Revolution in a tea cup

Of podcasts, planes, pleasure, and patriarchy

I love airports after I pass the security check. No, I never carry anything remotely objectionable with me to the airport. No safety pins, no powdered ajwain for my gut, no medicines, no scissors, not even heels. I wire all my wires in perfect circles in my luggage and handbag lest they create inappropriate shapes while coiling imperfectly. I keep multiple windows open on my phone- the digital fluttering of the air ticket, aadhar card, passport, stamped visa pages, and the vaccine certificate arrested and arranged in order of need, smoothly sweating from counter to counter. I pick the fawnest of shirts, straightest of jeans, flattest of shoes to really exhibit the innocent traveler that I am, with a right to be at the airport and to make it to the destination alive, unthreatened, and preferably with my slightly underweight luggage. Amidst all of this anxious putting together and presenting, I love airports with the passion of a first time flyer on drugs. Every. Single. Time.

I missed writing the last edition of Khwaabghar because I was busy watching productivity and procrastination advice videos on YouTube. The good part about having watched these is this confusion- I am not sure if I failed or the advice did. That aside, even outside of the paper and pen, I have had a really quiet month, nursing a love, a rage, and an anger that refused to bleed ink. On 11 January 2022, I heard ‘The Loneliness of the Indian Woman’, a 4-hour conversation between Amit Varma and Shrayana Bhattacharya about her book, “Desperately Seeking Shah Rukh”. I will not go into many details about the episode, but suffice it to say that I have now heard this conversation three times over, and am lagging behind on my line up for the week after. If you haven’t already, you do not need to have heard the episode to read this edition, but please do give it a listen at some point in your life :)

The conversation in the episode is not eye opening or revolutionary in terms of its content. I can comfortably promise that for most women, the power of this conversation, and the book, lies in just how familiar it is. The magic, however, is in putting this familiarity into words, giving it a language of love, economics, social transactions, discomfort, anger, and bollywood, and then finding it echoed in another person from across the transmission. All the three times that I heard the episode, I found years of my own uneasiness, thoughts, rage, and questions rearranged into words, tied into sentences.

Okay, but what does that have to do with airports?

Over the years, I have tried to come up with the perfect metaphor to explain the inner life of women as they navigate public spaces- trying to find an experience which all genders might relate to by digging into their own discomfort, insecurity, and tendency to overthink, helping them lay bare the uncomfortable gaze (real and imagined) which makes ‘being’ just a little bit harder. While in college, I used the ‘new child in the secondary school classroom’ metaphor. During my year in the UK, the anticipated violence of being a racial and cultural outsider came to mind. Once COVID hit, lockdowns, distancing, and the categorisation of every action into ‘essential’ or ‘we can live without this’ served as a superb metaphor for some time. All of these seemed to do the job of conveying just how most women feel ALL THE TIME. But there was a missing piece. If the experience of being in a public space was so uncomfortable, why not avoid it altogether? If that’s not possible, why not heed the age old advice and stay at home to avoid it at least when possible? The answer is simple and uncontained- the oppressiveness of patriarchy across the home and the world dwarfs against the sheer delight of being out and about, scaling the streets, weighing the risks, taking the chance, finding the joy, and living a little by occupying real space. Yes, women everywhere should have the unconditional right to occupy spaces as an end in itself. But this argument is bigger, less tangible than that. People across genders should be able to wear themselves out while engaging in the delights of everything the world has to offer. 

And that’s how, for now, I have arrived at the airport metaphor with its authoritative rules, uncomfortable security processes, and spatial coding- beyond which lies the promise of adventure.

Source: ANA

Unintentionally, the metaphor works well with COVID. As the virus shuts off the delightful parts of the process with increasing authority and arbitrariness, how do we find the pleasures of the adventure again?  

With the vocabulary of ‘essential’ and ‘non-essential’ seeping into our lives, I have watched myself play tricks on me over the past couple of years. If only I had antibodies for every time I did not call a friend when they crossed my mind, did not call them when I missed them, did not return their call because I was working or cooking or running or just tired. If only I had any idea of the number of calls I should have made to people whose mind I crossed, who missed me, who did not call me back. By iteration and practice, I have taught myself the incorrect lesson that when enough days pass by with a person on your mind or a call on your fingertips, it’s too late to call.

What were you doing all this time? Why didn’t you call sooner? Are you upto something interesting? You must really like your work? 

Well, what the hell am I going to say to that?

When you don’t do what you need to do for long enough, it forms Swiss Rolls of anticipated questions and guilt in your mind, and we all love Swiss Rolls. That’s what procrastination videos don’t tell you.

Once the familiar ‘delight’ of travel, airports, cafes, lunch breaks, long walks, metro stations, weddings, and unmasked kisses left the scene, I did not look for it in newer places. By iteration and practice, I have also taught myself the correct lesson, that when it gets really hard to keep up- leisure, love, friendship, delight, and deliciousness are the first things that get crossed off the list, but not because they’re done.

All through COVID; patriarchy, injustice, and sheer loneliness continued to weigh much the same for me. Only now, I was holding them alone, and all the time. I have scrolled and talked and heard enough to know that I am not alone. It’s like a phenomenon threatening to dismantle whole relationships with self and others, which were standing on the fragile balance of letting go, laughing, and ‘checking in’.

The conversation between Amit Varma and Shrayana Bhattacharya nudged me towards the difficult work of sparing time for love, finding ‘delight’ in the company of oneself with no ‘outputs’ to show for it, even as patriarchal expectations instruct otherwise. To take a walk at night because the moon says so. To call that friend I have been thinking about. To text back to the new year greetings from an old friend. To read, listen, smell, and touch for pleasure. To continue booking flights even as security checks scare the crap out of me, because the flight is beautiful. It reminded me that the male gaze has a 24-hour show on the streets with many jubilees to show for it, but it’s not the only show in town.

En-route Paris, 2017. This was the first time I saw a tiny plane far away from my plane.

To celebrate this reminder, I will be using the next 5 editions of Khwaabghar to set in writing some big and small delightful times I’ve had while subverting patriarchal expectations, ranging from my solo work trip to Puerto Rico in February 2020 to gulping down 10 gol gappas on my solitary run last week. Puerto Rico was the last time I left the country, dived into the Atlantic Ocean, ate hummus pizza, and floated in my life jacket with bioluminescent bacteria. Walking to the local namkeen shop and eating 2 plates of gol gappas alone is my favourite conclusion to a long run. I hope these stories make you smile, as we happily deviate from the instruction manual for good girls.

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