Malavika’s Mumbaistan: Hope is the thing with feathers
We can use this time to introspect, evolve and emerge stronger and more resilient and determined to heal ourselves and others around us. Manipur could be a watershed moment, a turning point as a people
It’s called Kintsugi, the traditional Japanese art of joining broken pieces of pottery together, using gold to fill the cracks, so that rather than connote broken-ness, the objects exude greater strength, beauty and value.
It is predicated on the concept that fault lines and flaws can be transformed through mindfulness, love, attention and care.
In the realm of relationships- Kintsugi defines the process through which traumas, wounds and scars are healed with mindfulness, dedication and devotion, resulting in richer more meaningful connections; in psychology, Kintsugi is a metaphor for transcending brokenness, spinning dross into beauty.
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It is strange to speak of strength, beauty and resilience in a column on Manipur. Strange, because Manipur is an ache in our collective heart, a scream in our collective gut.
The sheer hideousness and unfathomable violence and venality of what was done to those women, who were stripped, paraded, violated and abused by a horde of marauding men on May 4 in B Phainom village, 40km from the state capital, Imphal, has left us numb, shaken, speechless.
Having seen it with our eyes we cannot unsee it, ever. Having seen it now, how will we ever put these broken shards together? What precious alchemy will make us whole again? Is it too early to seek redemption? Is it too late? How many other atrocities of the same ferocity were committed, which have passed unrecorded? Will the wounds ever heal? Will the sadness and shame ever abate?
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But Manipur only comes as the latest stain in a ghastly spiral of increasing violence and brutality against women. Every day, the breaking news brings in more instances of shock-horror: women who are hacked in full public view, in broad daylight, on the corners of busy streets, or in the dead of night, behind closed doors, by their partners, lovers, fathers and brothers, family and community- elders, alleged friends and well-wishers. Women who are raped in open fields in villages or left to die crushed under the wheels of cars; women who are abducted, kidnapped, trafficked tortured, gang raped or killed even before they are born through infanticide.
What is happening, why has it begun to feel that there is a genocide on women in India today? What accounts for this resentment and rage, from where does this rancour rise?
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Perhaps this ferocious brutality that we are witnessing against women is a consequence of the deep anguish and despair that humanity is currently experiencing; a society which appears to be subliminally hell-bent on self-annihilation and which is subsumed in self-loathing is attacking the most life-sustaining element that it can find in its midst, like the Serpent that eats its own tail, or the man who chops his nose to spite his face.
Women, after all, are the Planet’s nurturers, not only as a gender, but as an energy, women are a life force; the feminine spirit bears, creates, supports, preserves, nourishes, conserves and perpetuates the idea of life itself.
Therefore, acts of violence against women are acts against the idea of life itself. They are a symptom of the profound malady that plagues modern society. The final gasp of the serpent in the throes of an existential crisis.
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So how do we face instances of increasing violence and brutality against women? Some do it through activism and advocacy, others with anguish and anger. How do we pick up the pieces and soldier on, knowing that more Manipurs have happened and will continue happening? What will it take for realisation to dawn that the instances of barbarity and savagery are not the manifestation of a gender war amongst us, as much as a civilizational crisis, an expression of a nation careening out of control, lost and in need of redemption and healing? That sexual violence has less to do with sex and more to do with power and domination? That violence against women has not been the exclusive purview of men alone and that women have been equally savage and merciless against other women too?
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This is where the process of Kintsugi of joining the broken pieces and fissures and scars that exist amidst us, through a process of love, attention and care, can be a guiding light. Of transforming the brokenness, despair, shame, anger and pain that has engulfed us by the alchemy of hope.
‘We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.’ said Martin Luther King Jr. ‘To live without hope is to cease to live.’ wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky. ‘Hope is the thing with feathers/That perches in the soul / And sings the tune without the words -And never stops - at all,’ Emily Dickinson reminds us.
In our darkest moments of despair and disillusionment, we must never give up on hope or humanity.
Before we focus on the violence and hatred that manifested in Manipur and other trouble spots, we must focus on the violence and hatred that manifests in ourselves too. What anger and savagery lurks in our own souls, what unnamed beasts, baying for blood power, domination and control, do we harbour in ourselves, under our everyday smiles and office attire? Before we heal others, we must heal ourselves. Before we pass judgement and censure and blame, we must eliminate the darkness within ourselves and that can only be done through a sense of mindfulness and forgiveness.
Violence begets violence, hatred spawns more hatred. Let Manipur stand as a milestone in our journey towards civilisational evolution. It is easy to allow ourselves to give in to the darkness, despair and brokenness that we all are experiencing.
But with mindfulness, dedication and devotion, hope can be the process of Kintsugi, that puts the broken pieces together, within and amidst us. We can use this time to introspect, evolve and emerge stronger and more resilient and determined to heal ourselves and others around us. Manipur could be a watershed moment, a turning point as a people.
As Leonard Cohen sang: ‘There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.’