Poornima Manco

Author

2022

To shrink or to expand?

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Growing up in a largely patriarchal society, I knew just when to shut up. I knew when to ingratiate, who to impress, how to accept “well-meaning” advice, how to smile through thinly veiled insults, laugh at inappropriate jokes, grin and bear the sanctimony of others, and how never ever to show my true self to anyone except my close family and friends. Why? Because shrinking to fit expectations was the norm. Good girls behaved a certain way, and I so desperately wanted to be a good girl and fit in.

Now and again, a certain rebelliousness would possess me, and quite without meaning to, I would react in an unwholesome manner, a manner that did not befit a young lady from a certain class of society who was ordinarily so good at toeing the line. These aberrations were hastily covered up or apologised for, and all was well again. Strangely, while my conscious self knew that to survive and thrive in my environs, I needed to conform, there was another, deeply hidden part inside of me, a subliminal side, that was starting to chafe against these strictures.

Still, while in my early twenties, I had neither the exposure nor the confidence to speak up and challenge the status quo.

When I moved from India to the United Kingdom, a fresh challenge confronted me. Here, I was an immigrant. A minority who needed once again to shrink and adapt and never raise my head above the parapet. Why? Because it was someone else’s land and someone else’s rules. While all the previous strictures had fallen away, the ones I faced now were more difficult to define or pin down. I was brown, therefore I had to find my place amongst other brown/black people. I’d grown up in India, therefore my accent “othered” me straight away. I did a job that was out of the ordinary for most Asians, and therefore had to reinforce my “good girl” credentials by being even more wholesome, approachable, and down-to-earth.

I really had no idea who I was anymore.

Marriage, babies, moving home, establishing myself in my career took the better part of the next two decades. Slowly, I started to discover myself, to find out what I liked and didn’t like, how much I’d put up with and just where my tolerance would end. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t a linear process. Messy and uncomfortable at times, painful at others, layers of self-applied masks were being peeled away year after year, leaving me raw and exposed. But it felt good. It felt like the real me was finally emerging after years of hibernating, of lying in wait for the perfect moment to show the world that I no longer cared for its boundaries or its pigeon-holes.

But now I wonder if I’ve gone too far?

Suddenly, I’m not sure I like this new me. This me who is combative and a tad too feisty. This me who bristles and snaps back at the slightest provocation; takes umbrage over perceived slights, expects (even demands) respect in every aspect of life. Who is this person who lives in a perpetual state of annoyance at the inequities and inequalities of the world? Who is this person who takes every contrary statement as a personal affront?

Do I even like this woman?

I recognise that years of suppression, of pent-up frustration, have finally erupted in this lava-like anger against anyone who thinks they can patronise, belittle, disrespect, overlook, or discriminate against me. Years of letting things go have morphed into not letting anything pass without objecting or protesting. I stand my ground now, everywhere and every time. And yes, it satisfies and fulfils me on multiple levels. But does it make me happy? Not always.

So, a balance needs to be achieved. I shrunk for years, and I have expanded in the last decade or so. Neither was without its benefits or pitfalls. Yet, here I am, examining who I am once again.

I want to be someone my daughters can look up to. I want to be a peer that my contemporaries respect and like, and don’t walk on eggshells around. I want to be the sort of person I’d like to be friends with.

There will be occasions I’ll need to shrink to allow for peace, when a skirmish will be just that and not worth the effort. There will be times I will need to expand to fight my corner because it’s not just about me, but also who and what I represent. Those moments will be worth going to battle for.

I am a work in progress. We are all works in progress. And if we’re willing to learn, then life is the greatest teacher of all. That much I do know. What I also know is that above all else, I want to grow into a person who I can live with. I want to go to bed with a clear conscience and wake up feeling positive about the day ahead.

Now, that is a goal worth striving for.

 

 

A Curious Incident in the Post Office

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It was a Saturday morning, and I was feeling quite Zen. I’d just come back from doing a Body Balance class at the gym. The sun was shining and life felt good. There was an Amazon package I needed to return, so off I trotted to our local Post Office/ Newsagent, hoping to tick off at least one chore on a long to-do list for the day.

At the Post Office, I stood behind an older man in the queue as he communicated with the Bangladeshi gentleman serving him. I detected an American accent and wondered to myself whether he lived locally while mentally working out what else needed doing after this errand. Meanwhile, I spotted that there was in fact another customer, a pink-haired lady standing to one side waiting her turn after the American man.

So far, so very normal.

Then, the Bangladeshi shop assistant spotted the package in my hand and said, “Madam, the post has already gone for the day. The next one is on Monday…”

I replied, “That’s okay. I don’t mind when it goes out. I just need to drop it off…”

Before I could say any more, the American man turned around and snarled at me, ” I was here FIRST! DO NOT PUSH AHEAD OF ME!!!”

Startled, I responded, “Hey! It was the assistant who spoke to me first…”

He turned around again and shouted, “BACK OFF AND SHUT UP!”

His entire body was radiating rage. If he could have reached forward and hit me, he would have. There was spittle foaming at the corners of his mouth and he narrowed his eyes at me, as if just waiting for one more word so that he could smack me. When I refused to engage, he turned his back on me.

At this point, I noticed that he was shaking while counting the money he had withdrawn. I stepped farther away, sensing all was not right with this man. The woman who had been witness to all of this spoke up, saying, “There is no need to be this rude. She was not interrupting your transaction. The postmaster addressed her first.”

At this, he growled at her, “SHUT UP! DON’T TALK TO ME!”

We exchanged glances, and she mouthed, “Americans!”

Now, before I proceed further with this story, I must add that I have plenty of American friends, acquaintances and colleagues who are the loveliest people. Kind, thoughtful, giving, polite and pleasant. He was NOT one of them.

I mouthed back, “Yeah, an ugly one.”

At this, he snapped, “It’s not because I’m American, okay? You were rude!”

We both retaliated with, “No, YOU were rude! We were just waiting patiently in the queue.”

He went back to counting the money, switching from being horrible to us to being polite to the postmaster. At one point, even the postmaster looked at me and gave a tiny shrug, as if to say, “I don’t know what’s wrong with this guy?”

A few minutes elapsed while the lady and I chatted about the sad state of all the banks closing down in the area. I was still shaken from the encounter, but didn’t want him to sense that he’d frightened me in any way. He was a bully, and I refused to give him the satisfaction.

Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, he turned around and said, “I’m sorry.”

The lady looked at him and said, “I get it. It is stressful that all the banks in the area have shut down, and that you need to come to the Post Office now to withdraw money. Even so, there was no need for that sort of behaviour.”

He was still shaking and looking at her when she responded softly, “Alright, I forgive you.”

Then he turned and gave me a supercilious look, waiting for me to say the same. I looked him straight in the eye and said, “No, I don’t forgive you. Your behaviour and your language were uncalled for. That was an unprovoked attack, and no, I won’t forgive you.”

“Fine,” he muttered, “don’t forgive me then.”

When he’d finished counting his money, he peeled off £20 and handed it to the lady, saying, “Here, buy yourself something with this.”

She pocketed it happily, saying, “Thanks, I will.”

He then held out another £20 to me.

I took another step back.

“No, thank you. I don’t want your money! Back off from me right now!” I didn’t raise my voice, but I was very firm as I said this, resolute that this man’s unwarranted behaviour would remain unforgiven, at least by me.

He shrugged, threw me a dirty look, and walked out the door.

After this entire incident, the Bangladeshi shop assistant felt sorry enough for me to take my package for a Monday pickup.

 

My questions are:

Was I wrong not to forgive him in the first place?

Was he trying to buy my forgiveness?

Can money really be the answer to bad behaviour?

 

Upon reflection, I have forgiven him. Clearly, he wasn’t a well man. The problem could be psychological or physical, maybe he has a very stressful life. I’ll never know. But I am proud of myself in that I refused to be bought. My integrity and self-respect were not for sale. Perhaps my refusal of his money will make him reflect, too. Maybe he’ll learn a little something from this incident as well.

People are not commodities. Treat everyone with the respect that you wish to be accorded. A heartfelt apology is worth far more than all £20 notes you might throw around.

What do you think?

 

All of Her

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Somewhere within her there is a little girl of eight. She waits for her mother to return from work, scared of the scolding her report card will beget, yet secure in the love and forgiveness that will inevitably follow. She listens to her father at the dinner table as he talks of his clients and their problems, the gentle wisdom he imparts daily underlined by the kindness flowing through his veins. At night, she weaves dreams around amorphous futures before falling deeply and heavily into slumber’s arms.

Somewhere within her, there is a rebellious teenager of sixteen. She curses her parents under her breath, planning elaborate schemes to hoodwink them and following through with none. Her friends are her life and she spends hours on the phone with them, talking about everything and nothing, all at once. She nurses a crush on the neighbourhood boy, watching him covertly as he walks his dog in the evening. She ignores him on the street when he smiles at her, because “good girls” don’t return male attention. But she is quietly devastated when he finds himself a pretty girlfriend, someone far prettier than her.

Somewhere within her is a young woman of twenty-one. She stands on the threshold of her adult life, ready to embark upon an adventure. Excited, nervous, unprepared, she is sad to leave home but wondrous at the possibilities ahead of her. “This,“ she whispers to herself, “is when I can truly begin to live on my own terms.” It’s not until much later that she realises that with freedom comes responsibility. And bills. Lots and lots of bills.

Somewhere within her is a thirty-year-old new mother, cradling her month-old baby, who doesn’t stop crying. Exhausted, she cries alongside. Surrounded by men – husband, father, father-in-law – who are no good to her at a time like this, she yearns for a woman’s touch, someone who will reassure her that this too shall pass, that childbearing and rearing isn’t an impossible task. There is no one who can replace her mother, who is long gone. She misses her desperately, the hollowness inside threatening to engulf her. Friends step in, clumsily, but they comfort her far more than the men can.

Somewhere within her is a forty-year-old who still looks young and alluring. No longer in love with her husband, she enjoys the attention that other men give her. She flirts – coy and cooing, revelling in the excitement and danger of uncharted terrain. In the dying embers of her youth, she feels alive again. No longer strait-jacketed by society’s mores and values, she wants to soar above the labels of wife and mother. She wants to forge ahead in her career, eager to shed the ties that hold her back – friends and family who caution and counsel her. She wants to define herself as someone important, someone worth knowing, someone others aspire to emulate.

Somewhere within her is a fifty-year-old divorcee who doesn’t know who she is anymore. Her husband has left, the children have moved away; the once dazzling career has fizzled; the paramours have melted away, and no, she isn’t someone important or worth knowing. She is just another anonymous woman living an anonymous life, searching for love on the internet. Her single status has left her friendless, a scarlet letter invisibly tattooed on her person declaring that she might poach on other women’s territories. She is afraid of loneliness, of old age, of dying.

Somewhere within her is a sixty-five-year-old grey-haired granny who is slightly hard of hearing. She, who had made peace with her singlehood before finding love with her husband again. They have both wandered and returned, this time to a quieter, more sedate love, one that will last the distance. Suddenly, her life is full to the brim with children, her children’s children and the school runs and coffee mornings that she missed out on the first time round chasing a career. She marvels at life’s bounty, crossing her fingers daily, praying that her luck doesn’t run out again.

Somewhere within her is a seventy-two-year-old widow, crying over wasted years, bloated egos and stupid, ridiculous, futile arguments. She misses everything about him, even his habit of leaving the cap off the toothpaste tube. Her children rally around her, reminding her of the good times, of what she still has, of what they created together. She wonders how her own father managed for two decades without her mother, how he carried on being a parent while putting a full-stop to being a spouse? She knows that the world still turns and she must turn with it, as others before her have done.

Somewhere within her is an eighty-five-year-old woman with arthritis, a heart condition and two hip replacements. She no longer cares she isn’t someone important, because she knows that in her own small way, she is. There aren’t many of her peers left, but those that are still meet monthly for a long and leisurely lunch. They discuss their families, the state of the planet, their misspent youths and laugh as only the young or the very old can – uninhibited and unashamed. They don’t understand the world anymore, feeling out of touch with everything, but they don’t care what anyone thinks of them, either. They sit comfortably in their wrinkled skins, free from the shackles of youth and vanity.

Somewhere within her is a ninety-year-old woman ready to give up her mortal coil. Life is a drag, and the only thing she looks forward to now are the rare visits from her great-grandchildren. Adults bore her while children delight her. In their innocence, she sees the only remaining purity in an increasingly depraved and insane world. Every morning, she wakes up and sighs that she is still alive. She prays for death; she invites it into her dreams, hoping it will step out of them and into her life someday soon. She waits and waits and waits, her hands crossed in her lap, her coffee cooling on the table beside her.

The Politics of Pain

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Are you someone who wears their heart on their sleeve? Or are you someone who retreats to a quiet corner to lick your wounds? Do you put a brave face on when your world is falling apart? Or do you weep openly, displaying your anguish for all to see?

What is the politics of pain?

Does displaying a stiff upper lip make you into an unfeeling monster? Does being the opposite make you into a drama queen?

Honestly, I don’t know. All I know is that the way I’ve handled pain has swung both ways. In some instances, I’ve wanted, even needed, the acknowledgement of my tragedy, the sympathy that comes along with that acknowledgement, the understanding that something earth-shattering has occurred and life will never be the same hereafter. At other times, my pain has felt so private that exposing it to the world has felt like a betrayal of my soul. This is pain that I need to process alone, in my own time, allowing the healing to occur without the prying eyes and the whispered platitudes of all and sundry. Which is the correct way? Maybe neither, maybe both.

I read an article recently in which the writer skewered all those who tried to offer her platitudes after the death of her partner and brother in quick succession. She was sick of being “othered”, of her tragedies being reduced to a litany of “atleasts”. We’ve all been there. On both sides of the equation. If you’ve ever suffered a loss, you know how difficult it is to squeeze comfort out of the quotidian banalities that are proffered by the people surrounding you. If you are the one offering the banal and overused words of comfort, you know how difficult it is to say something truly profound, something that can ease the pain, even if only for a short while. As humans, we are ill-equipped to deal with emotional pain. The irony is that this pain is something we will encounter several times over in our lifetimes.

Our responses to our suffering are born out of conditioning. If you come from a culture where mourning is done vocally and proudly, then it can seem perplexing when your efforts to condole are dismissed summarily by a person whose cultural conditioning primes them to mourn alone. If you derive succour from a public outpouring of sympathy, then a closed door response may seem odd to you. Conversely, if you cannot bear for the world and its wife to know your business, you may not be able to wrap your head around someone who actively seeks attention for their state.

There is a lady I follow on Instagram. She is an influencer. Last year, the most awful tragedy befell her when her child committed suicide. For weeks afterwards there was no sign of her on the social media platform, but when she returned, she seemed to be back on form doing what she had always done. I wondered how she could carry on after something so cataclysmic had occurred? How could she smile, try on new outfits and twirl in front of the camera? How?

Then I checked myself. What did I know of her pain, of how many tears she shed daily, of how she mourned her child? How much courage it must have taken her to just get out of bed! She was coping in the only way she knew how, by carrying on with life. Had this life changed forever? Yes, it had. She just refused to show how much to the world. And who was I to judge?

Ultimately, loss and pain, tragedy and grief, spare no one. How we deal with and react to, how we reach out and sympathise, are deeply personal responses with no right or wrong. If kindness and understanding form the basis of all our interactions, the politics of pain becomes moot.

“We look before and after, And pine for what is not; Our sincerest laughter With some pain is fraught; Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.”

– Percy Bysshe Shelley.

The Male Gaze

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Some time ago, a reviewer upbraided me for describing a woman in my book with a very ‘male gaze’. The criticism wasn’t entirely unwarranted, as the person describing the woman was a man, and for reasons of authenticity, I had to inhabit his skin and describe her through his eyes. However, her remark got me wondering. How often do we view ourselves and other women through the prism of a man’s expectations?

Many, many years ago, when I was in my early twenties, I came to England on a holiday with a female friend. For a short while, we intended to stay with her male cousin in his house in Kent. I had never met him before, and had zero expectations. But as soon as we met, I could see him sizing me up, and finding that I wasn’t as attractive as he’d been led to believe. How do I know this? I overheard a conversation he had with his friend over the phone where he described me as “disappointing”. As a twenty-something year old, I took his evaluation to heart, judging myself as harshly as he had judged me.

Now when I look back, the only “disappointing” thing I find about myself is that I couldn’t recognise an idiot when I saw one. He was a spoiled, entitled brat, used to women falling at his feet, and the many incidents that followed with him at the centre would make for a very interesting tale. However, I will save that for a future retelling.

Over the years, I’ve come to understand that no one can live up to the ideal standards that men enforce upon women. And I see women everywhere trying. No matter what we tell ourselves, we have internalised these incredibly harsh beauty standards within us and convinced ourselves that we primp and preen for no one else but our own selves. Really?

Don’t get me wrong – for the better part of my own life, I did the same. More the fool me!

There is nothing wrong with wanting to look attractive, to wanting to look your best at any age, whatever your best may be. But it is important to ask whose yardstick are you living by?

Recently I stumbled upon an article describing Kim Kardashian’s revenge body. What on earth is a revenge body I wondered? Well, the article enlightened me. After her divorce from Kanye West, Kim Kardashian had embarked upon a self-improvement endeavour which involved eating a plant-based diet, overhauling her exercise regime and removing her famous bum-implants. Naturally, this sent the netizens into a frenzy, each one proclaiming how “fabulous” Kim was looking post-breakup. A million or more young girls, fans of the canny businesswoman, most likely internalised the message that heartbreak didn’t mean diving into the nearest tub of Haagen-Dazs. Instead, it meant a punishing regimen of readying oneself for the next potential partner.

One can be the most shiny, beautiful self on the outside, but if it does not match up to the inside, it is a doomed undertaking.

Ageism, sexism, misogyny are the favoured sons of patriarchy. I see examples of women bending over backwards trying to adhere to the impossible criteria of youth, beauty and attractiveness imposed upon them by male-led institutions and thought processes. Actresses that starve their bodies and plump their faces, erasing every facial expression while erasing their wrinkles. Pre-teens who wear overtly sexualised clothing because they want to appear seductive. Young girls who pout and pirouette in their smalls in front of the camera, feeding the lusts of perverts, in the belief that they are ‘free’ to explore their sexuality as they will.

The ‘Male Gaze’ has us pinned against a wall, squirming like insects, performing haplessly and fighting a losing battle in the mistaken belief that we hold the cards. We don’t. We never have. But that’s not to say we never will.

Let us reclaim the narrative of our bodies and our minds. Our journey is ours alone, and let it be one that is empathetic to the process of ageing, understanding to the process of growing up, inclusive of every shape, size and colour, and above all, divorced from the ill effects of the male gaze.

 

 

 

The Flip Side

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A very long time ago, when my mother was still alive and too unwell to venture out of the house, she would regale me with stories of the movies she had seen over the week, or television shows that had captured her attention. As she would break it down scene by scene, sometimes I’d suppress my yawns, wondering why she spoke of little else. Over twenty years later, I’ve come to realise that at that moment, those movies and those television shows were her window to the world. Restricted as she was, because of her health, her only contact with the outside was through the people who visited her sporadically or through these programmes that allowed her to escape the misery of her ill-health.

In the last ten days, this has once again come home to me. On the 1st of January I tested positive for Covid, and was told to isolate until the 10th of the month. For the first four or five days, I was too tired and unwell for it to bother me much. Once I had recovered, however, I felt a bit like a caged animal. Albeit in a very nice cage, surrounded by a loving family. Guess what I’ve done in the past ten days? Yes, you guessed right! Binge watched multiple shows and movies that were on my list, chewed through a few books and newspaper articles, and worked on my own book, of course.

Maybe it’s the fact that I watched these programmes back to back, or that I read a short story that aligned perfectly with what I was thinking, but I felt compelled to write a blog post. I hope you don’t need to suppress any yawns as I detail what I found fascinating and what completely disheartened me, but here goes.

The first show I watched was the excellent BBC miniseries: A Very British Scandal. This was a retelling of the messy, scandalous, and extremely expensive divorce between the Duke of Argyll and his third wife, played by the fabulous Claire Foy. Neither character was sympathetic. They were both vainglorious, petty, cruel, adulterous and thoroughly spoilt. Yet, the difference lay in the way they were treated by society and by the courts. While the Duke’s reprehensible behaviour was condoned, forgiven or lauded, the Duchess was shamed publicly for having the same sexual appetites as her husband. What was good for the gander was most definitely not good for the goose here. ‘Slut-shaming’, a modern phrase, has been used in many other guises over the ages to vilify women if, Heaven forbid, they strayed from the morally upright path designated by men for them.

Yet, it’s not just men who practice these double standards. In the brilliant ‘Mrs America’, also showing on the BBC, it was women who brought down other women. Why? Because in the second wave of Feminism, when America was ripe for the Equal Rights Amendment to pass, a group of mid-western housewives, led by the indomitable Phyliss Schlafly, opposed, created obstacles, campaigned against ERA, and publicly defended their right to be stay-at-home wives and mothers, happy to play second fiddle to the men in their lives. Fighting against the very thing that would put men and women on an equal footing, creating deep political divisions between the Democrats and Republicans based on ‘liberal’ and ‘home-grown’ values, these women were happy to lop off the branch they were sitting on, never once cognisant of the great harm they were doing to their own sex.

In India, patriarchy is thriving, thank you very much. In the subtle, nuanced and careful examination of what’s happening to the forests in India, Vidya Balan’s Chief Forest Officer in the movie ‘Sherni’, is tasked with finding a man-eating tigress. There’s politics and corruption at work here, there’s ambition and a complete disregard of the environment, but there’s also misogyny, blind-siding and a patronising “she’s a little woman” attitude that permeates all her interactions with her male superiors. The end is bittersweet because it shows that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

I am an avowed feminist, and watching women carve out their place in the world, demanding to be seen as equals, gives me great joy. However, when the establishment turns against them, when their own sex drags them down, and when centuries of patriarchy override the little progress that has been achieved, it also fills me with great despair.

What if things were different? So different that they were upside down?

Read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s speculative ‘The Visit’ to examine a world where women are the ones making the rules. The men are stay-at-home dads or working menial jobs. They are fined and imprisoned for masturbation, as that’s seen as a waste of life-giving sperm. They have to turn a blind eye to their wives’ affairs, submit to the indignity of being questioned over their household finances, and harangued for daring to venture out after a certain hour. Their lives, their minds, their bodies are not their own. Can you picture it?

I can bet you a million pounds that a world like that could never come to pass. Men would shout “inequality” until their voices were hoarse. Then, why can’t we, as women living in the 21st century, ask for the same consideration?

Rant over.

The battle carries on.