My mom’s steel cupboard
I was happiest when, as a naïve 11 year old, I stood in front of my mother’s steel cupboard and thought about what I would be when I grew up.
It was a brown, double door, steel cupboard. With a mirror on one door and a wrist - fracturing handle on the other. It was the loudest cupboard to open. If one tried, it sounded like one of Metallica’s openers to an already delirious (and stoned) audience. None of that Oceans 11 soundless lasers cutting through walls of iron stuff. So maybe it was an anti-theft design back then?
I would stand in front of that mirror for many a stolen minute, while my mother alternated between berating the maid and cooking noisily (steel utensils, steel was clearly the metal of choice in a middle class home in India) in the kitchen, and there was no one around to ridicule this self-indulgence. I was everything from a successful actor to a successful lawyer to a successful activist that changed something, anything. As you can see, the underlying tone of all of these aspirations was a combination of dramatics and rebellion.
I should have paid heed to those personality traits then, as they were the very foundation of the anomaly of me. Nothing brings out the rebellion as injustice or lack of integrity. A rape in the news, a male bully of a colleague at work, a silly but hugely damaging joke an uninformed female friend circulated on WhatsApp. Immediate triggers for the onset of the emotions and then the drama in my head.
My brain in record-breaking time travels into the war zone. The place where the injustice of gender bias and the hundreds of years of history is now personal. A place where I cannot understand how we do such a bad job in raising boys to become weak men, and girls to tolerate, over compensate and perpetuate that cycle as women and mothers. I think back then about the 11 year old me, fueled with the injustice I saw in my surroundings, and the refusal to accept it. I am still that naive. I still feel 30 years later, just as strongly. In my head, I am berating that friend on that joke, telling her that every time we belittle ourselves as women; it only punctuates the permission for men to continue to be weak.
I think it is in my head, in a bubble that only I am privy to the contents of. That could not be farther from the truth.
Every over opinionated reaction to male friends’ lack of understanding, every crossing of the arms in a meeting with the bully at work, every jibe at female friends that immediately call for the daughters of the house to clean the table after lunch instead of sofa lounging sons, that’s how my head betrays me.
The bubble leaks that rebellion into a look, a tone, body language. The world sees the “feminazi”, that’s “too emotional”, “too opinionated “and needs to “relax”, or worse “get laid”.
Instead of unleashing these valid fights in unstructured, and worse, emotional outbursts to an unsuspecting and sometimes misplaced audience, I am going to write. In my own way, allow the naive 11 year old, standing in front of her mother’s steel cupboard to have her point of view, to validate her naivety, to, hopefully, find a well-placed audience that will help her change something, anything.
My Moms Steel Cupboard
Facing the mirror, she stands tall, all of 11.
Daydreaming her future. Actor? Lawyer? Activist!
Theatrics, sure. Rebellion, it’s a given.
Stolen moments, naivety at its best.
She’s 15 now, theatrics mellowed,
Rebellion now laced with rage and fright,
A balled fist tightened, threatening tears swallowed.
She straightens her back, preparing to fight.
She loses battles every day, patriarchy inching forwards
her mother, her friend, the house help, women galore
She tightens her armor, her weapon -her words
Not ready to give up, she’ll win the war.
20’s – rapes, male bullies, un-informed peers.
The armor is now a bubble, but the rage intact.
Watching women perpetuate cyclical horrors,
And men grow weaker, with noise and impact.
“Feminazi!” “Emotional” “Opinionated”
They sneer.
“Calm down”, or worse, “Get laid”.
Give up, let go, her 30’s scream, “Retire”!
Just when the towel is nearly thrown,
Two daughters, a divorce and a spartan is born.
At 40, round two of sharpening the sword,
Validating the naivety of the 11-year-old
In front of her mother’s steel cupboard,
For them, for her,
Fight! Fight! Fight!