Writer In Hiding - Rebel In Isolation

Hum ahl-e-safa mardood-e-harm
Masnad pe bethae jaenge
Sab taaj uchale jaenge
Sab takht girae jaenge
Hum dekhenge

When we- the faithful- who have been barred out of sacred places
will be seated on high cushions
When the crowns will be tossed,
When the thrones will be brought down.
We shall Witness
F.A.F

I am not hesitant to arrongantly genralize that most societies around the world, at some point, have proven to be enemies of free thought and lovers of misogyny and female oppression. The foundation of Freud was the severe repression of sexual desires in the Victorian era. The oppression has always resulted in rebellion, be it of a nation for freedom or be it of a gender for equality.

You, too,
must have your complaints.
My stand, though,
has been made clear
by time and history.

To have you bring
sanitary towels and contraceptives
From the outside world;
And to seek more such petty favours –

To order you around a bit,
if I could – To affirm a little
of my authority –

My vagina opens,
knowing all that it should.

A writer, a rebel, a politician.

• SALMA

We are aware about Nelson Mandela and Veer Savarkar who wrote about freedom and bright light in isolation. We know about them! We are told stories about the horrors they faced but I am not going to talk about a man today, no! I wouldn’t do that.

It is after witnessing Salma’s world that I realized human society works in wicked way. My penis grants me authority, it puts me a step ahead in terms of everything. A womans life, especially in India is never passed without being a mere object to be locked up in a glass showcase. I would rather say, a showcase is better than a locked room where Salma was trapped for most of her life. Salma! As I type her name, I can only picture a little girl in a small room somewhere in Thuvarankurichi, Tamil Nadu.

In a dark room colors seem to be fiction.
The one who lives in the light, shall never understand the merciless tormentor who tells us the stories of the skies, the stars and the flowers that bloom outside our world.

We can only imagine how beautiful it is to be nothing under the rays of the drowning sun, to be a naive romantic seeing the glimpse of a half moon and to welcome the bright light again like a child running into the arms of a mother.

But in a dark room colors seem to be fiction

I get uncomfortable in closed spaces if kept for a long time. I need my freedom, I need my feet to not be tangled up physically or mentally by me or someone else; SALMA WAS KEPT IN ISOLATION SINCE THE AGE OF 13. I always believed that a life is only and only of an individual and hence to imagine a 13 year old girl being denied of all her rights, sends chills down my spine.

According to The Shariat Act,1937 or The Muslim personal law states that once a girl attains puberty, she is ready for marriage. Although in the recent rulings of the Supreme court, it has been made clear that Prevention of child marriage act is a secular law. The supreme court has also made a statement in recent times that sex with a minor(married or unmarried) is considered as rape. This wasn’t there for Salma, she was engaged by the age of 12 and married off 6 years later. I had once read that “Words and ideas can change the world”, in case of Salma, this has been more correct than ever. Unlike many others, Salma was exposed to Russian literature and the ideas of Marx, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

“Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.”
- Tolstoy

Salma’s poems that she wrote in hiding, screams out the truth about the lives of women in her village. Her mother smuggled out every bit of paper Salma wrote on. It was only after spending 20 years in isolation, after chilling threats of acid attacks by her husband and after more mental abuse by her in- laws that the poems were published in a Tamil weekly.

Salma went on to write about sexual desires, she wrote about everything that was frowned upon in this society, much like the progressive writers. She was a rebel in true form! When a society is filled with stories of oppressed women, there eventually comes a time of rebellion and often, writers are the once to spark it. This gets me back to the top, the poetry of a rebel in the start hints that the reins of power shall be someday overthrown and when that happens people like Salma shall stand there, look the oppressor in the eye and witness the thrones stumbling down.

Salma went on to be a politician soon after she enjoyed her few years of freedom. I, for the reasons of my own could’nt cover everything about Salma. Kindly refer to Documentary by Kim Longinotto.

And knowing her story,
Your vagina shall open.