Our motto? We will not allow one of our own to be exploited by the world — not on our watch, certainly not if we can help it
Even as the entire nation celebrated Diwali, seven women channeled their grief for a magnificent cause and mourned the loss of a dear friend. Representation pic/AFP
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They were driven by rage, not vengeance, and were able to channel their grief for a magnificent cause. Like them, I too found myself still mourning the tragic loss of Monika Ghurde. It has been inexplicable; wrestling with such boundless sorrow over the horrific death of someone I was still getting to know, to know that this irreversible event has already had an indelible effect on me, shaking me to my very core. So, over the many hours that marked October 30, as I read the seven obituaries by seven of Monika’s friends that had been synchronised to appear across seven different publications, I started to heal a little. What I found most redemptive, besides the exquisitely penned eulogies to someone who was deserving of every single word, was the confirmation of my intuition about the solidarity of the sisterhood. We had, once again, proved that we would not allow one of our own to be exploited by the world, not on our watch, not if we could help it.
This word — sisterhood — is one I’ve found myself clinging to for the last five years, as a woman, as a writer, as a woman writer, and as a woman writer who has chosen to live an independent, unconventional life. Women have been my comfort and my deepest strength ever since I began to find myself veering towards such a decision. When Margaret Mascarenhas, one of the seven writers, for instance, introduced me and my book at its launch at Literati in Goa, a bookstore run by another amazing woman, Diviya, she mused to the audience (which had Monika among them) about how we had met. Not having ever met her before, I’d actually just cold-called her and asked if I could come live with her for a day or two because I happened to be in her neck of the woods. The knowledge that what we had in common was the same male abuser motivated me to befriend her. The male writer in question had taken great pains to vilify Margaret on various public and private forums, which made me increasingly suspicious. All these years later, I find I’m strangely grateful to him. His indecency motivated our connection, and Margaret and I remain among each other’s fiercest supporters.
I feel quite privileged to claim the other six women, too, as dear friends I’ve either gotten to know or am still getting to know as our lives unfold; some, like Arundhati Subramaniam, I’ve known since I was 17, while others, like Tishani Doshi, who I fell in love with recently in Melbourne, and Katharina, at whose exhibition I was invited to read excerpts from my book in Goa, are women whose friendships I am still discovering. Akanksha Sharma, the youngest of the lot, is one of the most wondrous people I know, and I have relished watching her grow into an amazing designer and human being.
Deepti Kapoor and Amrita Narayanan are my writerly contemporaries, two women who have been pushing the textual boundaries of women’s sexuality.
We always hear talk about boys’ clubs. How so much lobbying and power mongering happens at the behest of male friendships. Men are never questioned when they choose their friendships over their ethics, even if it means enabling abusers (think Tarun Tejpal). And yet, I read so many comments by male readers who were confused by the gesture these seven women made. Some had the audacity to ask what the point of it all was, or why these women had taken more than a week to publicly respond to Monika’s death. While they were helping each other grieve, certain male writers seized the opportunity to feign their affection for Monika and insensitively name-drop through their unwarranted obituaries, even maligning the victim, while the media peddled in gory details, sensationalising what was a horrific crime against all independent women, even at the cost of underreporting other similar tragedies.
Reading the seven pieces restored my faith not in humanity but in what I call The Sisterhood of the Travelling Feminists — the very same sisterhood that has been there for me through thick and thin, that counts among its members a very vast range of women artists and writers, designers and editors. Women who have all struggled to arrive at where they are now with very little help from their male counterparts. Their message this Diwali was loud and clear — that we will not stand for gendered injustice, we will not allow for erasures, that our solidarity is imposing, that when we come together our individual lights shine stronger and brighter than the youngest star, that, despite all our differences, our faith in each other is so unwavering we shall not be moved.
Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputed art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx. Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
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