Cold SnapDragon

On facing abuse This post is personal in nature, it focuses on domestic violence although it is not limited to domestic violence, and it describes what I've learnt of violence (mainly in relation to myself with reference to my class). It is by no means intended to speak for every woman, neither am I anywhere near certain that I've got it right. I've used the term 'abusive situation' as opposed to 'abusive relationship' simply because public discourse (in India) relating to domestic violence is largely limited to domestic violence perpetrated against wives by husbands and in-laws, almost completely ignoring other forms of domestic violence (including that perpetrated by natal families). I've also written of episodes of domestic violence earlier ( here )  in a post which isn't an accurate depiction of events. I I woke up from dream feeling happier than I had for a long time. I’d dreamt of a rape. Not mine. A rapist who was caught — I shot a gun at the...

(I began writing this post thinking of the portrayals of NE women by others... its scope unsurprisingly expanded in minutes.) Take racial insensitivity. Add to it the entitlement of the upper class and, treatment in real life aside, you have all the makings of the image of the Hottentot Venus of contemporary times in far too many portrayals of the figure of the marginalised woman. The Hottentot Venus was a person transformed into an object; she was born in South Africa in 1789, brought to England in 1810, and then exhibited on stage and in cages till her death in 1815. We know what she was turned into but we have no idea who she was. We often call her, when we deign to accord her any humanity, ‘Sarah Baartman’; of her given name, we can only guess. We believe ‘Ssehura’ may have been closest to it but can’t be sure. ‘Baartman’ or some variant may have been imposed on her upon being baptised in England in 1811. The appellation ‘Venus’ has never indicated anything but distorted nineteenth...

There’s something about the blank page, and the written word on it. Develop a fetish for notebooks simply because you think of them as waiting to be filled with hopes, and dreams, and tales. Or simply to be filled with insipid grocery lists and accounts: the minutiae of everyday life which, added up, often really are the sum total of our lives. It doesn’t always matter what language the text is in: it’s sometimes the beauty of the script alone that leaves you marvelling. Of text you can decipher, read relentlessly. Fail to remember what it is that you’ve read. Pick up a book firmly believing that you’ve never laid eyes on it before only to have a stray turn of phrase, so innocuous that it seemingly doesn’t bear remembrance, remind you that the book isn’t new to you after all. Go back to books you know you’ve read but can barely remember; find in them stories you hadn’t noticed earlier. Realise that if a book is any good at all, it bears re-reading. Only once you’ve traced the words and...

unedited Abuse is never an easy subject to speak of whether because one has experienced it and finds it difficult to speak of, or because it can be an extremely complex subject, or both. And the rationale underlying one’s own opinions can be extremely difficult to grasp. There is, of course, always the temptation, often subconscious, to assume that one can draw universal conclusions from one’s own experiences. There is also the desire to believe that specific ways of being or doing might enable one to escape abuse; an understandable desire that except for the fact that it can easily lead to drawing conclusions about how women who are abused ‘brought it on themselves’ by being different or doing things differently. Amongst the clearest indications of this are myths which surround domestic violence, particularly in the case of upper class women — the most popular image of domestic violence appears to be that of a drunken slob who comes home late, slaps his wife, and then promptly (and co...

An article published at Legally India: Why is death for rape even on the table? Lawyer Nandita Saikia discusses how the recent criminal law recent reforms, imposing the death penalty for rape, are a symptom of the problem but not a solution. "The notion that rape is death is precisely what the patriarchal understanding of rape is, and seen from this perspective, whilst bearing in mind that Indian society is deeply patriarchal, it isn’t difficult to understand why death being brought to the table in some cases of rape is seen as a good thing: a society that doesn't value women who have been raped or their lives is liable to cheer death-for-rape, and to assume that in doing so it is acting in the interest of those who have been raped." [ Read the rest of this piece at LegallyIndia.com . ]

Unproofed, unedited. I just began reading Devdutt Pattanaik's Myth=Mithya which he begins with a reference to ancient Greek philosophers knowing myth as mythos. Unsurprisingly, Pattanaik makes no reference to mythos also involving getting women to shut the hell up, as Homer has narrated of Penelope. Disconcerting as it is that one of the first records of Western literature involves men getting women to shut up, and that there are virtually no records of women writers since then till recent centuries —discounting anomalies to the rule such as Roswitha who, for all practical purposes, was not viewed as a sexual woman— what is perhaps even more disconcerting is that voice (especially for women) is still 'a mark of privilege' as someone put it. A mark of privilege on one hand, and a necessity on the other hand : for credibility, for enabling one to fight for what one claims as rights, for being able to narrate one’s own story, for being able to go about living one’s life in a...

The real villain of the piece (Re books being withdrawn or self-censored) is content law which hasn't been amended even though it's been becoming increasingly clear as time goes by that Indian content law needs amendment. (Tweets on the subject below, unfortunately complete with their typos.) Sans any comment on the Doniger book—perhaps before going off the deep end Re others not standing up for FoE, put yourselves on their shoes. — Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014 IMO, it's unfair to be unreservedly critical of people for 'not standing up for FoE'. For one thing, it's rarely ever that black and white. — Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014 Many content laws are criminal. Having money to hire good lawyers is not guaranteed to keep you out of jail for a content law violation. — Nandita Saikia (@nsaikia) February 11, 2014 The worst case scenario Re content law violations is jail not monetary damages. Given that, how enthu would you be to 'st...