The Beast and I

Jawahara:

Happy New Year. I thought you may like this poem...

The beats came up to me and licked my hand.
I was glad of the air, glad of the moss
And its luxurious softness, and at a loss
To know why I was accepted in that land
Of slow time and amiable beats. I had done
Nothing to find myself there. I had connived
With myself in the usual way, contrived
To cut losses, been glad when I won.
Surely this golden world was not for me.
It was too placid, too simple, too easy.
Any moment now the fabric would tear;
Someone would say I had no business there.
And I would get up and either fight or run
While the friendly beasts looked quietly on.

Suniti Namjoshi

godot: i have two words for u. `write back!` how goes it by the way?

Jawahara -

With “The Beast and I”, I believe you have unwittingly stumbled into an uncharted territory...it’s a world where the beast roams free, a world as alluring and seductive as it is intense and troubling...frightened, your heart beats fast as you try to run away from it...the irony is that the beast goes away only if you let it...illuminating the darkness notwithstanding...

I also believe that “The Beast and I” may have awoken that rare, atypical writer in you...I won’t miss any of your writings at Chowk from now on...can’t promise if I’ll be commenting on them...or not!...yes, I’m too unpredictable...that’s no relief to anyone...!!!

I’m delighted you’re staying :)

Wow! This became quite the heated InterAction. Interesting! It`s weird that the InterAct section of this story has been so much busier than any other stories that I have written on chowk. Of course, most of it had nothing to do with the story itself :-).

Temporal, it is always good to hear from you. Bina, Shandana, I think the topic(s) you were discussing deserve an article (or more) of their own. Maybe a debate type thing might be fun. Thanks! That was quite lively and interesting.

Godot, I am most definitely staying. I said I wasn`t sure if I would be published on here, not because of others` comments but my own inspiration and writing that comes and goes in fits and starts.

Ana, I hope you stay on chowk. Farzana, I await a response to my latest email.

Everyone else, thanks for reading this and commenting on it...good or bad.

Time for bed now *yawns*

Uff, Farzana...the moseebut with you is that if I’m critical I’m offensive, and if I’m commending I’m patronizing...a guy can’t win!...patronizing?...how about if told you it was the first time I realized what they mean when they say “eyes are the mirror of the soul,” and I wondered if those eyes could be so expressive in a picture how deep they must touch you in real life...flippant?...it wasn’t the first time I regretted not being a fiction writer myself, that not being able to externalize my innermost thoughts via that channel...perhaps “hai!” threw you off...it meant the mask.

I’m sure writing it was not as difficult for you, jaya, as submitting it to Chowk. However courageous, knowing the beast, that must have been a nerve-wrecking decision. I fear that your worst fears may have been realized by the interactions, this one perhaps making it even worse...but it couldn’t be not said. Take solace in that this whole thing will soon be archived and move to the oblivion, just as all others have. Thank you for an extradordinary piece...the one that will resonate for some time to come...certainly one of the very best I’ve read at Chowk. Stay for others’ sake. Beelzebub is out of your way...at Chowk.

Shandana,

Supporting the family is hardly a man`s domain, look at all the women here who are widows, divorcees or whose husbands are drug addicts/runaways/disabled and have to support their children. In our house we employ three widows each with nine children or more. No men in those domains at all.

So true though, corrpution, nepotism, car snatchings, bombings all know no gender. But rape is the only crime/trauma where your gender and sexuality comes into it... and is all-affected by it.

On the subject of losing yourself after rape: having just read Sebold`s ``Lucky`` my perceptions and ideas on rape are strongly influenced by her gritty detail of the rape and its aftermath and her success at bringing her assailant to justice. But she says that the line is inevitably crossed once rape happens. Not only do you lose yourself but you lose out on belonging in that community that is ``other``, not-raped. Losses all around. I suppose you find something else afterwards, but it`s a discovery no woman really wants to make.

Stillbirth is traumatic. I`ve had friends who went through it, it is a devastating loss that so often goes unknown and unacknowledged and unmourned, same goes for miscarriage. Again, all losses a man can`t relate to except by second degree (and nor can I, yet).

Cheers (needed after such discussion!)

i think a traumatic event would shape and colour a persons sensibilty regardless of gender, it might just manifest itself differently. as for danger and vulnerability, surely this is something all pakistani`s feel. there are more male drivers than women for example, and people have been killed during car snatching, bombs and terrorists also recognize no difference when it comes to dismembering bodies. you are right in that often in pakistan a womans body is a crime waiting to happen, but i think men have their own unique fears and pressures which sometimes seem trivial to us but are just as opressive for them. getting a good job, supporting the family is still pretty much a mans domain, and i think when you have to struggle constantly against things which are intrinsic here like corruption, nepotism, sycophancy it takes its toll as well. just thinking aloud...lately i have been feeling much more sympathy for the pakistani man as well. the ordinary pakistani man that is. it is interesting you should mention the meerwala case, you know of course that the whole thing started when her brother was sodomized by three men in the sugar cane fields. strange that most of us don`t remember abdul shakoor. also, why assume you lose who you are? why is the female identity so closely tied to her sexual experiences? again in the meerwala case, mukhtaran didn`t lose herself but rather found herself in that she discovered she had the courage to stand up for what she believed in (her right to justice) despite all the obstacles in her way. this wasn`t a new thing for her, this courage, it was just that the whole world acknoledged it afterwards.

as for what is the worst, as a recent mother i would say having a stillborn child after feeling him/her alive inside you for months would have to be up there. or losing that child...our fears tend to evolve with our experiences. but they always seem to be tied to loss.

Shandana,

It`s not that rape and assault don`t happen to men - they do. But I find that it shapes and colors a woman`s whole sensibility from a very early age. The fear that it could happen, the danger, the vulnerability you feel is something I don`t think men understand, or grow up with. You know how it is in our society - the feeling that you always have to be protected, guarded, safeguarded from the ultimate disaster. And the stigma should it happen - the fear of pregnancy from a rape - can men really relate to this?

I don`t think women will ever really be able to escape from that legacy. The recent newspaper accounts of gangrapes, what happened to Mukhtaar Mai, the women in Gujranwalla paraded naked through the streets - this to me is a woman`s domain more than a man`s. In our society the best way to get back at a man is to dishonor his women.

I await the day when a woman`s body isn`t a crime waiting to happen.

PS, I don`t know if rape is ``the worst``. I suppose being killed is the worst. I suppose being dismembered is also the worst. But rape embodies both those things because who you were before it is killed and hacked into pieces. Anyway. The worst is many different things to different people.

bina,

dont know if rape and assault are exclusively womans domain. men get raped and assaulted too. also, is being raped the absolute worst thing that can happen to a person? just wondering, i have two male friends who were molested when they were kids. they dont give themselves room to recover because they`d rather just supress it totally, whereas women often use pain as a springboard for rebirth.

shandana

hamidm,

ya know i didn`t like naipul when i read him earlier but these days i`m reading a bend in the river and its really really good, reminds me of pakistan, with the big man and the protagonists desire to keep his head in the sand.

long live grahan greene, i think his work is amazing. and grisham and koontz are very readable and a great way to extract maximum utility from munchie food.

shandana

zeeshan,

have you read margaret atwood? judith budnitz? nadine gordimer? zadie smith?

shandana

Zeeshan

Try Alice Sebold. Her work deals with rape and assault - the very worst aspects of being a woman - but in an unflinching voice and one without the manipulation that you dislike. I reviewed ``The Lovely Bones`` for the Dawn Books and Authors section this past Sunday and just finished her memoirs.

Dude, I didn`t even look at your ``favorite authors`` list until you mentioned it in your interact. I wasn`t surprised by what I found though. And really, I have no problem if you prefer male authors to female. I think the story is more important than the gender - always have.

But writing that deals with women and women`s issues is naturally going to be the more favored terrain of the female author. That`s not to say women can`t write great science fiction (Madeline L`Engle), mysteries (Agatha Christie), or historical fiction (nobody comes to mind, Margaret Mitchell can`t be historical fiction can she... LOL). But as they say you write what you know best and women know best what it`s like to be women. Bas... if you aren`t interested in that, no big deal, but I don`t see why you have to pull down women who are.

After all aren`t people interested in being represented? Why such a hullaballoo over Irish writing, South Asian writing, Muslim authors, Jewish writing. blah blah blah? Do we dismiss these writers because their writing is too specialized or manipulative or exlusive or specialist?

Oh dear, I have to run out, so I`ll post this and continue later....

Cheers

Hamid,

Mubarak to you and Steele loving Mrs. Hamid! Mr. S insists that he will trail me in the afterlife, such Chaucer reading woman lover he is (we actually had a conversation today where I threatened to ignore him in heaven if he didnt go to the doctor...that all the angels would back me up and turn around and stick their tongues at him)...my point is not only do women read that author of Mistral`s Daughter, but also Graham Greene (freshman year of college), Ibsen, Sophocles, Mukherjee, etc in addition to all other genres related to their various identities. The effect of this is the emergence of writers like Jhumpa Lahiri, whose prose is refined clarity.

But on more experimental level, gender will be transgressed and transformed, esp. in the hands of young women writers who will take on, de/reconstruct, subvert female and male identity-and this is going to be extremely significant.

saminasha,

.......... thank god that women think and write different - men can be awfully boring and tedious ......... to be honest, i find women to be a lot more interesting than men and they do bring the ``other`` perspective to life ........ so there is nothing wrong with gender specific writing since you guys do make up half of humantity - the better half, i might add ............. but you have to understand that readers tend to view things based on their own life experience and their warped world views .......... for example, i love ``a house for mr biswas``, and have read it twice because for whatever reason i can relate to it, and naipaul is one heck of a story teller - i feel as if i have been to trinidad and tormented by the tulsis ............. in my book he is awesome - others might disagree ............ take ``moth smoke`` by hamid mohsin - a pretty mediocre book by literary standards, i presume, but i couldn`t put it down because i felt i knew those people ( it was one heady experience!) ..............on the other hand you couldn`t make me read crap by james joyce, who, if he hadn`t existed, would have been invented by sadistic english teachers to torture adolescents ..............

......... to be honest i probably don`t know what i am talking about - i hate to admit it , but i have read every book by graham greene and grisham and koontz (and enjoyed it) ......... what else can you buy for under ten bucks and read from cover to cover on a four hour flight?.......... and mrs hamidm voraciously reads danielle steele and sappy stuff like ``a cup of comfort``, but i still love her - i wouldn`t trade her in for a woman who reads chaucer ............

Hamid Sahib,

I wouldnt bet the GNP of Argentina on gender specific writer so quickly. Lets see what happens now that girls are hooked up on the Internet and experimenting with identities...you might want to speak to your daughters about this...or read how young women in iran have been blogging online...