Easily Perfect

 Perfect

Everything I've always wanted

In the blue sky, swept fluently

over whispering grass that 

bend limply under a gentle wind

 

Perfect

Everything I've always wanted

In the waves shimmering under a low sun,

In the waves, crashing clumsily

on hastily drawn lines and crumbling castles

Perfect

Everything I've always wanted

In pages forced apart against 

a gale of warm wind

in pages smelling of musty, meandering mines,

In pages, dyed with ink spilling from a hurrying hand

Perfect

Everything I've always wanted

In your laugh, as we giggle over fries,

feuding over the the right memory

 over dropped calls and missed chances

 

Perfect

Everything I've always wanted

In a tune rushing past humming woods

swaying reluctantly, unwilling to 

stir from their deep slumber

 

Perfect

Everything I've always wanted

In your arms, your eyes alight with

a life that spins me dizzy, 

in your voice that carry your easy kindness

 

Perfect

Everything I've always wanted

Smiling into the sun, my mind

afire with a dream of a breathing future

of a life that spins me dizzy

 

Perfect

Everything I've always wanted

the darkness around me recedes

and I wander into a quiet light

What do you see?

I look through your eyes

The world is sharper, warmer, friendlier
Light bounces gently off young leaves
and finds its way through your window
There is colour. Shining brightly.


I see the rain patter against the glass
I see you flinch and bury your
head in your arms. I worry.
But I know that I will see you bask
in the light of your laughs again.

The skies darken here too. I almost
allow myself a shiver.
You are blind to the grey.
And choose to see the shadows
cast dizzying patterns on the green grass

I see you stumble as you hurry
But you do not stop. As I did.

I look through your eyes.
Your eyes do not see me.

Best Served Cold

(This is a song I recorded a little while ago)

 

Don't you know I can hear you sigh?
Do you know I can see you hide?

I was in love. all the while
Fed a pie a of sweetened lies

Told me we was good-you and I
Met my fears with a sunny smile

Even when I said, "No", darling
Let's leave our heats, beating,

We found our love, but now it's nothing
Let us be-alive and breathing

I remember the lights were shining
I thought my baby won't be minding

All those words, I'm just saying
The shone, my red was spilling

I ran, ran, ran from you, baby
And now I wait, all too ready

Watch your back, watch your back, baby
I'm coming back for you, baby
Hold your sighs, my baby
Hold your gasp, I'm here, my baby

Here's the link to the song: https://soundcloud.com/aparna-ravikumar/best-served-cold

Moving past being bullied

Being bullied can harden people. Close them off, toughen them up-all the words that you would associate with a ‘resting bitch face’. I have one. I was bullied. I wasn’t blameless. But there you go, I let it happen to me. And while I let it happen to me, I must have participated in it too-I can’t say.

There is a strange feeling of power that comes with bullying someone while you’re being bullied too. When the bullies, just for a moment, allow you to enter their sacred circle, allow you to laugh with them, they treat you as an equal-what is, after all better than a community for someone who only knows loneliness? Maybe that’s why bullies bully too. I am not defending the act of bullying. I am only talking about what it was like for me. 

A little pause for context, before I push ahead. I thought I’d write this after having finished Cat’s Eye, by Margaret Atwood. Much like her writing in Blind Assassin, the writing in Cat’s Eye is dark, abrupt, and, at times, chilling. Two strong themes that reeled me in, right from the beginning, were: the older brother angle, and the being bullied angle.

When she talks about how alone she was, how easily frightened she was by her friends and by the sheer thought of calling them out on their behaviour-I am rudely yanked back to a past that I am encouraged, repeatedly, to forget. A past I haven’t quite been able to move past entirely-I still worry about what people will think of me, I still worry about what will happen if suddenly, all the adults decided to give me a new nickname.

A lot of this might seem like a sob-story. I must have been taking little, fun pranks of adolescence far too seriously. All this happened over a decade ago, while I was class monitor, writing down names on the board and being the best ally to the teachers that I could be-because I saw them as my only friends. Telling on my classmates could have given me that name-sure. Changing allegiances could have given me that name-sure. Trying to hit a class mate friend because I misunderstood our dynamic could have given me that name-sure. Maybe there were other things too-other things that I was doing wrong. 

I have not been a good friend all the time, I understand this. I am not a person who was entirely wronged, I can find a way to see that too. Perhaps there were some who thought I deserved a nickname for things that I had done. I remember awful things that I have done, for which I am still regretful, for which I have sought forgiveness. But I cannot speak to all of those other terrible things. Perhaps that’s selfish-to only remember the wrongs that were inflicted on me, but none of the harm that I unleashed upon others. I wish there were a reflection of me that I could see, to borrow Atwood’s idea from Cat’s Eye. I wish there were a reflection of me that could somehow make me think that I deserved the thoughts that little Elaine, from Cat’s Eye had too. 

I began to be afraid of the book, as I read the bullying bits. I thought I would find a dark place in my mind and burrow my way into it, into silence. But that hasn’t happened. I used to be uncomfortable when my friends agreed that I was bullied in school. And I even resisted help from a friend who saw evidence of my thoughts. The book has changed me. I will admit freely now. I was bullied. And after all this time of living sloppily in denial, I will find a way to move past it. I will find a way to stop being scared. I was bullied. But I will move past it.

Fight Drifting and Casual Sexism at Work

There is no running away from it. Every single person-regardless of economic or social class, gender, designation-should examine their gender biases. There are far too many people I know, who are widely read-conversant in science, politics, business and broad feminist ideas, who themselves promulgate deeply sexist ideas. The source of casual sexism that these social beings-well- read and seemingly broad-minded, remains a mystery to me. Are we just too lazy to examine our beliefs? Or too lazy to act on our beliefs? I’m not sure I’m asking the right questions here.

Here are common examples of sexism at the workplace-said to me by employees spread across the designation spectrum. I’m sure these examples are not uncommon. They’re also not lazy jokes-i.e. they were said in seriousness.  

1. Women are becoming lazy these days and don’t want to enter the kitchen. That’s why I learnt how to cook(man to 8 men and me)
2. Even if you’re working, you’re a girl, no, make some snacks and come for everyone (another man to me in the same audience as 1.)
3. We don’t want to hire a newly-married girl. She’ll become pregnant and go on maternity leave.
4. It is so nice to see two woman being friends-usually we don’t see it. (Said to two women by a man)
5. Why are all the ladies sitting together? Is there a ladies club? (4 women sat together, all the men crowded around their own tables. Alright, this was a lazy joke, but I don’t remember walking up to men in the office and asking them if they were in a men’s club)
6. What are you girls doing, sitting around? (I was standing) Go, mingle with the others (This, after we stopped by all tables to pay our respects to the men. No man was told to mingle with us)
7. Girls shouldn’t be in the same team (my thought: in order to force diversity in the group, force the discomfort on the women)
8. Why are you cutting the cake, the girls are there. They should do this(a man to another man cutting his birthday cake)

I’ll stop there. I’m getting terribly riled up. And I hope you are too, if you’ve read some of those bullet points above this paragraph. How awful it is, that I am in no position to object against such crass sexism. Often, the people who choose to be violently insensitive get away with saying anything they want to, leaving the average receiver of insensitivity, stuttering in anger. 

It is a right damn shame-the conservative Indian industry is so strongly hierarchical that it has the potential to snuff out creativity and positivity. A junior female is at the bottom of the entire system. She is told not to say “No” to any kind of work, because it is important that she learn. Game, she naively begins to say “Yes” to everything-the classic problem-not at all as fun as the It's Always Sunny episode when Charlie says “Yes” to everything.

So, she is asked to sit the entire day-she is an engineer with over a year of work experience-to scan cards. She says “yes” unwillingly. She is at fault here. So she tries to communicate her discomfort to her manager.  And he says-“it may be routine, but it’s your job”. Then the manager’s boss finds out that you’ve been scanning cards and decides to do something about it. Nearly in tears, she tries to tell him how she gets through the day, and he can see her struggle. He decides to help her and give her more challenging assignments, and also trains her in the basics of business. But there is no work for her. Nobody in the office will take her seriously, and will continue to pile on their mundane tasks on her. She is again left stranded. Should she quit? She has spent over a year at the place, and is still being told that she has no decision-making power. She has no path to a future in the firm.

Around her, the men who joined after her, are welcomed warmly into their teams, assigned challenging work, dispatched to training programmes, taught ways to improve their skills and are shown a path to a future in the firm.

Drifting, with no path or set list of tasks, is a brain-sucking place to be in. I chose to  listen to podcasts to cling to a last shred of intelligence in me. I think I hung on to it.

To anyone reading this-fight against drifting-young women, fight even harder. I didn’t. I still haven’t worked up the energy or the courage to fight. I hope you do.

P.S: I say women specifically because I can speak as one. I wouldn’t claim to know what is like to fight any other kind of bias.