radha

i always wanted to be radha when i would dance in school , it was such a gratifying feeling being the lead dancer.
often i wondered was love so great , that she left her family for the love of lord krishna , was she never pointed at, called names?
strange isnt it, she was i am sure it was hard to listen to her heart and defy the world....
but we had another radha in our neighbouhood , our sweeper's daughter , lovely little girl, very bright , very talented ...
radha had run away from home to become actress in Bollywood , but as the city and its fangs bit her hard. many years later , when my sister was about to leave for Nigeria , i had seen her standing near my neighbor's door. delighted i went to meet her, her face was much beautiful and glowing almost in the early morning light.
i stood talking with her for almost an hour , mother and father were away seeing Dibhai off at the airport. it was almost seven thirty when radha took my leave , and hugged me . memories came flowing by , how we played in our courtyard and my sister would be our teacher, and punish us...memories of , warm summers,beautiful winters spend learning to knit , and sew and tie plaits of various kinds till late in the evening when radha would go home and cook while we sat down with homework.
tears welled up my eyes , i asked radha to stay , she refused , she didn't want to be seen, people wouldnt like us seen together , she had come to see my sister leave from a distance lest mother would know.
radha worked as prostitute in Mumbai. she would come down to visit her parents once a year for one night and leave the next day early , but radha left me that day proud , very proud
it was her job , she feared the society yes , but her fear didn't stop her from loving with her heart , they had sold her body not her being , they could never do that......... never......
i would never have her courage ,or her faith , she knew it wouldn't matter to me who she was now , but she never visited me again , just once letting me know those memories are precious to her as well.....i wish someday someday .....

actresses

my mother often told me when i was young, that the world i beautiful place until it starts revealing itself to you. i often remembered those lines. people we meet every other day, things we do , conversation we have all are somehow masked by a layer. i often wonder if i am masked too. my patience trials away yet i keep smiling when i am not happy,i am tired of being nice , i am tired of not retaliating when i want to.yet somehow i keep doing them , i smile , i walk ,i talk , i dont loose my temper everywhere and i dont retaliate.i am as much masked then , much more than others.
but such covers are necessary i think , to undo the pains our reactions may instill on others. somehow i feel too much burdened today of such masks , such feigning, attitude. mother says we women are great actresses , performing our roles so well. some one i know once stated , me being coy and nagging a lot is also a sort of role playing. i had never thought of myself as playing a role.
here we may all stop to think, have we so deeply imbibed our roles , anything out of that becomes untoward , incorrect , bad , questioned and contested. strange is the system , painful is its ways.... power relations rule the circumstances of life. but do we deserve this , or if we revolt are we going to get ourselves out of one pattern to thrust ourselves to another pattern.
the process seems cyclic . almost infinite , controller,controlled, controlled becomes controller and it goes on. a stop to it ,might just never happen. when i see newspaper reports of rape and abuse ,assault and harassment , i smile.
isn't it part of our roles to play the victim waiting to be saved by our saviors. the parochial society leaves us to prove them guilty and to prove that the crime has been committed. i smile when i see , a husband checking his wife's cellphone , ordering her to cover her head and cater to her in laws.
when will be ever grow sick and tired of such performances , when will be just all break the rules and be ourselves , when will we just stop and think masks are needed to hide the dirt inside , but we are not dirty , we are made to be so.
when will we stop thinking ourselves impure , pure, and virgin ,when shall this mask fall off ,when?
someday it should before it sticks on to us so much that it never comes off
we must hurry.....we must