Poornima Manco

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A body beautiful

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Walking through the museum, I was struck by how fulsome the women appeared in the paintings. Their curvaceous bodies boasted rolls of fat, sweet little bellies, thighs that were broad and strong, breasts that were firm and ripe. They seemed neither ashamed, nor particularly concerned by their appearance. This, of course, was a painter’s perspective, and perhaps the women then were just as addled with insecurities, as they are now. However, for a very brief period, I was able to suspend all bodily angst, and gaze upon the beauty of the feminine form before norms and diktats started fashioning taste.

These were Renaissance painters who delighted in realism. Therefore, I must conclude, that the women they painted, were not too far removed from the women they saw in their everyday living. Compare that to the emaciated models that people the catwalks of Paris and Milan, and a strange dichotomy emerges. At what point did women stop looking like women in popular culture? When did having a BMI less than 18 constitute having the perfect figure?

I took my daughters along as I wanted them to be exposed to the Old Masters. See the interplay of light and shadows, observe the craftsmanship, the breathtaking talent of these amazing artists. Subliminally, however, I also wanted them to absorb the message that a woman’s body is a wondrous thing. It has the ability to create and sustain life within it. It is not merely a clothes horse. Having a thigh gap is by no means the apex of its achievement.

Sadly, as more young girls succumb to the lure of the fashion magazines, and to the peer pressure of having collar bones that could slice you in two, the incidence of anorexia and bulimia continue to rise.

As my ten year old looks down at the tiny swell of her stomach, and declares she needs to go on a diet, I have to turn my gaze inward, and ask myself, how much I am to blame as well. Every time I have sighed at a pair of trousers that don’t fit, or after a night of excess, vowed to rein it in. Every time I have rejected a dessert with a martyred air, what message have I relayed to my progeny? That denial is good? Virtuous even? That my being a size ten is more important than my being kind, intelligent, aware and grounded?

In examination of what constitutes beauty, I must examine not just what lies without, but also what lies within. An awareness, and a synergy of the two is perhaps the nearest realisation of a body beautiful.

Thought for the day

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Apologies for the hiatus. A series of unfortunate events have kept me house bound and bed ridden for a while. What I have discovered in the meantime is that medicine, particularly that which knocks you out, isn’t quite the hotbed of creativity. My thoughts have been a jumble, and I have been unproductive on most fronts.

What I have been unable to escape from is the constant reports of the latest atrocities being committed by the IS. It has made me wonder how quickly we become desensitised to violence. Is this why it takes even more ghastly acts to call attention to a cause? How soon before we become completely inured? Before the beheading of innocents or the mass abduction of young girls is passé? How many more depths have to be plumbed before we can reach the nadir?

The time of innocence is a brief few years at the very beginning of life, and that too, if one is lucky. The rest of the time is a quick unravelling of that naiveté. The world’s underbelly is an ugly place. To protect our children however, we disabuse them of their guilelessness, fill their heads with monsters, real or imagined. Hoping against hope that cynicism, mistrust and circumstances will protect them from the worst.

And all the while we wait for the next horror to be unleashed, the next act of savage barbarity to dominate the headlines, while we scurry about our daily tasks, averting our eyes and pinching our nostrils, from the stink of moral turpitude that emanates off humanity.

Who am I?

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The most rudimentary of questions. Yet the answer escapes most of us. Try and define yourself. Not describe, define. Who are you? Stripped down to the most elemental level. Are you brave? Are you a coward? Are you brutish or sophisticated? Are you conservative or liberal? Are you religious or an atheist? Who are you?

The answer is a complex one. And I’ll wager, not one you are expecting. The answer is: I do not know. I do not know how brave I am, till I am in a situation that requires courage. At that point, will I choose to save my skin or save another’s? I think I am sophisticated, till you put me in an unfamiliar milieu, and the social shorthand fails me. Then I appear brutish, unrefined and uncouth. I think I am liberal till my daughter brings home a boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks, and all at once, every bit of my socialism flies out of the window. I think I am religious, yet I laugh at the barbaric rituals and stone gods of the ostensibly primitive.

Any of this sound familiar?

We are all complex, multi layered, multi dimensional wonders of evolution. We are all a work in progress. What I am in this moment, I will not be in the next. Nor will you. Our experiences, our joys, our sorrows contribute to our own unique signatures.

Fundamentally though, we all believe that we are good people. From the terrorist who bombs a hundred people in a square, giving up his life for a cause, to the politician who bombs a country, in pursuit of a higher good. We believe we are good. But are we?

These moral complexities are the shifting sands that govern human nature.

Who am I? The song from Les Misérables where Jean Valjean questions his moral core is perhaps the best way to end this rambling, philosophical blog post. Who am I? I am me.

 

Sharia

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It is with growing horror and a deep sense of foreboding that I read about the re introduction of the Sharia law in the kingdom of Brunei. Sharia law, for those who are unfamiliar with it, is considered the infallible law of God in Islam. In its radical interpretation, music and dance are forbidden as are (very obviously) cigarettes and alcohol; there are medieval punishments for crimes like theft, and enforcement of attendance to regular prayer is brutal and swift. The introduction of Sharia has been a longstanding goal for many Islamist movements. Even as ISIS the breakaway extremist faction of the Al Qaeda, makes steady inroads into Iraq and neighbouring Syria, with an alarming speed, it is bringing these changes along in its wake.

Scarily, for the women in this part of the world, this will mean losing whatever little independence they had to begin with. Servility, subjugation, voicelessness, obedience and anonymity are bywords for the womenfolk under Sharia. In Brunei, where the plan is to introduce the law in three phases, the first will include fines and jail terms for unmarried women becoming pregnant. The second will incorporate punishments like whipping and amputations for alcohol consumption and theft. The third will be the imposition of stoning and death sentences for adultery, sodomy and murder. These punishments will apply not just to the locals but also to non-muslims.

It should come as no surprise that the judges, enforcers and authorities will primarily be male. Moderate Islamists have always understood and supported the role of women in society. How can a nation, a family, or a relationship thrive and prosper, if a significant proportion of the populace is metaphorically bound, gagged and blindfolded? Yet, in a return to the Dark ages, these laws aim to do just that. Women are seen as no more than baby making machines, with the added perk of being housemaids and nursemaids.

With a denial to basic freedom, to education and to any kind of joy in their lives, what kind of a future will emerge from these lands? For is it not the hand that rocks the cradle, that subliminally rules the world? If not in deed, then in desperation, there is bound to emerge a counter movement. One that will be spearheaded by brave souls like Malala Yousafzai. When that happens, and it will, it is women in the free world who must rise in support of our sisters. The time to be passive has long gone. What we are questioning and debating are not the tenets of a religious law, but our rights as humans to be accorded the respect and the dignity that should be the bedrock of all existence.

 

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Mind the gap

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Apologies for the l o n g gap between posts. Life has been exceedingly frenetic and I know that is a poor excuse, but it is nonetheless true. I write this past the witching hour, having just trawled through mountains of paperwork, with the prospect of correcting my daughter’s Kumon looming straight after. Can it get any worse? Oh yes it can. A sports day, a mid afternoon cocktail and dinner at a friend’s tomorrow. Whither the time to write? Add to that the perpetual jet lag, and you have all of the best excuses procrastination can offer up.

Needless to say, the voice of conscience and other writers’ diligence, stabs at me daily.

A couple of ideas are fermenting. Till then bear with me, and actually, don’t mind the gap too much.

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Language of Love

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Lately, I was sent a poem of tongue twisters. English words that were spelt in a similar fashion but were quite distinct from one another, in the way they were pronounced. Now, each language has its inherent vagaries, yet, I’ll wager its the English language that has more inconsistencies than you could shake a stick at. In its varied capriciousness are the contradictory proverbs that we are regularly assailed with.

How about: It’s better to be safe than sorry. (But) Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

Or: Distance makes the heart grow fonder. (But) Out of sight, out of mind.

And: Many hands make light work. (But) Too many cooks spoil the broth.

I’m sure you follow my drift. Interestingly enough, it is these very quirks and foibles that make English such a wonderful language to explore and try to master.

Language, for the most part, is seen as a means of communication. For writers, poets, orators, actors it is much more than just that. It is a living, breathing, ever evolving entity that facilitates a flow of ideas, art, information and in the process a little of the person enters into the medium. For anyone who has read Hemingway, or watched a performance by Olivier, or wept over a poem by Sylvia Plath, the language is but a step ladder into their souls.

I’ll close with the poem that gave birth to this blog post. It alternately amused me, confounded me and challenged me, but ultimately made me realise, that love – true love- is unconditional. And so, my love affair with the English language carries on.

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.
Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it’s written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation’s OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation — think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won’t it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It’s a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough —
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

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