Your Gender,Not A Perennial Embarrasment.

              “I am a perennial embarrassment.”

-Rudra Chatterjee (Chitrangada:The Crowning Wish)

Many moons ago, when I was more of a kid than a girl, I saw an image in an English daily followed at home. I was not more than ten years old at that time. In that big black and white photograph which occupied a considerable quarter of that page, two young women were embracing each other with a delicate and aesthetic intimacy. I stared at that column because, I felt nothing unusual in women who are close together! Mind fluttered with the question- “what has given this picture, such an importance to appear in this page.”  Being a person with incurable ‘curiosity syndrome’, I pushed myself to make sense out of the cluttered sentences upon the faded white page , fabricated with sophisticated words ! It was really so heavy to be afforded by my vocabulary, thoughts and consciousness. The only thing that I deduced from the whole article is the single idea – “girl-girl relationship” just  like girl-boy relationship. That notion perplexed me but I never knew that it engendered many controversies and reactions! It took me some more years to gather  a cognizance about homo-sexuality. Even today, I am so confused about how to look upto the sexual subaltern, which includes queer, gay, lesbian, transgender  and bi-sexual. 

For a long time, like many others, I also barked up the wrong tree believing that individuals deviating from basic gender identities are just psychologically impaired rather than often biologically structured as such. National Geographic Magazine of January, 2017 was an insight into the gender revolution around us .This special issue came with the face of a nine year old “trans girl” Avery Jackson from Missouri declaring “the best thing about being a girl is, now I don’t have to pretend to be a boy”. The magazine gathered the statements of several  9 year olds of various gender identities, across the globe. Nawar Kagete,a nine year old tribal girl from Kenya shares that being a girl means to get chased and seduced  by men,wherever you go .Nine year old Dvir Berman, of Israel believes that being a boy is all about being stronger whereas, Yingzhi Wang of China suggests that a boy is to protect girls because they are “weaker , smaller and timid.” But I was shaken by the statement of a Kenyan tribal boy, Lopeyok Kagete because he admits that “the good thing about being a boy is the penis!” How should I interpret it- with innocence or fear! Should I equate him with tender boyhood or,  established  manhood!  Now,let’s swallow the bitter pill that all those kids are our own prejudiced heavy reflections cast upon their unbiased innocence and good will.

Last year, as part of a study, I quizzed a psychologist whether homosexual desires could sprout out  due to  sexual negligence from one’s own  hetero-sexual partner or due to an environment  that suppresses natural  sexual intimacies for the sake of uplifting morality and culture. This was but better answered by Deepa Mehta’s Fire-Earth-Water trilogy  but the images faded with the heaviness of newly sprung confusions.   Fire (1996) reveals the unfulfilled, unacknowledged and unappreciated marital lives of two wives of a typical Indian household who are only meant to assist and tolerate their husbands. Duties assigned to a woman, right after she’s born grooms herself  as nothing but a household pet. These wives -  Radha(Shabana Azmi) and Sita(Nandita Das),  are denied of affection, honor and sexual expression by their husbands. But they end up discovering their discarded desires and sexual liberty in the other one’s soul and body and the story evolves into a homo-erotic tale of self-discovery and self-expression . The film progresses by breaking the fetters of male dominance and crawls into the skin of female desires but finds satiation in homo-sexual identity. Every  Itihasa valorizes the hero and chastises the heroine as it emphasis  ideality and rules out imperfections of existence. Generations would condemn Rama’s plight even if Sita is virtuous or not but cannot afford to accept Sita without any fire test even if her chastity bears no scar of dirt. The film, as it progress towards the climax, narrates a situation similar to Agnipareeksha but this fire test tries to gobble “Radha”  by licking her attire. Though Radha is flawed or unchaste as according to traditional and cultural perspectives, fire could not consume her life. Rain pour down as Radha unites with Sita; no fire could withstand a rain! 

Often, realizations are not only hard but also confusing. To break the shackles of all those much-followed concepts and  to breathe as an aware self needs a lot of personal effort. For epochs, world knew only the pride and prejudice of men and women but now the world has to accept and embrace ‘their’ tale of life too.

 “Be What You Wish To Be.”