In Which Punky Learns How to Break a Man. Literally, this time.

Toh beta, agar kisi aadmi ki backbone todhni ho, toh aise karna hai...

She's a witty, loud, strict but sweet, shaaka-polaa wearing lady. She could be my neighbour eating moongphali in the winter sun, and I won't bat an eyelid at that. But when she throws this opening line from a loudspeaker at a groggy me stifling an 8 am yawn, It's A Moment. Something snaps. 'Whatttt?? Woah.'


Memory Interlude. Scene from Kill Bill.

Pai Mei: [punches through a block of wood from three inches away] Since your arm now belongs to me, I want it strong. Can you do that?
The Bride: I can, but not that close.
Pai Mei: Then you can't do it. What if your enemy is three inches in front of you, what do you do then? Curl into a ball? Or do you put your fist through him?


That was just the first day. 10 days later, I don't bat an eyelid when she orders me, 'Aadmi ke paet ka maalpani bahar nikaal ke laana hai', while I practice the Fingertip Short Punch. I don't flinch when she tells me how to identify the effectiveness of my thwack by the length of the man's big, heaving, breathless gulp. No, I don't think it's odd when she tells me that what a man deserves for getting closer than I'd like, is a swift, dagger-sharp yanking of his elbow joint. There's a thin line between self-defence and goondi-gardi at the Delhi Police Self Defence camp for women that I'm attending. And frankly my dear, I'll be the last one to complain.


For me, that first day was a revelation. Revelation that I could actually do away with a lot of the 'but's that chased my oft-repeated 'I love being a woman' line. A bit of a eureka! moment. The kind that you get, say for instance, when you discover much after you've been at it, that sex can be fun --- not just 'Awkwardddd!!' or something one ought to Figure the Fuss About, or to follow diligently, like a flowchart progression titled 'This is How it's Done'. 'Twas my Hey-I'm-A-Woman-No-You-Don't-Mess-With-Me moment. Here I was, standing in a playground, along with 300 girls and women, some still in frocks while others were wearing their hair grey. And we were not being asked to be sweet, loving, peacemaking, 'adjisting' women. We were being asked to be jaw-snapping, fire-spitting, hot-fiery-lava-bursting angry. So angry, we could kill a man who'd wronged us. Pierce our nails into his eyes, dig our elbows into his temples, shatter his nose, batter his chin with our knuckles, make him writhe in agony with a precise, effective, swift kick in the groin.



'APNA GUSSAA NIKAALO!', my instructor bellowed. And right there, I suffered a tiny, silent, momentuous second of shock. Because I realised that no one had ever said that to me. Despite my liberal upbringing, my loving parents who always encouraged me to express myself, experience everything (even let me do all the nasty things as long I didn't tell them). Despite my loving girlfriends who gathered me together on zillions of teary broken-heart nights and sterile-disappointment days. My mentors, my lovers, my rolemodels. Nobody ever asked me to let my anger out (hell, not even Madonna, I'm thinking, hurt, in retrospect). To think that all that pent-up anger I'd carried with me all these years, had just been rotting, pulsing, lashing under a growing, groaning weight. A moment of recognition too: So this was that muffled stab I felt every time my rational self told me to 'not create a scene', every time I read about 18-month-old girls being raped, every time I looked at a man backpacking alone, unobserved, unassaulted.



What I'd needed all along, was for a Delhi Police woman inspector to tell me, grinning, as she demonstrated a crisp, whack-away chin-elbow punch, 'yeh jo aapki nazuk-nazuk kalaiyaan hain na, in ko aise use karna hai .'What I needed was a situation in which I didn't have to check my internal 'haww' if she told me, "Aise punch maaro ki aadmi ko pataa bhi na chaley. Jab naak se khoon bahegaa na, tab pataa chalega us ko..." What I needed, was a kind, stern woman who'd yell at me 'Gussaa nikaalo!!' in ear-stinging, angry, Caps Lock mode, so I could yell back an undiluted reaction without chasing even a split-second of thinking. I screamed. So hard that I had to dam up the tears, so hard that I felt a rush of indescribably happy relief and blink-blink surprise-shock at how so many volatile memories had come tumbling out of nowhere, found form, and dissipated into thin air.



When was the last time an aunty (hell, even a shrink) asked you to scream the living daylights out of everyone around you? Like, a holler as loud as Hero Hiralal against the banyan tree? Rapidly fading memory, eh? I had to jog my memory far back too, through half a dozen previous lives and countless virtual nightmares, before I could remember how to do it, how to push the 'reasonable' limits. And when I did yell that guttural 'hey!!' it came out so angry, so red, so trembling-pulsing with emotional release, the ghissu in me came to terms with the fact that Aristotelian catharsis is SHIT if it isn't exactly this.



A little less of the turbulence of adolescence in me now. But the methodical OCD aunty in me isn't ready to yield yet. She loves making lists, and at the moment her To Do list reads thus, dangerously so: Find Pai Mei, learn the Five Point Exploding Heart maneouvre, put on a yellow jumpsuit, go on a Crazy 88 slaughter rampage! I've even got my killer Bride liner ready, all the pauses and stresses practiced in front of the mirror even: 'You and I have unfinished business.'