Cynthia Linwoods

The Sabbatical Ends

Three degrees, fourteen internships, two broken knees and sex change later here I am contemplating, thousands of kilometers away from what I am supposed to be calling “home”, do I have all that I once wanted? I ghost write during the day and write for myself at ghostly hours. Struggling to balance bills, academics, jobs, loneliness, transitioning and recovery, I don’t even remember how last three years went by, and by the looks of it, it looks like a couple more years are going to fizzle out this way. I pity myself for carrying the hunger to fit the last three years in this one post, I don’t hate the feeling I just pity it. Twenty five years of carrying shame can do that to anyone I suppose. But worst of all, there is part of me that feels like I am failing in every aspect of my life. Be it career, relationships or love.

I was supposed to get married to Adarsh, have my family alongside as I transitioned, have more present friends and pursue a career in academia, at least begin a PhD. None of that happened. Well I have a couple of friends who try their best to be present, but for my emotional appetite, they just seem to fall short just like my parents did. Fear of seeming ungrateful stops me from blaming or complaining but yeah I am not satisfied with my personal life, the part where it includes others. I am glad I have a job where I get to write instead of loosing my fingerprints away entering data onto an excel sheet.

My relationship with myself has never been this good in the 27 years of my existence, I am not the little kid who got bullied a lot, anymore. She is healing! And boy is she healing so well! I think what saddens me is that the possibility of this healing at a distance from my loved ones. Will they ever come around? Do I want them to come around anymore, I know I don’t need them to? I am able to meet my own needs now, especially emotionally. Maybe this is why I am at a place to acknowledge my dissatisfaction with the relationships in my life. But what do I do with this acknowledgment? I don’t know, I just wish I could write for myself instead of writing for some rich brat.

It is isolating on the worst days and solitude on the best ones. Sadly there is no in between. I crave for them. How stable that would feel? Less turmoil, lesser a mess, and maybe a bit less of myself too. Why is it that I am too much for most people around me? I have to measure and pour, like I used to in the chemistry lab in high school. I miss studying science. But even then every now and then uninvited intruders come in to take away what they feel is theirs, leaving behind bruises, scars and acid burn marks that are invisible to the patriarch’s eyes. Afterall, that’s why I stopped talking to my father. His audacity to say that all I confided in him and my mother was a creation of my illusion just like my womanhood, and that the butcher next door didn’t harass me neither did my mother’s cousin groom me for 7 years under the pretense of fixing my transness. Then of course the exorcism was there, I will leave that for another day. For now I need to rest.

Amidst all this chaos if I have learnt something, then it is this, to take it easy. To take life gently. Just like I did with this post, I wanted to begin from the day and point of the incident where my knee broke for the second time, but I refrained as it made my heart uneasy. Why should I write with an uneasy heart for a world full heartless readers? They may be incompetent to care for me, but I will care for myself. I will look after myself. So I will choose easier beginnings and softer endings as I know I deserve them.

– Cynthia Linwoods

ii. Sensing

There is so much to say, but I am feeling comfortable in silence. Maybe it is the awareness that I am gaining with each passing day at the university. I have been an observant person since childhood. But having access to university and a certain vocabulary is developing a sense of articulation in me, one that exists in thought and often in speech, but at the same time is silencing me. The silence that I observe now, is coming from a space of awareness, one about how indifferent people around me are, it is not ignorance, because that is passive. What I infer is a lack, a lack of action. They want to talk without listening, they want to write without doing their research, and they want to “contribute” without sharing the labour.

I am a first-generation graduate, and my presence in an elite space like my university is political. The politics of my presence exist in multitudes. Of these multitudes, I am aware of my caste position, class position, gender identity, gender expression, body, and race. Gender and class consume half of my labour pie, while the rest remain as unequal slices and some as few crumbs scattered around. Even though I am making efforts to cut slices of labour pie, at times it feels like the slices are melting and merging together at their convenience. With, harassments and prejudices (even unintentional ones) are demanding constant space, and so is the healing process. Amidst all of it, I am aiming to reach the submission deadlines of my courses and my part-time jobs.

It is humorous to realize that a system that claims to thrive on merit is one of the most incompetent ones that exist when it comes to encompassing the resource management and skills that go into dealing with obstacles sourced from inequalities that our textbooks are yet to contain. When your commute to work has more insights to offer than your textbooks, learning naturally takes a back seat on the ride. Rather, you feel like taking the wheels in your hands and just taking the next exit before you are stuck in the traffic of conformists who are speeding to the flyover, overlooking the realities that they get to overtake. My gender dysphoria is one such reality. Often reflected at the intersections of the traffic signals, you might see some individuals who are applauding their way through dysphoria while collecting the petty in loose change and pity in the lack of it. I am not one of them, I share dysphoria with them, but I don’t share many of their struggles, and neither do they have enough privileges to access my struggles. However, I do have access to the flyover, and I want to take the diversion. But I can’t because most of the time, conformity is where security for bread, butter and shelter lies. I am only beginning to interpret my dysphoria now, even though I have lived through it in most of my memories. I can sense a constant effort in my consciousness, all the while acknowledging all the coping that happens there instantaneously. It’s literally a matter of time, until what now is coping is deferred into a painful confrontation, grief, and finally acceptance.

– Cynthia Linwoods.

i. Should I move to Campus?

TW: Mention of Covid -19 related trauma.

I have been seeing Instagram stories of my friends at AU (the university where I am Studying at present) and their WhatsApp status; and as much as I want to be there I know there is much more that would go into it – for me. The pandemic being around I would have to take a flight, as spending more than two days in train would mean more the risk of exposure to the virus. At this moment I can’t help myself but to think what if things go down as they did in the second wave. This money in my savings would be of utmost value. I can’t let it go for the sake of socializing – I know socializing seems important as well. But if it’s a “this or that” between preventing a health scare and or moving in to campus for socializing , I would settle for the former.

The trauma of second wave hasn’t left me yet. I thought I wouldn’t make it and it comes back every now and then; that fear of not making it out of a near death experience. For the first 2 days I thought maybe I deserved this sickness, and that impostor feeling prevented me from taking my medicines for those 2 days. Leading a life where I am always at the cliff of fear, seemed way more difficult than the convenience in death, especially when it was coming under the disguise of “natural death”. It won’t be like killing myself which would bring shame on to my family along with deeper pain. “Natural death” receives more acceptance, compared to death due to suicide as the former has a strange sense of validation while the later seems autonomous (superficially).

Everyone at home was infected except for my 13 year old sister – her face is what made go and do my routine steaming and taking pills. By then it was too late, I felt slight uneasiness in breathing which worsened in a couple of days, to a point that I had to be rushed to the near by (good) hospital – only to realize that my lungs were infected; covid-19-induce-pneumonia. If it weren’t for my father’s quick decision to leave Bangalore and it’s inefficient and corrupt healthcare system; and to travel to Kerala by Road the next morning – I might have achieved that convenient option of dying. By then I didn’t want to die anymore. I couldn’t give up on my dreams, I wanted to meet my partner whom I had pushed away because I felt I wasn’t worthy of anything so good in my life; heeding to the feeling that “he had to be too good to be true”. I had applied for this fellowship which I badly wanted to get into, and apparently this university is so inclusive! INCLUSIVE! INCLUSION! INCLUSIVITY! Something I have only heard about on social media and seen westerners talk about practicing at their workplaces. I was having a chance to have a bite of that pie and that too not crumbs of it! (or at least I hoped so).

We survived. We recovered (physically). Our next of kin showed their true colours, despite of being vaccinated none of them bothered to even ask if we ate or whether were we fine – they lived in houses right next to ours being ignorant on our sufferance. It was my maternal uncle (someone who have constantly seen my mother with a fair amount enmity in his gaze) – who turned up to feed us. We survived on very poor nutrition and solely on medicines till then. But we made it out of it, for which I am grateful because that year many didn’t. Friends were lost, their family were lost, social media was filled with R.I.Ps – how does one ignore that and just move on, when it’s recurrence is still a possibility? How do I jump into an ideal “bio-bubble” (that clearly can’t be maintained is solely on paper in shallow words) without being double vaxxed?

TW: Mention of Transphobia.

The space that promised and marketed itself on inclusion turned out not living upto its branding (yet). I realized that even though gender neutral accommodation could be a possibility there (unofficially), yet I would have to go through a process of providing a self declaration which would validate my “transness” or as I was informed from a person in authority “even provide documents of transitioning” to acquire the space I should have access to on humanitarian grounds. My Cisgender peers don’t need provide any such documents or undergo any such processes. They can walk into their affirmative spaces simply based on how they look. It is not equal neither it is equitable; how is it inclusion? At inclusion the ones who benefit from exclusion should put in efforts, when the excluded ones have to take that burden too- it is nothing but unpaid labour (often labelled as academics as “activism”.

TW: MENTION OF R*PE.

3 men gang-raped me when I was 18 years old. I am still recovering from the trauma and coming in closure with the terms and conditions of it being a life long healing process. I don’t go into the details, because every time I do that it feels like I am reliving that disastrous evening. This university has a history (at least in hearsay and rumors) to be a space that is incompetent to hold assaulter(s) accountable. Some people even find it okay to excuse sexual assaults, because they are not competent enough to outgrow their toxic idols who instigate the assaults.

I am aware that I should not stop living and occupying space because of other people and their opinions could result in my exclusion. But I am not sure if I am ready to walk into a toxic environment – or a space of which toxicity is all I am able to see. How do I unsee it and walk into it, while being aware of possible consequences? God forbid if these fears come true, won’t these people hold me accountable for being naive enough “to let that happen to myself” while my assaulter(s) lives his/their “perfect” and “normal” life(s)? I don’t know how do I share this with anyone and not end up being seen only for the trauma that I carry and not the efforts I put in, to come out of it. They will wish me “more power”, they will call me “brave” – all for something as basic as existing. I don’t know what to do but wonder “Should I move to campus?” when there is a spectrum of threats that include physiological, social, mental and physical (sexual) threats.

-Cynthia Linwoods.

Chapter III – Something didn’t feel right!

When I got them, they were already broken. For them, I was supposed to be the bond between the two of them. To their disappointment, I turned out to be a lump of sand; that will turn into a confronting mirror in the heat of life. In which all they could see is their broken reality. It was this reflection that scared them off – from each other and from me. Their brokenness comes from their past, but today I feel like writing about mine.

I didn’t notice their voids until I discovered my own. Be it the dancing classes being taken away from me; or later on boasting about how they “saved my masculinity” to the guests. Every action and every word left a void that grew deeper with time. I have heard that time heals, but does it really? Or is it that we get too used to those wounds that they don’t hurt anymore nor feel alienated. They seem like an extra appendage that’s sometimes an enhancement and mainly a disability. The one that disables me from having wants; while I am draining all I have to meet what I need.

Violence could be obviously an instinctive trail to fill such voids. I did resort to this trial once since I was a child and everyone took it in “the spirit of a joke”. But now I wonder how she would have felt. This is a story from my Kindergarten days: By this time, I had learnt that Achan Controls Amma. Hence, anyone with features like his could control anyone with features like her. Accompanying that, I had also realized that fair coloured skin is beautiful and black ones aren’t. I had denied giving an uncle and an aunt hug just because their skin colour was darker than mine. I was a 3-year-old.

“Black is ugly”, Achamma used to say a lot while describing two of my cousins with fair skin and the other two with darker skin colour. I found it was okay to consider someone ugly on the colour of their skin and to hurt them for it.

I don’t remember the day when this happened or even what led to it. I can only recall the hate and not the reason behind it. There was a little girl whose skin was much darker than mine. We were having our mid-day meal at the kindergarten. I got a chilly from my meal; I took it and straight away rubbed it into her left eye. She started crying loudly, as she was in pain and panic. I wanted her to be quiet, so I opened my water bottle and splashed the water on her face; I splashed water until my bottle got empty. It wasn’t an act of help; it was one to silence. In a further panic, she went silent for a moment and not realizing what had just happened; all of it happened so fast! There was fear in her right eye that shifted something in me, and she couldn’t open her left eye (obviously because of the chilly burn). Rest about that day is a vague memory. I guess there were no classes post-lunch break, probably I would have run to my mother and walked back home. I didn’t get any scolding from the teachers or anyone else (not even my mother). As if everything was alright. While I knew something, somewhere was broken, as a 3-year-old, I realized “something somewhere is broken, what I did was not right”, but nobody bothered to fix it.

The next day I didn’t go to school because I was afraid more than ashamed. “Will her mother come and scold me, hit me or even worse poke a chilli in my eye to make me feel the same pain that I caused her daughter?”. I acted as if I was unwell for two days and, my mother believed me, as I was not a child who would want to miss even a day of school. I loved going to school, even on days when I was really unwell. She sensed the oddness in my reluctance to go back to school, and to get the news out of me, she started a random conversation. She started talking casually about my friends at kindergarten and whether someone hurt me or made fun of me or anything that; I would want her to know about. I confessed about that day and, she was taken aback because I had never shown any signs, let alone actions of violent behaviour till that day. I was known to be “the quiet kid”.

I went back to school after my mother spoke to the principal and probably with that little girl’s mother as well. But I don’t remember seeing her and apologizing. Little did I know that the bully I was to her was a precedent for my experience of being bullied. Usually, people become bullies after being subjected to bullying and in my case, it was the other way around. I wish if our parents and the principal would have gotten us in one room and asked me why I did what I did, I could have probably told her what I heard all the time from my Achamma and how I believed that darker the skin was, the uglier someone was, and the more of the harm they face for it could be normalised. I wish what later became a story of my “notorious boyhood” would have been reminded to me as a lesson. One that reminded me how I was someone’s abuser and that I being as young as her did not console the pain I caused her; nor does it undo the terror she felt in my presence.

It took me two decades to acknowledge this and 3 more years to put my realization into words. Other than the two of us, everyone involved was an adult, much mature than we were. Why didn’t anyone correct me? I have unlearned this conditioning now. While I move on to unlearn the rest of them, I wonder if this story and my sense of guilt would reach her. But if you are reading this – I am sorry!

– Cynthia Linwoods

Chapter II – Beginning of My Memories

When I look back for the very initial memories of mine, they are in the forms of fading dreams, but I got to know they weren’t mere dreams when my parents would tell me about those incidents later on as I grew up. I remember eating Litchi from my father’s hands as a toddler, on the streets of Hastsal. I remember my first day of school, I didn’t cry like other kids. Neither I had an idea that the rest of my school years will be full of tears, at least for most of it. I remember the day when we left Delhi to move to Kerala for a while, and I remember being with my mother and her brother on the train while we waved goodbye to my father.

I remember being blamed and getting beaten up for mischiefs that my cousin sisters did, or their father pulling my trousers to expose my genitals in front of the entire family for “fun”. S Such “funny” things later built a doubtful self-esteem in me, from a young age. I realised that in most Indian households children have been raised up on the fear and the guilt that their parents manage to build in them. It’s quite ironic that building a sense to differentiate between the right and the wrong has abuse as its foundation. But that’s not the actual struggle, it begins when you have a mind of your own; especially when you are the victim of oppression caused by those who unsee the systemic privileges they have, and that allows them to overpower you and your expressions by just existing in masses.

One such memory of oppression was when I was a 6-year-old who wanted to learn Indian classical dance, Bharatanatyam. My parents didn’t deny me from joining, 3 months into it; they realized that my feminine traits were blooming in their full capacity. I never entered that dance class once this realization happened to them, or rather say they didn’t let me to. From there onwards whenever any guest would come home, my parents would use me as an example to tell them why boys shouldn’t learn classical dance, since it would make them an “aanupenu” (a word used to shame individuals who are male in appearance and behave feminine). I was their victory story, the “aanupenu” whom they made a boy by taking him out of the dance class which according to them was meant for girls (My father, even today believes that my gender identity is “different” because they sent me to that dance class) That was the first time I realized that, what I feel from within and what I am seen as are poles apart, and that my identity was wrong and their sugar-coated pride was right. All of a sudden, a merry little life was torn apart into a huge struggle for freedom of expression, a fundamental right.

Born into a typical middle-class Indian family, my options were always limited to the money we had. Even though there was always a need for money, we used to be a happy family of three; or at least that’s what my parents successfully portrayed to me. My father used to work for a paramilitary force, so due to the nature of his job he wasn’t much around me while I was growing up, it was always my mother, but trust me! She never let me feel his absence, I and my mother used to have lots of fun! She would walk with me to my kindergarten; she would be there with a billion rupees smile waiting for me outside when my day at kindergarten was over. And to her surprise, I never cried like other kids who didn’t want to leave their mothers. I guess it was the security and integrity that I had with her back then; the trust that she would never leave me, no matter what. Then we used to head home; and by the time we reached home, my mom would be aware of all the happenings of my day at school, since I was a non-stop chatterbox. God! It was hard to stop me from talking!! But I always talked sense, or at least I would like to believe so. Mother and I, we used to make food together, she used to make exquisitely delicious snacks and my contribution to the kitchen was eating them all. We watched Hollywood movies by putting two balcony chairs opposite to one another and I would crawl up and sit in the blanket between her arms on her lap, resting my head on her belly. Calm and cozy, my safest space in the world; and it was through those movies that I got my first exposure to English, which has been my only tool when it comes to expressing myself including these blogs that I’m putting. We used to be each other’s best friends! In fact, she never let me realize that she was my only friend for a long time.

Cynthia Linwoods

Chapter I – Born Into

This is a tale, unlike another grandma/ grandpa tales you would have heard. In fact, here the binaries of life break. So, once upon a time, not so long ago; in fact, on the 7th of October 1997, that’s when it all began. At least for me, I was born in Thrissur, Kerala. I was born into a typical Malayali, Hindu, Ezhava family. Along with being Indian, these were the labels I was assigned at the time of my birth. Accompanying them came along another label. This was an actual game-changer; being assigned male at birth. You see, this title alone has a lot of privileges attached to it for sure. These privileges exist on the social end. It doesn’t matter which part of the world you are born in; these privileges exist to some degree or another. Like a contract, there are certain conditions for you to have these privileges. And one of them is to stay a male and that too a masculine one. Well for me the maintenance was over as soon as my sense of identity developed. I wonder how many of us have heard of intersectionality. I heard about it recently, during a pandemic read among the triggering news of course! There is a sense of privilege when in power, especially when in masses. In my case being Hindu is a relief. Since it freed me from facing religion-based violence from the majority. Here I belong to the majority. Since that violence is not my tale’s part, I would leave it for someone who is experiencing it, to say about it. On the list, next is cast and colour. Let’s focus on caste first, since colour, hair, and size need a chapter of their own.

Being born into the Ezhava caste had its own good values. My maternal grandpa and uncle were huge believers of Sri Narayana Guru. Like most of the other community members. In fact, even I like that man’s ideology of one religion, one caste, and one God. Hello but the irony is that none of his followers; or let’s say most of his believers don’t follow this ideology. Rather they use his ideology to cloak their propaganda and many have succeeded. You may investigate the history if you want to verify it. But what if historians told history the way the narrator wanted it to tell it, so whom do we trust? I don’t know and it is a valid answer. Not knowing something should be valid, but one thing I know for sure is that we need to see each other as humans. Free of titles and roles of any kind. It might sound ideal, but if we speak for ourselves and act for the larger change it doesn’t seem to be unattainable.

As the list continues, financial status is a big deciding factor. We hear money is shallow, materialistic, can’t buy happiness, and whatnot. Money is an essential and may decide your privilege. Especially in respect of power and access to spaces and institutions. Not only institutions of education, but also social institutions of marriage and family. Some demonize money, while some glorify it alone. I don’t know if I fit in that binary either. Being born into a family of government servants, life was hard but not worst. This is something I am grateful for, not because I’ve seen many who don’t have it. But because it gives me a scope to achieve on my own for myself and my folks. My dad was employed in defence and mom was busy making a home. She was being both my mom and dad as he was always serving the nation. Him not being around is something she blames as a reason among the others. The others for my identity being the way it is “due to the lack of a male influence”.

– Cynthia Linwoods.

Prologue

This is neither a start nor an end. But, since I am telling you my story from this juncture, let it be the prologue. The prologue to my past and my present. Here there is no room for the future because I am done planning the uncertainty. Yet, you and I both know that we will continue to do so. The stories I tell from now on, are parts of mine and that of others. By others I mean, those whom my life’s course has affected and who have affected mine. This is not a place to blame, neither is it one to reason. It’s a narrative; a narrative of personal multitudes and hearsays. I don’t know if I am being brave by sharing my version of the truth. Or if I am being a coward doing it all under the cloak of a pen name, if not absolute then for partial discretion.

There is hope, I won’t deny that, or else why would I try to document? I chose to narrate so that you would simply listen. I tried talking, conversing, debating, and even quarrelling and arguing at times. Yet none of them seems to work. So, I will narrate my story of being born in Kerala and then growing up anywhere but Kerala, carrying the burden of cultural shock, shame, and pride. My story of being a girl and growing into a woman while occupying a body that was assigned male at birth. My story of dealing with casteism at home, even though I seldom found casteist oppressors outside. My story of growing up in defence campuses and yet feeling defenceless. And then transitioning into civilian life. Along with all these stories of mine, there will be those of people with whom I felt closely associated. Even though our struggles were poles apart, I could see some universal similarities in them. Or maybe I was simply coping by seeing what I wanted to see so that I felt like I belonged.

– Cynthia Linwoods.