures I click. However, this doesn’t reduce their essence, it simply implies that the ‘personal,‘ is the basis for any exploration one undertakes.
“The personal is political,” a phrase which marked the second wave of Feminism, viewed the family as a site where womanhood was learnt. I also believe that my womanhood is shaped by the places I go to, and the people I meet, and that is what I try to convey through my photography. The pictures of open windows signify the liberation I experienced in an all-women’s college.
My college is my safe space. In the words of Shelly Tara, it is a “private space within a public” college. What oppression tries to attain is complete control over the everyday aspects of one’s life by setting ideals for what they should be or do. What do I wear? What should I eat? How am I looking? Being part of a women’s college normalises a state of simply existing, without having to demand the right to do so. And I believe that this can be a source of feminist liberation.
My feminist joy is in living the fact that there is strength in the collective, that the red walls of my college stand firmly in resistance to the patriarchal roots of society, to men who “invade” our spaces only to establish their false sense of entitlement to spaces they don’t occupy.
Feminist joys: the seemingly little things in life aren’t little
Leisure and time are feminist concepts. The question of ‘who,’ has the opportunity to devote time to oneself has to do with privilege. It is tied to the idea of whose time carries social and economic value. For my grandmother, taking time out to read the monthly Urdu novel she subscribed to, was perhaps a luxury. The affective roles of nurturing, cooking and caregiving she adopted remained unacknowledged and unpaid.
I am back home and in order to celebrate her spirit to manage all tasks and find time for herself, I read the January 1980 edition of Pakeezah Aancal, an ode to my grandmother’s love for stories and the women authors of this anthology. In the battle between ‘power within,’ and ‘power over’, leisure goes for the former. It is a tool to carve a world for myself, both within me and beyond.
My feminist victories are small-scale yet worthwhile, like writing a piece for Feminism In India every week, knowing that my pen has more strength than any weapon known to humankind, hoping you would feel a sense of solidarity while reading this at the moment.
You put your whole heart into what you write. I love it.