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Kamala Das

Body awareness is by itself a weakness. Gender awareness is worse.

When I was a young woman, I wore size four shoes. I was proud of the pale comeliness of my narrow feet. My husband suffered from a foot fetish. So all was well with the world.

As I grew older, I began to wear a size five to be comfortable. My heart developed ischaemia. A blood test revealed diabetes. These afflictions came effortlessly, more or less like the inevitable advent of grey hair and wrinkles. My feet began to hurt when I walked on the beach or climbed the hills. Such pleasures vanished from my life. Swimming was still possible, but only during trips outside my country. In inhibited, puritanical and hypocritical Kerala, a greying woman swimming in anything resembling beach wear would cause a ruckus.

My feet are no longer recognisable. I wear a size six now. I can only wear footwear that are spatulate, for they must accommodate my swollen toes. I often wonder if there are unseen organs within me, swelling in size with the onset of loneliness and the consequent cynicism.

Body awareness is by itself a weakness. Gender awareness is worse. To remember only the visible trappings of one's body, forgetting the existence of the invisible ones is common but not wise. To be obsessed by breasts, thighs and legs, ignoring the blood-purifying heart, the liver and the intestines, must cause spiritual indiscipline.

The most respected component of all is undoubtedly the soul. If one is conscious of the soul, people cease to be mere bodies and begin to resemble balls of fire. Balls of fire capable of a silent collision. Like blobs of mercury, we merge into the others, enhancing ourselves. This vision must arrive someday to make life comprehensible.

A few days ago, I was called to inaugurate a women's meet where gloomy men formed three quarters of the audience. The stage had three rows of chairs, all occupied by the feminists of the state who, in recent years, have been clamouring for a solution to the problem of sexual harassment. Could we re-adjust our vision and attain tranquillity?

To what extent can one ignore one's body? I have a feminist friend in Bombay who has influenced my ways of thinking significantly and frequently. She once made me ashamed of my tendency to use unguents to mitigate effects of age. Why should you convince anyone of your beauty, she asked me once while I, ordinary woman, wilted in shame.

Afterwards, for nearly a year I traipsed around like a gypsy, my skin tanned by the sun and fine lines forming beneath my eyes and around the mouth. Men stopped opening doors for me, stopped pulling out chairs for me or speaking in that distinctive tone, softened with admiration. Spiritual awareness began to pall. Then, at an airport, I picked up a jar of plentitude and set to work on my ravaged face.

When people hint that I look comely despite my age, I blush in gratitude and discover within myself that I am no feminist writer entitled to inaugurate a women's meet. There is, in most of us, this division into two personalities, each dissimilar to the other. The voices within argue raucously. They cannot be stilled.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier