The day the past met the future

It is my grandmother’s birthday today. If she were alive, she would have been two shy of ninety. When the clock struck midnight to announce this day, I walked to the kitchen where we have an altar behind the door. The altar has a portrait of my grandmother. I sat down quietly, looking into her eyes inside the frame.

I wished her, or rather, her memory, a happy birthday. It was a silent conversation. (Maybe you think I need help – I probably do, who doesn’t? - but stick with me on this for a bit.) I am in that spot in life where I’m reflecting on the one hand, and trying to catch up with the pace at which things around me take place. And by take place, I mean the whole hog: crumble, disintegrate, frustrate, rebuild, mend, remain, stabilize, rinse and repeat. Last night, I found myself questioning a lot of my choices in life, the price I’ve paid for some, the missed buses, the dreams that seem unattainable. I found myself second guessing myself for the choices I made. I played what I thought were her words in her voice, inside my head, giving myself solace.

And in the random way in which the mind works, it struck me then, that my grandmother had given me my first true understanding of feminism.

Among the many stories my grandmother told me, the one narrative that keeps coming back is the story of Savitri and Satyavan. Yama, the God of Death in Hindu Mythology decided that Satyavan’s time was up and showed up to claim his soul. Savitri’s undying love for Satyavan was the fuel for her courageous pursuit of Yama until the end of the world. It was baffling for Yama, of course, that a mortal had the gumption to chase him, and even so much as think of reclaiming what he saw as rightfully his. Her courage moved the God of Death, and he returned the love of her life back to her.

This story had been recurrent in my conversations with my grandmother for many reasons – once about undying love, once about unconditional love, once about letting go, and the one conversation that’s coming back strongly today is about the real meaning of feminism. One little caveat before I proceed: I want you to know that I am a feminist because I am a firm believer in equality.

I was a bit of a black-and-white thinker when I was in my teens. When the concept of feminism was introduced to me, I took it to mean that it tended towards being anti-man. I suppose I did have a proclivity towards turning into a man-hater. But that phase lasted for precisely three days and ten hours, until my grandmother told me the same story, once again.

It was March 8, 2007. International Women’s Day. It coincided with a festival specific to my community: women perform a ritual, praying for the longevity of the men in their lives. It was a dichotomy that didn’t sit down well with me: International Women’s Day, and I have to religiously bend over backwards to pray for the longevity of the men in my life while they watched television idly? I asked her where this festival had its origins, and the story was told to me, once more.

I was enraged. Did this Savitri, this woman, not have self-respect? Why run after a man’s life after that? Would he love her as much, would he do this much for her? In those moments, she was all things anti-feminist for me.

My grandmother smiled when I asked her this. She told me that Savitri did what she wanted, and because she was so sure of what she wanted and acted on it in free will, she was empowered. She had the capacity to love, and so unconditionally at that, that even Death was shamed into returning what he had sought to steal. Love like Savitri’s did not discriminate, it did not think about parochial considerations such as gender or identity, it did not think about anything that could contain or pigeon-hole it. Instead, it acted, it proved to be the fulcrum for something so poignant, so sincere, so pure that precious little could take away from it.

That day, my grandmother redefined my myopic feminism. Feminism, that day, came to be about the right of choice, the right of equality and the right to be empowered in one’s choices and exercise of choices therein. In simple terms, it is just equality. It isn’t about denouncing a man because he is a man, or upholding a woman because she is a woman. It is, rather, about being considerate to the human being – no matter what attributes maybe involved.

I replayed the exchange in my head last night. In a trice, the burden of almost every trial and tribulation that this year so far has held for me moved away. I came to see how much of the ideals of feminism have come to define me, my choices, and my actions. In that moment, I came to understand that every obstacle that stood in my way this year was only a test to see if I had the strength and the conviction in my beliefs, enough to cross the barriers life threw in my way.

And in that moment, I heard the voices of about forty children in my ears, telling me that I was doing exactly what I was meant to do.

About forty children, yes. I am not a mother to truly articulate what it feels like to share a bond with a child. I am not a teacher in the strictest sense of the term to truly verbalize what I feel as a bond with students. If there ever were a nomadic equivalent of a teacher – I would be it. I float around and work with different groups of students, of different ages and from different backgrounds. I share a few thought-provoking sessions where I am as much the learner as them. I do this from the fringes: at a school, at a café, at a studio, where my time is an outsourced addition to their normal schedules. And so, I don’t see them day in and day out. You’d think that I’d be detached. I was, but only until I met the students of the Akshar Arbol International School in Chennai, where I held my most recent workshop on Gender Equality.

And those forty odd voices I heard in my ears, were from those delightful children.

I got up from my spot behind the kitchen door and went to my desk. I took the scrapbook that my children had made for me. I opened up to the centre page, and saw the image you see on the top left of this post, again.

This time, it held so much more meaning than kind praise, and lots and lots and lots of warmth (which only rises each time I open the scrapbook). The past had met the future, and I was but the channel between the two. This time, it felt like my grandmother’s hand touching my head, telling me that it was all going to be fine.