Category Archives: Kerala

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.