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
The Cynfull Voice 