In Conversation with Mitali Saran.
Mitali, your writing is characterised by a deeply irreverent tone and a unique voice. For instance, in Square Peg, Round Hole, you describe yourself as ‘an Indian woman in her mid-forties, single, childless, jobless, who dresses like an uncool teenager, wraps presents in newspaper, drinks, smokes, occasionally drops into a bar or a movie theatre alone, drives around in the middle of the night, has no ambition…’ Did it take time for you to ‘find your voice’ in your writing, or have you always been so free thinking and uninhibited?
I’ve always had a pretty uninhibited head and heart, but I was off-the-charts shy while growing up, a natural control freak, and savagely private. I was a bookworm who rarely spoke, dressed badly, and didn’t go boy-hunting. I spent years in some ridiculous macho rictus, in which I wouldn’t or couldn’t talk about my feelings. All I wanted was to be left alone to live freely (that part is still true).
Well, that’s the kind of crazy that life has no patience with, so it sent me many years of panic attacks to teach me to express my feelings instead of pickling them in emotional formaldehyde. That enriched all my friendships, and certainly my life. I never gave a fuck about what people thought of my behaviour and life choices, and I quickly stopped giving a fuck about what they thought of my mistakes.
But I’ve never been the slightest bit shy in my writing. A lot of my earlier writing was garden-variety features, travel destinations, book reviews and so on. But when I started writing a column for Business Standard, my bit of real estate in the newspaper quite naturally, without thought or planning, became the place where I writing-live. And it seems to me a pointless waste of time not to live and write in the realest and truest way possible, instead of pretending to be some one else — some madly put-together person, someone whom more people will read or like more. If you enjoy reading me, great; if you don’t, well, your eyeballs are your own.
What’s your advice to those (Indian women) who fear what others may think?
Life is painfully short, and nobody knows how to live or die. All we’ve got are wild guesses, and breadcrumbs left by those who’ve gone before, but those trails define their journey, not necessarily yours or mine. The world is designed to make you think that other people know what they’re doing, but I promise you that everyone is winging it. Social agreement is merely a form of reassurance in the nut job business of being alive — it is not necessarily the hallmark of goodness or rightness for you. Finding your own path sometimes means risking the approval of people you love, but that’s how you separate the wheat from the chaff (and many people will come around). Those who take the time out to make you feel bad about your choices are probably not very happy people, so beware of their advice.
Also: you will be made to feel that you’re the only one sticking out like a sore thumb. Never believe that. No matter how weird your choices, millions of your fellow citizens and fellow humans make the same ones. On the off chance that you’re really the only one: so what? That, by the way, is the best response to many conversations, situations, and crises: So what?
Your humorous derision of Indian tradition and female oppression is often expressed in your column for the Business Standard. For example, in The Diary of a Traditional Indian Wife (May 2015), you wrote, ‘Woke as usual, giving thanks — before I’m even fully conscious, that’s how thankful I am — that I have a husband, and therefore a place in Indian society. Turned over and looked at the hairy back I’ve woken up next to for four years. Sometimes, waking up to this view makes me want to stick a knife between his shoulder blades, but when that happens I quickly do some pranayama, as our ancient culture counsels, and the feeling passes….’ With women’s roles changing so fast in urban India, do you believe there’s any valid place for tradition, such as the role of ‘dutiful wife’?
Of course there is. I don’t believe that a woman who chooses to stay home and look after her family and press her in-laws’ feet is making a lesser choice than a woman who becomes the country’s first gay fighter pilot. The crux of it, as far as I’m concerned, is being genuinely able to choose whatever choice you make. Getting an education helps to ensure that you have a choice; but you can also be educated into cookie-cutter choices, and that’s equally unfree. Being in a position to make a true choice, no matter what your circumstances are, begins with getting to know yourself, reflecting on what you really want, choosing accordingly, and course-correcting those choices as necessary.
You aren’t squeamish about bodily functions. In your columns you discuss menstrual cups, bowel movements, and a woman’s right to smoke. At the end of your piece in Walking Towards Ourselves, you refer to your ‘free range vagina’ — a term that went viral on the Internet after an excerpt was published. In being this frank, are you breaking open taboos? Is it possible your words will encourage other Indian women to believe in their right to make choices about their own bodies, rather than having men or the state make decisions for them?
You can’t throw a pea in this country without busting a taboo, so I suppose I and many other women regularly do. I have no idea whether writing about it is influential and encouraging for other women. For one thing I write in English, which immediately means reaching only a very tiny section of people, and within that, preaching to the choir. But I put my thoughts out there, and it’s up to people to evaluate them. If I am prescriptive, it is first and foremost for myself. I don’t for a minute believe that not having a family is better than having a family for anyone other than myself. You don’t have to be a free-range vagina to live the life you want — but if you were unconsciously searching for that phrase, and found resonance in my writing, I’m happy to have helped.
When writing about the documentary film about the Nirbhaya rape case called India’s Daughter, you commented that ‘the most normal, mainstream form of patriarchy is that men own the narrative. If someone else — say a bunch of women — start getting audible, they get smacked down until the narrative returns to normal programming.’ Have you ever been ‘smacked down’? Are you ever afraid of negative reader response? Who criticizes your attitudes more — men or women?
Of course, I’m smacked down all the time. The Internet loves nothing more than a good smacking down — and besides righteous outrage there are a lot of angry people out there who find liberation and catharsis in anonymously abusing people — but so do family and friends, with varying degrees of goodwill. But smacking down is only really effective if the smackee stays smacked down, so if you ignore the smackery, which I do, you defang it. I’d say that more men than women are critical of me, though patriarchy comes in (at least) two flavours of gender. I also get a heartening amount of male support. What’s to fear about negative responses? Of course scads of people will disagree and hate you and so forth. But I have no interest in writing to please. I write what seems true and clear and real to me, and readers are free to take it or leave it. On the bright side, the newspaper hasn’t fired me yet.
Is there a clear way forward for women to ‘own the narrative’ or at least to co-own it?
I don’t know that anything is clear, but it’s not just a matter of being vocal in the media, it’s also about acting out change. It’s pointless being a feminist in print if you don’t have the mettle to take the real world steps that cause real world disruption and real world change. A thousand fiery columns are meaningless if you can’t do what it ultimately comes down to: upsetting your parents, outraging the elders, fighting with the significant other, confronting the boss, challenging friendships, passing up opportunities, standing up for the unpopular view, and immunizing yourself against social disapproval without necessarily ceding your place in a community. The point is not to create feminist ghettos but to mainstream feminism so that it too comes in (at least) two flavours of gender. That means that a critical mass of women and men have to be willing to live a disruptive, boat-rocking, trouble-making life.
How do people generally react to you when they learn you are divorced? How much of a stigma is there?
I don’t think anyone I know thinks of being divorced as a terrible liability. What they do focus on is the next partner, because most people still assume that being partnered up is a life goal. But that’s a small section of elite urban India. There is still a lot of general disapproval around divorce in this country — even though the courts have been liberal in sanctioning live-in relationships — and a lot of people assume that a divorced woman is helpless and exploitable, and sexually up for grabs. I haven’t faced any flak, though. If there are knives sticking out of my back, I can’t see them, so that’s fine.
Your mother has been a strong presence in your life, and in fact you live together. Has she been your guiding light? Is she the one who gave you the confidence or the permission to speak, write, think, behave as freely as you do?
It never occurred to me that I didn’t have permission. That attitude must be at least partly credited to some of my parents’ parenting. On the other hand, they — and she particularly — were convent educated, and while they were liberated in many ways, their social sensibilities were also rooted in patriarchy. It was hardwired into them in ways that they were either blind to or actually on board with — for example, getting stressed about what I wore or where I went and with whom, on the grounds of “safety”. I fought them hard, and it would never have occurred to me not to — patriarchy is injustice, and from the time I was quite tiny, nothing has bothered me more than injustice. I grew up batting off judgment and fear at home, and that’s among the people who most matter and whose approval one most needs and wants. After that, batting off the judgment and fear of the rest of the world isn’t so hard, though it has harder possible consequences.
Mothers are foundational to our sense of self. I had to fight her hard to be myself, but she made it easier by being intelligent, talented, and adaptable. She has not only come to understand her errant brats quite well, but also to value the freedoms (some of them thrust upon her) that my generation takes for granted. Social approval matters to her, but she has solidly stood up for my right to disregard it. That’s invaluable to me. She’s also a beacon of sunniness, unflagging curiosity, bravery, and fun, in the face of chronic illness. So she drives me nuts, and I think she’s a total champion.
Read Mitali’s story ‘Square Peg, Round Hole’ in Walking Towards Ourselves out now from Hardie Grant Books. Read more about the book here.
