growing up to feminism

My sister mentioned home grown feminism in her blog. Was there indeed something like that in our homes? At surface level, there seems to be no room for feminism or indeed any kind of radicalism in our kind of background.

But then just as feminism approaches us in the safe spaces of women’s colleges and from the approved habits of reading classics, it finds strands in the dampest of traditions and voices in the silences of history and memory. It creeps through the crevices of correct upbringing, through the pauses between the narration of stories and their moralistic conclusions. It soaks our consciousness through the women in our lives.

Through a mother who countered every outbreak of temper with- ‘this is not the attitude with which you can go out into the world and make your way in it’. Leaving no doubt that not ‘going out into the world’ was an option we didn’t have.

And whose deep affection for her sibling never stopped her from making it known what she wanted to study and what she ended up studying and who was to blame.

Through an aunt who had to give up her job because her husband was too busy climbing to the top to share in parenthood and who never stopped regretting it, and is never satisfied with the cliché that she is ‘behind’ his phenomenal success.

Through another aunt who was forever criticised for prioritising her job over family occasions and functions.

And another who started working at the age of 40 to prove a point and find her worth and revels in that space which not only keeps her sane, but is all her own.

Through a relative who had to drop out of school when she got married to a man 13 years her senior, but who took her 12^th standard exam when her children were at college.

And another whose minimal knowledge of English didn’t stop her from learning how to operate the computer, and use the internet.

Through the glowing admiration for and fond recollection of a great grandmother (a tonsured widow) by her sons and grandsons; their assertion that had she the opportunity she could have been the prime minister. What kind of role model did she and their memory of her make for their daughters?

Feminism also pokes us through the barbs directed at unwomanly women. And through the sympathy and condolences expressed to people with no sons. And the fear felt by the people with no sons when they read an ancient text detailing the awful fate of their souls as their pyres would not be lit by the rightful male progeny. And when some of them react to this fate with a laugh (however nervous) and a shrug, it is a triumph for feminism