Announcing Aurat Bandh 26th December 2012

Announcing Aurat Bandh

26th December 2012

From 1947 to 2012, India has seen many a Bharat Bandh, Gujjar Bandh, Maharashtra Bandh etc. etc and we’ve all seen innumerable times the mechanics of these bandhs and how they do NOT function.

A woman gets gang raped in a moving bus and the country stands spineless. What do we as women get to hear – “Don’t step out of the house, don’t go anywhere unaccompanied, don’t wear revealing clothes – in short they would prefer if we would stop living.”

Since the government of this nation fails us yet again, it is now time to take matters into our own hands.

45% of our Corporate Workforce are women. If we come together and boycott all work for day, at home or in the office - we can bring the country to a standstill and force society to finally recognize our rights and appreciate us.

It's time we stand up for our rights and security.

This call goes out to ALL the women in the nation for an AURAT BANDH to pledge our solidarity to the innumerable women being victimized simply for being women.

Let us not do any work for one day and let's see how the society manages to function. 

Also one would like to clarify that this isn’t about women staying at home to be safe. On the contrary, it is about how much women contribute economically and sociologically to a society.

The aim is for men to see the least amount of women on the streets, in offices and all other familiar places not doing the things they are used too.

This is all about the power women have in any given social economical situation.

Aurat Bandh is about telling one and all that while we cannot function without a safe environment, repeatedly being victimized for being women; even an economy and society cannot function without our contribution.

Not Bharat Bandh but an Aurat Bandh on December 26, 2012.

For Further information:

Noor Enayat

Zoya's 365 days

I found a calendar in that box with days struck off, month after month. Above every struck off month was the total number of days written, as if she counted each day that went by.

As I flipped further to see where this led to I reached December 25th and there these lines were penned in the margin in Zoya familiar slant:

365 days have gone by since I saw you last. 

365 days since I felt peace wash over my being,

365 days since your scent filled up my senses.

365 days, and I have stopped looking for you,

365 days but I havent stopped wanting you, 

365 days and life has moved,

365 days and the world is still.

365 days and I breathe and I die,

365 days since I have been dead yet I am alive

365 days I've spent with bathed breath, 

hoping to catch a small glimpse while I wander the streets

365 days just waiting to see the wondrous sight of you

365 days waiting to see the sun shine down  your hair

365 days hoping to see the moon light bathe your skin

365 days wanting to see the stars twinkle when I see them in your eyes.

365 days

Hoping and Waiting, 

Wanting and Wasting, 

365 days spent Wilting.

365 days living

while dying!

ANOTHER SNIPPET

Another short snippet for book... needs alot of rewriting - 

I sat with her, with one of the many unsent letters written by Zoya. out of the stack I randomly pulled one out. 

I dont know who she had written this for, there was no name it just began suddenly. Just like it ended suddenly. 

"You asked me when would I write for and about you and I simply replied darling it’ll happen.

I have been meaning to write about you for a while, but somehow dont have the right words to describe what you make me feel.

They say love happens in the most unexpected of all places and look at us. We were sure even before we met each other that this wasn’t meant to be. 

I laugh out aloud every time I think of the first time we met – the awkward pauses, both of us trying to think what to say while we were talking and the oddness of the way we said good-bye.

But as you walked away, I kept on wanting to call out to you and say stay back, spend a little more time with me, there is this something about you that makes me wonder – may be!

As we spoke more I realized we were the same and yet so different… As we met more I knew I would like too see that smile often and that twinkle in your eyes because you were just happy to be alive."

"To say I have madly fallen in love with you would be injustice to us. You are not someone to be loved madly or insanely. You are the very thing that brings sanity to my life… you make me feel normal and sane.

To think it has been but a few days knowing you seems strange, for it seems I have known you forever. I do not say why did we not meet earlier, but I am happy that we have met now and not later when life may have made more cynical and pessimistic.

There is this smile that comes to my face when I think of you. A smile I am not familiar with. There is happiness I feel from within when I think of you, a sense of contentment that I have never felt.

With ease and without intrusion you have become a part of my everyday existence as if you have been here forever. You heal me in such way, that it feels as if I was a fool to have gotten hurt. But had it not been for the hurt, may be I wouldn’t have found you.

You make me feel good about everything in life and every worry seems to have a simple solution, sometimes too simple a solution. You simplify life for me. With you I do not have to pretend to be anyone but who I truly am, including a child at times.

You ease into the house as if you have been here forever and as you ease in to the people I know I see an odd familiarity and camadrie between them and you. It is as if they have known you for as long as I have known them. They are at ease, as if they know you will not harm me or them.

I feel oddly safe when you are there. Safe enough, to just let go of all the care in the world.

While I miss you when you are not around, it isn’t the mad craving or the insanity I have felt before, for I feel this strange comfort where I know you will be with me when possible.

These are the many words… And there will be many more to come…"

I could imagine the smile that must've played on her lips as she wrote these words and the twinkle that must have been in her eyes. 

But I was sure, whoever this was addressed must have long been gone, or Zoya wouldn't have been gone!

Being God isnt easy

Writing can be both an exhilarating experience as well as a tiring one.

As a writer you have the ability to literally play God with your characters.  After all, it is you who decides who they are, what they look like, what should their lives be and all the other nitty gritties of their existence. You have the power to decide what their reactions and actions are and what are the repercussions of these actions and reactions. As the God of the world you create in that work of fiction, you decide what the problems and complications are… it is your universe and your world.. you run it!

In essence you give birth to a new life, like God; nurture it like a parent and sometimes kill it like the angel of death.

It is tiring because most often at least one aspect or element if not all of what you write reflects your actual life. Your reality you put under the thin veil of fiction and try to pass it off as imagination.

The reason a critic can hurt you and hurt you beyond what most people can imagine, is that when he criticises your writing, he criticises you and your life, the choice you never had or the choices you made! He questions your reality and your being.

The most tiring and exhausting aspect of writing is how to end a story.

When you are at the end of the story you are once again in a precarious position of playing God. You could be the giver or life or a murderer for you shall end the very life you created!

Ending the story on a happy note creates a false hope that all shall be fine; but ending it with certain finality gives birth to hopelessness!

What if you leave it open ended! That is always an option. But that is something that is always unfair to the world of your creation. It is unfair to those who are alive within that story you created... it is ambiguous and life is never completely ambiguous.

How can you be unfair to the life born from within your mind! And then you start to think… Should you kill the life you have nurtured every waking hour and while you have slept or should you let them have a utopic ending and be happy or maybe let them final decide to take their life in their hands.

This choice is the toughest of them all according to me! Because for me I never know how to end a story. How to complete the cycle of life I created. How can I be fair to everyone – myself, my characters, my story and the person who reads my work!

Happy ending make me unhappy, because unfortunately they are far away from reality; and sad endings I am unable to give as these characters are a labour of my love. Open ended is not my life then how can it be of my characters!

So this time, I attempt to start with the death of a character and how that death saves not only the life of those in her world but in many ways my life.

With this attempt that I like the way the story is shaping up but yet I still feel may be I could save the whole world I create, may be no life has to end and all can be saved!

And, then it strikes me, for one to live another has to die. That is the balance of life; the way the world works. That is barefaced reality of the world and so has to be the reality of my fiction.