time of my life

I chew on grief every year

My gums have bit the depths off its edge

It becomes leaner and leaner till it becomes a slice

The crust, disloyal to life is yet a savior to memory

Rich with rhetoric and metaphors

In no time, a life has become a date, a wall of souvenir, a splash of red

A name tag, an unsolved floor size puzzle

Ashes put graves to shame

Burnt and not buried

Touching instead of brushing against a spirit

Waddling through a puddle of a set program menu

Of measured tributes, wrapped jilebis and arabic munazats

Of covered heads, hankies, and post milad politics…..

(I don’t remember having written it. I don’t have any recollections of this outburst. All I know is that I must have written it in anger. I sound angry at customs. I sound upset with practices.
Yet I go through the same cycle every time one of us loses a dad, a mum or a partner. Let’s not talk about kids. i simply get too personal. Subjectivity can be a curse for aesthetics.  Talking about dying again, though.
I just got back home from a colleague’s home. He has just lost his 80 year old dad. His grief is clear. I empathize. After a long time, I hear women wailing in the bedroom. “abba, kano gala?” “abba…tomakey pani khawatey parlam na” etc, etc. But people don’t cry over the dead anymore. I quickly ask him to recite suras instead of letting the womenfolk howl. How typical! Neighbors were pouring in. Food from next door, a stranger offering hugs and help? Was this another world I was witnessing? Was I the alien in the scene?
The minute hands move too quickly in my world. The winds blow my hesitation away. The heat dries my tears up.
I ride away from his tragedy, unable to confront my insentivities.)

Plans have changed. People have changed. Power centers have all shifted. With the Chinese beginning to learn English, with the Chinese getting taller, with the world dancing to the RMB even with the slightest threat of the China, the priorities have shifted. We Bangladeshis, who used to sit across the tables with buyers and bid for programs with fabric from China are now going the Complete Chinese way.
We work with the Westerners through China/Hong Kong. It’s more convenient. They are more organized, more detailed and all we need to do is lazily quote our Cutting and Manufacturing range and rest in peace. Here’s a brief account of one of my trips:

I board the plane and am seated right beside a Chinese woman: adequately equipped with calculators, notebooks and phones. Till the plane taxies down the runaway, the Chinese dame is constantly doing her: “Whyiii..” (pronounced ‘why’) with her buyer on the other end. I guess they say it all the times indicating that all’s understood and doable. Nothing’s a no-no to this race. You want a diamond blast, alpha blast, delta blast …moon blast….in your denims that you are buying from Asia at a mean USD4.50/pc to be retailing at USD 40.00 at your stores, here we go!!! We have the Chinese to offer you whatever you need. The Indians have been having it hard now. With design studios being set up in Bangalore for BMW-s, do they really want to be bought? Nooo…they certainly qualify to be separately labeled as the Bollywoodian, the Bangalored, the Mumbaitized et al. After all, we Southasians are all about aesthetics and not efficiency. Efficiency, productivity are best left to the toiling Chinese who would simply have lunch out of the tiny carriers in less than 15 minutes and return to work straight away. But then these days we have many Chinese digging RMB out of their grounds and coming to Hong Kong to shop for the ‘real’ thing while the Hong Kong people run towards Mainland China to buy the ‘fakes.’ Apologies….you call them fakes and you may be greatly embarrassed. Like I was last night. At close to 11:00 p.m around the Times Square in Causeway Bay, I entered a tiny outlet that seemed stuffed with branded fakes. Snooping around fakes is a compulsion I cannot resist. I touched a Fendi thinking that it would be around HKD 200.00?? Before I spoke my mind, the girl gave me the sharpest look possible and told me that those were not the Thai fakes. Those were factory rejects. I was astonished to read the label that she proudly held out. It was a HKD 2000.00= a little over USD 220.00. I was dazed. The inner lining was substituted by cheap polyester, the surface material was of course, perfect. The next one was an LV bag which happened to be gorgeous labeled at HKD 11,000.00 . That apparently was a recent ‘second hand’. This instantly reminded me of the ‘beg-borrow-steal’ website that allows college kids to rent branded bags! What are the Chinese going to think next? The toilets in China are wonders of the century. The extent of automation with regard to the speed of the flush, the revolving angle of the bidet, the height of sanitization is scary. But then again, when one thinks about the environment, China is still burning coals and ending up being the soot one dreads to invest in. Yet there are investments in China. Yet China floods the global market with every possible product, and in spite of the growing numbers of recall by the US retailers, the Chinese toy makers will survive. My next stop was at an ungodly hour of 1:00 am. It was a scheduled visit to one of my dear colleagues who used to work for ‘Next’, the UK retailer for an unforgivably long span of nine years. She looked deeply content with the ‘Omm’ store right below her office that spoke of absolute sustainability. Patagonia, Timberland would be ashamed of the tiny outlet with only 3 branches across China and Hong Kong. The organic yarn, the organic approach, the bamboo interior all reflect Health. Absolutely!
A T shirt that needs 1/3rd ton of chemicals needs to be shunned! While the likes of M&S invest with UK 5 Billion on environment friendly products, the X-marts of the world are looking at namesake stamps of the Organic 5% out of the 100 and are doing their sales pitch, targeting the soft customers and apparently attempting ethical sourcing.
What could that signify? What could that mean to the third world that’s struggling with its own labor issues and productivity and of course, fiscal handicap? While I bade good bye to my Hong Kong-English-South African friend, I prepared for another meeting with a great buyer the next morning. The morning did begin at 8:00 am sharp with the buyer looking straight into my eye and asking me if I knew that besides technical and HR compliance, we now need to look at Organic requirements. Going Green, Mr?
At what price? The squeeze again, Mr.? Buying environment friendly, absolute sustainable line of products happens to be his company’s commitment. I understand his point. What I fail to comprehend is for how long are we going to be subjected to the Final Cut with the other side happily strumming the lines of corporate social responsibilities?
Are the tables ever going to turn in our favor??

Hath Taslima Eyes?

 

There’s a limit to waiting. I have been waiting for the last two weeks to let the news come to an end instead of  stirring a few more feminist minds by giving enough material to liberals to argue in favor of the persecuted, and most of all to see how BJP would react to our ever controversial Taslima N. But thanks to the ever efficient media no news is ever left alone to wither away or dry up in the regional spotlight. Every item is worth a glance, every female’s worth an attention, every controversy is worth the silver time. One who had fled to Sweden in Jan 24, 1994 has made a comeback and this time, to the headlines of every newspaper in India . Editorials on her have peaked. While I am an avid critic of undeserving attention, I too, ironically am writing about her. Indian government has turned her into a glorious hero.

The mythic masks that are set for a woman often push her to become one. Therefore, did Taslima N took the Woolfian advice and decided to become a writer after she had killed the angels in the house? Perhaps Spenser’s Errour from The Faerie Queene being a “half woman, half serpent” added inspiration to the artist. Perhaps, the other monstrous Duessa, who assumed the image of Una and tempted men, tempted the unconventional artist. Perhaps Lucifera’s House of Pride is what TN was looking for as an ideal home to settle in.Perhaps the twin images of angel and monster is what a creator looks for…just because it gives the mind an escape route ether way. Otherwise, why on earth would Taslima look for quick fame after she had successfully written: Nirbachito Column (Selected Columns)? Why would she look for ignominy and dishonor through Lajja(Shame), Amar Meye Bela (My Girlhood) et al? Why would her literature be branded as pornography and be banned in her own homeland? And if that ban had stopped a reader from downloading it through net, then that would be another issue. But Lajja in Bengali can be downloaded in seconds. I did too. Taslima may have passionate dwellings within her own self, but she could try holding her tongue back instead of holding forth. If it’s masculine politics she wants to destroy, she should not concentrate on her cosmic libido. And on the other hand, if her literature is supposed to be political, then why would she still need another land? Why should her new book be : Narir Kono Desh Nei (A Woman has no Country)? Does a Nari need a country? If she had ever been a Woolf lover, she too would need no country, “have no country” and “want no country”. (Three Guineas ).

India ’s controversial poet Kamala Das has had no place for quite a while. She pictures herself as the goddess Durga and she titles one of her chapters “I Was Carlo’s Sita,” in which she tells about one of her affairs. Das has been quite vocal about passion and has not shied away from the angle of aesthetic exposure:

 

Getting a man to love you is easy

Only be honest about your wants as

Woman. Stand nude before the glass with him

So that he sees himself the stronger one

And believes it so, and you so much more

Softer, younger, lovelier.

 

Women like Das in this manner have been changing the Southasian scenario of fiction and poetry as more and more of subjective expressions have crept into the art. But is the private considered and acknowledged as art? Should there be a negation of ego where creativity comes in? Should creativity be free of debts to even the self? As much as a woman is like the door hinges rusting with time and sandwiched between the private and the public, she also needs to attempt liberation of her identity in spite of suffering and the search for her identity should soar beyond all conceivable heights.

Taslima for example, needed no stamp of a prescribed feminist. Was it so difficult for her to have broken away from the simultaneity of oppressions? Taslima should have realized that not all of us would feel the same as her. I have been rejoicing doubly ever since she has, as a token of regret, agreed to destroy pages from her book: Dikhondito (Halved). Yet, as much as I feel the need to slam the door on her sensitivities, her face riddled with fear on TV evokes a strange sympathy even in her arch enemies. As much as I want to confront her blasphemous thread, the fundamentalists make it impossible to do so.

Come what may, I shall never side with you, Razakars. If India wants to bear your burden for the sake of appearing apparently secular, let her do so. Why should Bangladesh allow you to become an issue? BJP and Narendra Modi need you. I don’t. Therefore, the united Muslims of West Bengal, neither do you stand a chance, nor does Taslima’s compulsions and preferences of spotlight.

We women may feel trapped against a glassy pane, we women may take off and fall prey to the politics of orgasm, but we have enough strength in us to map our spirits and check out for ourselves whether we have defied the category of pregnability and motherhood or whether we are simply born to embrace masquerades of performativity.