Giving Up, Giving In

Oh dear sweet blog, what an utter, utter relief it is to be tappin' away on you again! I have had a seriously bad week (things really kicked up on Sunday morning, but I will only talk about that once I have the strength/anyone asks).

I read this article which got my mental cogs whirring rustily. Maybe I'll even write on it like I used to, who knows??! Lack of sleep, serious emotional stress and general need-to-cry have left me clogged and murky upstairs. What I really need is some sort of anonymous guardian angel figure who will kidnap me, appease the various people who are baying for my blood asking me to do the bare minimum expected of me when I signed on to take a chunk of Governmental money to be educated. I get told that I am a good person, who makes people happy (chiefly by The Libertarian, bless him) but I do feel like a tremendous failure when things pile up on me. The knotted narrative of my life so far, in which all the events connect and nothing can be left out to fully understand the enormity of current problems, makes it that much harder.

After handing in an essay two days late by accident, after having spent all day writing another which WAS due today, I almost fell to pieces. Never had my skin felt thinner in recent memory, as I stood in front of the office of the somewhat perplexed Administrative Director of the School of English and Drama! I could feel heat creeping upon me; I knew how it might look to them, and I was ashamed. 'I'm not your common or garden layabout!' I wanted to shout with some sort of perverse pride. 'No; I'm in this situation because I'm pathetic enough to be deeply affected by the suffering of others! GO ON! PUNISH ME!'

Defeatist, much? I managed to recover 'Fight Mode' once they, very kindly, gave it an on-time stamp after all, but I was afraid. I knew that my memory, taxed with misery and fatigue, would probably fail me. Sure enough, it did - the essay was of course due in two days ago. Everyone else isn't always wrong, my mother used to say to me. It's YOU. I went to see my course organiser, quivering on the brink. She was very considerate and my skin thinned further, dangerously. She had misunderstood things slightly. I clarified. She went to recover my essay, and my skin collapsed altogether. Sat right there in her office, I cried. Oh, how much I wanted to cry my eyes out! How I wanted to slide to the floor, pull my coat over my face and cry pathetically in great, big, bursting sobs! Embarrassingly enough, my eyes are filling with tears in my university library as I type this.

Instead, I hyperventilated my way back to some semblance of composure. I could not embroil this poor woman - who had once asked me if I was alright after the seminar, because I hadn't contributed - in my personal failure to handle emotion. So, head dipped and shoulders shaking, I 'sucked it up'. A vague numbness settled over me and when she returned, I could occasionally flick glances towards her. There was an awful, genuine kindness in her eyes when she (repeatedly) apologised. She could probably tell from my shrivelled eyes that I had problems. Hence my inability to meet her eye. She advised me to speak to my advisor and submit an Extenuating Circumstances form. I comically imagined entering his office to meet with him and descending into a disastrous, weeping wreck.

A fear and pride held me back, just like it does. I want to resolve my feelings somehow. The urge to live, to be something is strong in me - but so too is the urge for destruction. Why? Why do I want to lie across a stranger's table and cry out my whole life? Why do I want to invite them to stamp over my feelings? Deep down, I know they probably won't. They'll just be appalled. They will probably, as many already have, give me credit for coping with the amount of familal bullying that I took.

I am a hypocrite though. I usually like grey areas, I like things to be complicated. Yet when it comes to the whole 'I need to get away from my family, but they have made more vocal expressions of love towards me recently than ever before and I feel horribly guilty. Plus, I'm the only real adult in the house emotionally' - I wish I could pass. I really do.

The source of much of this angst is that, when I returned innocently home last weekend to work on the essay I handed in today, I was served up the information that my elder sister (who was there, as I complained in my last post) is there for good because she has left her husband. He has always been abusive (not physically, thankfully for him). Much to my amazement, it was my parents who had told her to come back. A giant psychological shift has taken place - both my parents and my sister are being forced to reassess the way they see the world. My sister, at the age of 31, is being forced to consider life without a partner and children. I know that sounds dramatic; but that's how it is in her head. Remember that as a card-carrying member of the community we live in (unlike me), she subscribed fully to all the bullshit dictated to us by my parents, and especially my mother.

My mother, in a manner which really shouldn't surprise me, obviously feels both relief and guilt in great measure. I don't think she's quite emotionally developed enough to realise that, but as somebody who has borne the brunt of her tactlessness my whole life, I can see it. She keeps talking about how glad she is my sister is back, bringing up family skeletons and saying in an accusatory way 'I don't know how you stayed with him!'

GREAT, Mother. Just great. She's already feeling guilty of betraying him, as the abusee often feels upon escaping their abuser, and trying to make sense of why he married her in the first place when he obviously didn't love her. Make it worse, why don't you? Truly, we can do no right. We actually pointed this out to my mum ('If she had come back sooner, you would have accused her of not working at it') but my mum seemed rather oblivious. I don't hate my mum like I came close to in the past - I despair of her. She had the sheer presence of mind to bring up my sister's ex-fiance the other day (who broke off the engagement unexpectedly and without contact, and then tried to hide from her afterwards, fucking asshole) and say of her soon-to-be ex: 'It must have been something you did that really irritated him.'

Fucking hell! Though I know it really doesn't sound like it, she meant well in her completely cack-handed way. As my sister sobbed into her fleece, I turned and refashioned my mum's bald statement into what it was probably intended to be. 'You see? You see?' my mum leapt in eagerly, as she often does when I comment on the sorry affair. She flags up the evident sense in what I'm saying, I think with some relief, because Mater REALLY doesn't know how to do emotion.

So yes - at a time when I was already under hideous levels of pressure (two essays, Master's applications, a French presentation which should have been done LAST YEAR, behind on general French work and barely keeping up with my reading), this landed slap on me like a big, fat, fucking turd. This kind of shit makes me angry enough as it is, but the fact of it happening to my sister, my mum bringing up similar family history and meeting an old friend who had put her daughter's in-laws behind bars after a long fight increased my sense of despondent rage. At the very least, I wanted to be at home to look after my sister for the short period of time she has off, but nuuuuuu, I have to keep going and do fucking shit. Well, I am only human. I fail. I failed today. By a miracle (i.e. making it probably quite obvious that I would not refrain, if pushed, from crying in the English office), I was saved - but this is bullshit, yo.

I shouldn't have to be in this position. Maybe I sound like an ingrate for saying that, but that's how I feel, I'm afraid. I have no bitterness about all the time I lost looking after my sister (why the fuck should I?) but it just seems so very fucking unfair that this kind of bollocks happens to me. Furthermore, when I grovel before my advisor and the evaluatory board that may or may not condemn me for my failure of memory, I must reduce this all to one paragraph. How shittily pathetic is it going to sound, do you think? 'Sorry, I think I'm developing a stomach ulcer because my sister's getting divorced.' I know it's not right - but good God, part of me almost feels like I deserve it. Maybe I do. Maybe I should have been professional to the end, as my mother no doubt would have been.

Ah well, fucking bullshit essays handed in, still not had a shower and the French presentation looms over me like an executioner. Time I went back to the flat, had dinner and leapt out of the window forced myself to read until I fall asleep with exhaustion and then stay up later than necessary for no good reason because I can't relax and the fridge is too loud.

Well, I'm a regular bundle of joy - but so run the joys of blogging. It's like offloading on people without actually doing so. No need to make small talk, no need to force myself to be suitably smiley. I am free of social convention's oppression and I can wallow in my mounting unhappiness. Not a joke, not a hint of a smile. Sometimes even krazy jelly beans lose all their colour.

Marriage: I Ain't Sold

This post was inspired by Nesrine Malik, Desi Italiana and Sonia... thanks, guys.

Well. I must begin this post by congratulating myself on avoiding eating more than 1-an'-a-bit squares of utterly tasty Sainsbury's Belgian dark chocolate, especially after having eaten a sin-filled pack of Walkers' Max Paprika earlier. I am a feminist and ergo not crazy about looking overly-youthful and wisplike all the time (the former would really be cause for concern, as I am still quite young!), but if you do not have the metabolism of a greyhound and are likely to get grumpy after eating too much 'crap,' you have to watch it.

This post is intended to be about marriage, especially its place within Indian culture. I have learnt a fair bit about this recently, and I feel that it's time I wrested my blog from the caprices of creativity and pushed it back towards the polemic. Unfortunately, because tiredness and stress have somewhat 'worn the wick' recently, I may descend into what is essentially a series of no more than randomly-caught observations.

I used to think that I could escape the clutches of the Indian society that surrounded me by choosing who I got married to. There was a rather great irony in this, because I would say that feminism/egalitarianism is more important to me than keeping my parents happy and upholding a certain idea of Indian 'culture'. Ever since I was little, I have burned at the notion that females should be considered inferior to males in any way, especially in this country. Even the whole 'men are naturally stronger' argument never cut much ice with me. I mean, bitch please – are all men the same? No. Are all women the same? No. For example, a dedicated female javelin or discus thrower is probably going to be of greater strength than an Asian rudeboi of the same age, unless, like my brother currently is, he's so obsessed with getting 'hench' that he's significantly bulked-up.

Aaaaaanyway… I used to believe that one could have the best of both worlds. I could placate my parents in the merest sense by marrying someone brown and to all intents and purposes, Sikh. Even if he was secretly unsure (like me), or a naastik (atheist), it would be OK because, like a well-placed visual illusion, everybody would see what they wanted to see.

The problem with my little picture is that it was missing someone fundamentally important: me. I was thinking about entering into an arrangement that would be convenient for the other person and appease his family and mine. I have always taken pride in being the firebrand of the family, but I didn't see the obvious until it was pointed out to me repeatedly by a very dear friend: I'm not ready to get married and I never will be.

Now, I can understand the line of thought that goes 'oh, y'know – it'll just be a stupid wedding and then you have the rest of your life.' I can understand because that's what I thought up until a few weeks ago. What bullshit, yaar! Whether you're a girl or a boy, if you're Indian, shaadi (marriage) is the whole point of your life. All that differs is the point at which this is impressed, and then eventually, imposed upon you. If you're a girl, chances are you'll be conditioned from childhood (whether you realise/enjoy it or not) to be a wife and then eventually in some ways, a mother. Whereas with boys, it varies - many of them are left free to do as they like until a certain age when the kitchen sink and all is suddenly dropped on their head.

This must be said, because the current double standards that are deeply ingrained within Indian society (more so in some classes/groups than others) are bad for EVERYONE. Seeing and admitting this is a shot of common sense that is desperately needed. Parents like mine – who are actually almost liberal in some ways, how else would I have got the way I am?! – encourage and support their daughters in going to university, only to gently remind them that marriage is ultimately going to be more important. Even if this reminder does not come verbally, it comes in the fact that more of your life will be spent in gearing you towards marriage than will be spent in encouraging you to get a job you want to, or in pursuing a degree you want to do.

I find that even in education, marriage just won't leave people alone. Women who do 'male' degrees (medicine, law, dentistry, finance etc.) or watered-down 'male'/acceptably-feminine degrees (biomedical sciences, pharmacy, teaching…) are more worthwhile investments than those in the arts. The same applies for men, more or less. However, the reason I find this more appalling with regards to women is because it shows how little things have really changed. Now, people don't just want a well-indentured servant, they want one who can pay her way too. Funny how the huge emotional sacrifices made by the bride (leaving her family and having to externalise them while ingratiating herself with a set of near-strangers) doesn't apply much in this regard. I do appreciate that men who 'deviate' educationally also have it hard, but the overall level of suffering is still notably lower for them. (It often seems to me that if you're a guy who does 'deviate' and it doesn't work out for you, your senior male relatives will often rally round and bail you out somehow, while if you're a girl, your senior female relatives will tell you you're reaping what you've sown, but it could just be the cynicism getting the better of me...).

Encouraging the men-folk to do whatever before suddenly dropping the nuptial bomb is disastrous as well. Shrieking harridan mothers-in-law and scheming bahus (daughters-in-law) have come to stereotypically define the power-struggles in Indian marriages, because there are some things that people just don't want to say. Like, if you let your son marry a woman and then make her life hell because he has someone already (or because he swings the other way…), you are not 'saving face.' You are NOT good parents. It will reflect back on you when the aggrieved party either fights back or leaves, when your son gets together properly with the 'somebody else' or when something bad happens to the wife.

I know that tradition is hard to let go of for many Indians, especially my parents' generation (those who are in their fifties and sixties now), but puh-lease. If you've come to a foreign country, you have to accept the fact that your children have the right to choose to follow 'other' influences – and why wouldn't they? There is so much more freedom available to them in many ways. Some will eventually turn their back on that, but many don't want to. Your tricking them into losing the adult years of their lives in a tacit concession to your ideals – shaadi – only shows you up as a load of spoilt children.

That isn't to say that marriage always inevitably fails. I take a very dim view of it, because I have seen how often people struggle to balance the sacrifice, the delusion and the harsh, harsh reality. I simply think that it needs to be said that the failure of marriage is NOT down to Western influences, emotional immaturity or anything that easily scapegoatable. I think deep down, we know that it's really down to the arrangement of power in the Indian family structure (if you're old, you're wise. If you're young, shut up), and the deeply unequal and voracious nature of marriage. Stop idealising the parivaar (family) and the shaadi! Most of the time, in a move harking back to the Middle flippin' Ages, marriage is about the advancement of two families. The Indian ethos par excellence, distilled into the symbolic form of the married couple: communities before individuals. It often becomes almost a political contract, an act enacted for the purposes of what-bloody-else? NETWORKING. 'Look at the relatives I have acquired.I have moved up in the world!' Very bloody ironic for Sikhs, since Sikhi is meant to be without caste, whereas many Punjabis are obsessed with going up a class (why?! why does having x number of doctor/lawyer relatives make you more of a person?!).

To finish, my mother often castigated us for not trying hard enough/failing to learn how to make adequately round chappatis. She told us we needed to learn it for our own sake, because 'otherwise, what will people say? What would your suss (mother-in-law) say? People will say that I didn't teach your properly' (i.e. that she had failed in her duty as a mother).

Yeah, because telling your daughter that she should learn something to your standards to please some far-off woman – which at the end turns out to be you, surprise surprise! – isn't selfish in the least. As Private Eye would say: trebles all round!