Anger and Amnesia

(Published in First City magazine, February 2013).

“Toh beta, agar kisi aadmi ki backbone todhni ho, toh aise karna hai...” She was a loud but sweet, shaaka-polaa-wearing lady. She could be my neighbour eating moongphali in the winter sun; no I wouldn’t bat an eyelid at that. But when she hurled that opening line from a loudspeaker at a groggy me stifling an 8 am yawn, It Was a Moment. Something snapped; I uttered rather with an eloquence most unbecoming of my writerly conceits: ‘Hain?’

That was just the first day. 10 days later, I didn’t bat an eyelid when she ordered me, 'Aadmi ke paet ka maalpani bahar nikaal ke laana hai', while I practiced the Fingertip Short Punch. I didn’t flinch when she told me how to identify the effectiveness of my thwack by the length of the man's big, heaving, breathless gulp. No, I didn’t at all think it odd when she told me that what a man deserves for getting closer than I'd like, is a swift, dagger-sharp yanking of his elbow joint. I didn’t even think it was odd to practice my homework on the unsuspecting Husband. At the Delhi Police Self Defence camp for women that I was attending, there was a thin line between self-defence and goondi-gardi. Clearly, I had no complaints about that little fact.

Here I was, standing in a playground, along with 300 girls and women (among them, inexplicably, my mother-in-law). Some still in frocks; others wearing their hair grey. Here, I was not pretending to do my daily self-flagellator-style writerly activities: I was not engaging in compulsive note-making, I was not indulging in amicable self-scrutiny and wound-fingering, no. I was not blowing my large, combustible, spillage-prone emotions into word-balloons, or neck-wringing them into sentence-shapes. I was not taking it all in by slow, silent osmosis; I was not patiently engaging with the world so I could find a way to engage with myself in a civilised, intellectual, controlled manner. I was doing the opposite. I was no friggin’ writer. I was part of a near-mob of women who were not the usual sweet, loving, peacemaking, 'adjisting' type. We were 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. I suffered a tiny, silent, momentuous second of shock. Because I instinctively knew that no one had ever said those words to me. Despite my three decades and more of copious note-taking from conversations. Despite my loving parents who gave me a liberal upbringing full of encouragement to express myself, even wildly; to experience everything, even the nasty things (as long I didn't tell them, that is). My mentors, my lovers, my role models. Nobody ever asked me to let my anger out (hell, not even Madonna, I'm thinking, hurt, in retrospect). To think that it was this unfaced, pent-up anger I'd carried with me all these years: rotting, pulsing, lashing under its growing, groaning weight. That 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.

It was a moment of recognition, that my life in this city hasn’t at all been what I imagine it to be. I imagine that I am a remember-er. The writer in the city, going about her self-appointed, self-righteous task of collecting all the little details in sweet little memory-jars. But living one’s image of oneself is not easy; perhaps it is impossible, in my city Dilli. What I really do in this city, this grand template that throws so many notes at me all day - flowers, thorns, nails, warts and all – is live between the two oscillatory worlds of anger and amnesia. They both taught me the survival trick to wade through a day in this city. It goes like this: Dilli provokes, I feel imploding anger, I forget to breathe, life becomes intolerable, cruel, incomprehensible, unbearable. A safety valve clicks into action; I inhale; I forget for some time; I remember selectively and write sweet columns celebrating irony; I resolve it all momentarily. Until a man with perfectly clear vision walks out of the Metro station and right into my chest. I stand there, staring, mute, my careful writerly eloquence buried under a thousand bricks of red-hot, lead-heavy anger. Safety valve clicks; I breathe; I walk. The embers throb under layers of calm.

What I'd needed all along, was for a Delhi Police aunty inspector to tell me, grinning, as she demonstrated a crisp, whack-away chin-elbow punch, “Scream, ‘HEY!’ The loudest you can!.” What I needed was that kind, stern aunty to yell at me 'Gussaa nikaalo!!' in ear-stinging, angry, Caps Lock mode while I was trying to jog my memory through half a dozen previous lives and countless virtual nightmares, wondering if I could remember how to do it, how to push the 'reasonable' limits. I needed her electric shock of a bellow to hit me hard, so I could yell back an undiluted reaction, without chasing even that split-second of thinking.

I screamed. That guttural ‘hey!!' came out so angry, so red, so trembling-pulsing with emotional release. She screamed, I screamed. So hard I had to dam up the involuntary tears, the terrifying inexplicable sadness I always feel, underneath it all. I punched the air with more screams; for once, I didn’t care to stop and take notes. I felt a rush of indescribably happy relief and blink-blink surprise-shock at how so many volatile memories were coming tumbling out of nowhere, finding form, and dissipating into thin air. And perhaps only for that one moment in my life, I felt no regret that I could not collect any of them, that I had failed as a writer during those brief and enormous moments - larger than me, or this city, than me in this city.

WHAT’S KEEPING THE DILLIWALI SANE
When she’s not hollering randomly? Plotting world domination. Fancying herself The Bride on a Kill Bill rampage. Making things; chasing catharsis of the silly DIY kind, with make-it-at-home pepper spray. Don’t believe me? Then do it yourself, on the ItsHandMade blog. The feisty ladies who run this ecommerce site are crafty divas in their own right, and post free DIYs on the website’s blog. Among them are the DIY Pepper spray, and whole lot of other fun peacetime things such as cereal box diaries, chalkboard placemats, magic jars and photo holders made out of old paperbacks. Best thing: Lotsa photos of the step-by-step kind, which makes everything look so unintimidatingly easy. Better than the best thing: They give the cutest tips along with the directions. My favourite from the Pepper Spray post: “Don’t practice on anyone. Just have trust in your potion. It is at its best for two weeks. After that, you might want to change the solution. If you feel it’s a waste, then you can spray it on some omelettes before you change into a new batch.”

Just do it at www.itshandmade.in/blog.

(Swaati Chattopadhyay is a writer, dancer, compulsive analogy-weaver, who has a happily complicated relationship with her frog-in-a-Delhi-well life. There’s nothing she’d love more than a piece of your mind in her inbox, at delusionaldilliwali@gmail.com).