A past filled with an unwelcoming household and repressed insecurities comes sprouting to life during sleepovers, amidst a problematic Bollywood OG film, Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham in this tale.
It had already begun when we started dissecting the expectations and representation of women characters. But it formally started when we thought we could postpone sleeping till 2:00 am and go on scrolling Zomato in our broken conditions. It was started by her, as always, with another dank joke mocking family structures, her own daddy issues, and questioning why our mothers are the way they are. And then, as we order the food with the film on hold and assignments glaring at us, it starts in a stream of consciousness with absurd ruptures, with no sense yet a lot of sense.
The non-linear narrative begins with a question: “Would you be the way you are if you had been given all the freedom we deserved? With no curfew timings, with no dual existence, with no cap to be a certain way.” I replied, “No, for sure.” And here we go where we ought not to, into a loop of questions entangled with other “what if” mining possibilities of altered pasts and renewed futures in that utopian space of a bed. Maybe I would have been a bit more sporty or a dancer, perhaps not this afraid of challenging my body into movements if they wouldn’t have laughed it off when I cried losing my first race.
An academically excelling child with thin arms and a huge dark forehead should have been given a space to lose and try again. Little did they know that in those sunny afternoons she wasn’t just playing for the sake of it; she was cycling while sweating because she wanted her body to be an acknowledgement on one of those annual sports days, not just her grades. Maybe I would have accepted that tanned skin a bit earlier without greasing myself with heavy moisturisers meant for an adult’s skin and getting scolded on wasting a lot of it.
The utopia of sleepover is interrupted by the presence of the food delivery. With alert senses and without crossing that threshold, we take the food “safely” and enjoy not being mutilated for being a woman. And suddenly we go about discussing the impact of regime change on our syllabus. We wish we could have read Mahasweta Devi’s “Draupadi” in our classroom lecture with our coolest professor. But we cannot. Many chapters are compressed, shredded and omitted in the NCERTs as well. We might be the last batch learning a course like “Interrogating Queerness” in a regime where professors are being appointed on the basis of the “right” (pun intended) ideology.
Should we mourn that we are not reading what we should be or should we celebrate that we are a specimen witnessing a regime change and a dilapidated democracy? The absurd ruptures in the conversation and the change of topic from fathers to state made me think, how can we question the state of we have never questioned our fathers?
As the night goes towards the devil hour, the conversation intensifies itself, and believe me, neither I nor she were intending to go there. But somehow we touch Pandora’s Box, the box filled with childhood trauma. And there comes a family medical history that facades diabetes but contains repression and mental illnesses. The psychotic disorder of your cousin is not just incidental. It was a generation of trauma, repressed desires, and confinement that escalated in our generation. She is more than a marriageable daughter and a body that needs to be under perpetual surveillance.
The cuddles, hugs and kisses all creates an affirmative space meanwhile. You can cry about the gaze you feel on your body here; you can also cry about losing that internship opportunity you found super cool; you can cry about the fact that you cried while losing that loved one; about changing cities; about things not working out; and everything else under the sky. This is a safe space. Despite popular imagination, it’s not two girls gossiping about men; well, maybe it is, but it’s also the state that is a man and the patriarchy that gets embodiment in a masculine figure.
In the magnum opus of Ved Vyas, Mahabharat in Shanti Parv Yudhishthira finds that Karna was the brother to the Pandavas and this was a secret concealed by their mother Kunti. When this is revealed, he curses the women of the world that they will never be able to keep a secret safe. Well sad for the supposed king of truth; we knew that the secrets scared on the bed would remain safe for a lifetime.
These cathartic sleepovers smash a lot. Many times they even break the regulations of time and space. A group of women cross the threshold into the cityscape of Delhi, reclaiming nights and breaking generations of morality. These sleepovers also gets transformed into house parties where Smirnoff creates a state of trance and all that is regressive seems smash-able. The next morning will bring new negotiations and compromises- a practice in writing an answer in a way that my ideology is not revealed, listening lectures of people who support genocide, not questioning a misogynistic joke in the fear of looking a killjoy and not being a good feminist. But that space in a kinship that we create like a dearly crochet pattern we could be a feminist not good enough, a radical feminist, even someone who is just learning the terminology for now. The day might be one that tries to dictate our being but we have the power to change it because of such nights that belong to us.
