Steeling myself against despair

Going by recent events, it would seem we are trapped in a horrible time loop with no escape route. Representation pic

Lately, I've been struggling to make sense of our present reality. When did it get so pitifully absurd? Last week, like many of you, I, too, felt like I was being held hostage by the Ambani family through the forced exposure to the unending extravagance and pageantry. Could it be that the bridal couple is simply afraid of the mundane nature of married life, so they keep deferring it through celebration after celebration? What on earth were the Kardashian sisters doing on the guest list? Their presence seemed like a bizarre plot twist. Did we really need such a spectacle to celebrate something so domestic as getting married? What does it even mean to have such deep pockets you have no fear of running out? Is it genuinely pleasurable to live your life in fulfilment of all your wet dreams and fantasies? I always imagined the whole point of dreaming of something was the inherent unattainability. Doesn't one get bored when all one has to do is order a few people around and throw some money in the right direction to see before you something you had only envisioned?

There was no escaping the lavishness of this reception. It was even reported as a spread in the local newspaper in this border region where I live. But the worst part was not just the endless reams of social media posts about the glamourous outfits, the jewellery, the tacky décor and the traffic jams they inadvertently caused, but the forced exposure to all of it in the midst of ongoing genocide in Sudan and Gaza. It is eerie to be exposed to footage of the bride entering in what looked to me like a tasteless bird-shaped boat alongside images and videos of schools being bombed in Gaza, reports of more bombs being sent to Gaza, and the assassination attempt on Trump's life that led to ludicrous statements denouncing political violence in America while actively enabling every other form of it in Gaza and other parts of the world. This was not a timeline I had signed up for.

We're trapped in a horrible time loop with no escape route, it would seem. It isn't just the virtual realm that has been kidnapped. It is also our lived reality, the soaring temperatures… friends in Delhi are still traumatised about having to endure 50-degree heat waves. So many parts of the world are underwater. How is it possible for anyone to talk about climate change without addressing the continuing violence against Palestine, Sudan, Haiti, Kashmir, and so many other places in the world where the logic of extractivist capitalism justifies settler colonialism and forms of continuing imperialism?

Living where I do, I think a lot about what may constitute small acts of resistance. Because this town of Tramin is a tourist destination and much of the local economy is catered towards German tourists, it can often feel like an insulated bubble. There are days when this can be comforting, but the general atmosphere is of a people so spoilt by their privileges they don't necessarily know what it is like for people in other parts of the world. Sometimes I try to disturb their sense of order by using chalk to write political slogans on the streets next to the tractors I draw for our toddler. ‘Ceasefire now', I write, or ‘Stop killing children'. In the university I encourage my students, all of whom come from hyper-privileged backgrounds, to understand what wilful ignorance means, and what it says about privilege. There are days when I tire of entertaining conversations about the oppression of South Asian women. I want to shout from the rooftops to all the women here to get them to see how they, too, are victims of patriarchal oppression, that the gender pay gap is so real in Europe, and that they all pay a very heavy price for choosing motherhood. Their lack of political awareness weighs heavy on my chest.

How do I sustain myself against despair? How do I practise hope as a discipline? I feel quite certain that my attempts at mastering German and Italian are an extension of my feminist activism. I want to learn to speak their languages so that I can use words to tear off their blindfolds or the rose-tinted lenses through which they see the world. As immigrants, we are often consigned to be stuck facilitating the basic issue of earning a livelihood, we are now allowed the time to achieve fluency with the languages that aren't ours, and so resistance often becomes an inter-generational project. But I want to start doing the work now, I don't want to have to task our child with it. Yesterday, as he and I were prepping to make a Tenerina, a kind of brownie cake typical to the region of Ferrara in Italy, I thought back to baking with my father and sister throughout my childhood, and later with my niblings. As he licked the spatula the way my sister and I used to do, he said aloud, ‘happy'. It was the first time I had heard him use the word. I felt unexpectedly moved. Maybe these mundane joys to be found in small acts of resistance and rebellion are the only way out.

Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx

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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper