COMPREHENSION - II

Request:
Re-read the following text till you stop taking stands for or against its content.
In other words have a first hand experience of reading it, devoid of biases, personal or political.

Crux:
This is a strictly personal article as I wouldn’t have cared to write it for any body in this world except you.

Preface:
It’s good that you are thoughtful.
Even better that you have chosen to enlighten me on what Feminism is and what it isn’t ?

Maybe with a pre-conception that I generally tend to believe and assert all those points which you note as it isn’t.
Maybe without a pre-conception, just a general trial to clarify the almost biased and cryptic concepts of feminism in a male psyche.

Your trial and the points are well convincing and eloquent.

Lecture:
Foreseeing you as an artist, I get spasms when I sense a hindrance to your advance that you are unaware off. You may ask, how is it that I come to know of something happening to you which you yourself do not realize.
May be my age and a parental concern prompts me.
May be I am altogether wrong in my apprehensions.

Coming back to the point of my foreseeing you as an artist, more specifically as a writer who writes fiction and poetry.

You may assert it now that it’s just my vision and you do not share it.
You may agree to me.

Whatever may the case be.


Would you deny to a point that you think.
You analyze.
You conceptualize.
You take stands.
You conclude.

I believe no.

This makes me term you sensitive.

And that is why I love to have a dialogue with you.

Sensitive people have their defined politics.
Some have them permanently fixed.
Some keep changing but are unaware of the change.
Some change aware.

I just want to remind you that an artist is inherently of the third kind.

With my bias of wishing to see you as an artist, I get disturbed when I find you rigid in your politics. But as I have mentioned earlier, my vision of you as an artist is solely mine, and you have all the rights to deny it.
Still when it comes to feelings, I fall helpless. I cannot satisfy myself cerebrally by saying that, fine, she is what she is, who am I to mould her?

I have already started doubting whether this essay has been communicative enough to express my feel.
Ummeed pe duniya tiki hai

So after claiming for myself that you are sensitive and believing that you are a writer, let me introduce you to few other facts of our existence that for me hold more importance than feminism.
This again does not imply that feminism is anyhow a neglected realm in my thought process.
Just that I have my priorities.


To start with let me display a little evidential data.
1: 49 children died of starvation in the month of April 2006 in the district of Janjgir.
2: In a survey of World Food Programme (for which I made a documentary) for the district of Raigarh, it was reported that the drinking water supply was just 23% of the entire need in the rural area of Raigarh.
3: 37% of the total labor in the construction sites of Raipur are children below 17 years of age.
4: 167 villages in Raigarh district do not have primary health care establishments.
5: 32 villages of Dharamjagarh tehsil do not have access to the district headquarters in rains due to lack of roads.

Interesting find I collected from an NGO.

So what I infer is that in developing and underdeveloped countries like India, the predominant binary is that of Rich/Poor. Something that overshadows the binary of Female/Male in my ideological stand.

To me thus, the issues that question my sensitivity listed in a priority basis are as follows.

I call them cosmic threats.
1: Consumerism
2: Environmental apathy
3: Animal rights
4: Child labor
5: Women exploitation
6: Poverty.

When I confront you on your stands, it is for a reason to see your sensitivity grow and embrace all such issues rather than stick to one. And then let it reflect beautifully and effectually in your works, poetry, fiction or academics.

I hope that I made myself clear.





Afterword: About me.

Well before you pronounced it for the first time in your consciousness – feminism.

I had published at least 50 poems and an article on women.
Had been always related to women.
Fancied my self as the only existent male in a women’s world.
(you remember my image of a room filled with 100girls and me)
Promised myself 400 hrs of kiss.

And now after you have evolved it in your conscious – feminism.

I co-exist with a wife who knows how caring I am.
A daughter who fascinates me no ends just by her being.

I repeat re-read it.
Tukun