A Certain Age

As a slayer of demons she is a warrior non pareil. While one rejoices at the annihilation of evil by the forces of good, and we dance and sing and stuff our faces until we are sick, one forgets to remember what else the demon represented. ‘Evil’ is such a blanket term: anyone with an ugly face, differently-coloured skin, one who speaks a different language, worships different gods, can come under that rubric.

We can also term the sins of neglect, indifference, deliberately keeping people in a state of extreme distress as evil. In the scramble to associate ourselves with the good life, whatever that may mean, we may grind our heel down hard on the innocent, the helpless.

Everything one reads seems so dire. Endless implications for the fate of civilization and the way the world turns and is going to go in the next ten, twenty, fifty years.

Headlines leap out at you, editorials are filled with foreboding, each day’s events cast shadows that are hard to shake off. Clearly one reads too many newspapers. But television is no better. The News channels are full of images that ruin your digestion and your peace. Train wrecks, babies caught under debris, city streets that have turned into armoured fortresses, women’s faces racked by pain and rage, howling over the bodies of loved ones.

Something I read recently pushed me out of my usual comfort zone to the extreme edge of what might go wrong for women in the city. Visiting the women’s jail in Byculla, where about 200 women undertrial prisoners are packed together on different charges, opens one’s eyes to searing realities. The room where they sit or lie on palettes is fairly large., but there was not a milimetre of space between one woman and the next. The loos at the far end cast their miasma over the entire hall. Male and female constables stood around barking orders.

En masse, the women look tired, some are clearly ill. Fights start up for no reason at all. There are women who have been there for years on end. Being released on bail is almost impossible for most; most have no lawyers to represent them. Some have small children with them.

I ask the jail superintendent what happens to the children. They stay with the mother till they are four. After that they are either taken away by the families or they get ‘lost in the system.’ Her tone was emotionless, and she avoided my eye.

The system….

Who profits most from the system? Who the least?

I remember looking at photographs in an exhibition put up by an NGO at the NGMA about two years ago. The subjects of these photographs were the sanitation workers of Bombay. Actually, sanitation workers is the dignified name for these people who really at the bottom of the pile. I am not being facetious. Clearing the sewers of Bombay, working with the filth emitted by the city’s millions has given these people jobs but no dignity. In their own eyes they are “the scum.” “The smell never goes, even after a bath, and no one talks to our children.” “We are hard put to educate them, or find marriage partners for them.” In this caste-ridden society, they are the lowest. Their faces, with their eyes averted were pitiful. The women stood in the shadows, unwilling to show their faces.

Caste… another word for the system?

How do people survive?

And how do we sleep at night?

One is prone to so many fears now, that while reading about illness and disease on the Internet, you are convinced that you have all the symptoms and that hospitalization and death are just a blink away. Just recently, there were several articles about ovarian cancer and how it crept into one’s system so secretly that by the time it was diagnosed, it was time to make one’s farewells. That bit of information has played havoc with my sleep. I have been talking to all my friends, alarming them quite needlessly, I’m sure. “Have you had unexplained tummy upsets over the last three months or so?” “Have you felt vague pains in the abdominal area?” “You have? Oh my God!” “For heaven’s sake, go get yourself tested, and by the way, this particular blood test CA 125 is not foolproof. You’ll need to have it several times every three months, and even then it may show up negative!”

Finally, one of my friends has had to tell me in the severest tones, “Now just stop it! That’s quite enough!”

To be safe and well and to look forward to a quiet day with friends and family seems the height of achievement. My women friends and I laugh and talk on the phone or send each other silly messages on e-mail, but somehow one’s time seems measured by a distant gong sounding somewhere.