I’m not the kind of person who likes participating in marches. Most of the time, I’m not sure what difference they’ll make. But in a country where homosexuality is still illegal, the sheer visibility of the gay pride parade on Sunday made it something worth talking about. (It was Bangalore’s first gay pride parade.) And because sexual freedom is something I feel strongly about, I actually stirred myself (and A) post lunch and made it to JC Road where we joined the parade halfway.
Guesstimates of how many would turn up had ranged from 50 to 1000. The actual number was 500, which most of us agreed was not bad. This consisted of gays, lesbians, hijras, kothis and many straight people who wanted to express solidarity. The mood was an edgy mix of defiance and celebration; lots of colourful flags swished in the breeze; and while some faces were masked, others were joyfully bare. The media had turned up in droves and the police were surprisingly un-troublesome. Here are some snapshots…
Cross posted on UV
The highest compliment in my grandmother’s book was “What a sweet girl! She keeps her mouth stitched up.” Of course, in Bengali, this has a nicer ring to it but it essentially means a girl who keeps quiet, who is silent in the face of adversity (and torture and ill-treatment), who endures. I grew up hearing this and, of course, consequently thought of myself as a very bad girl indeed. For as a child, I was what is commonly called ‘moophat’ in Hindi, loosely meaning brash and thoughtlessly expressive. Over the years, I mellowed (—or was made to?) and recently, I have sometimes found myself unable to speak even when it is urgently, desperately required. » Read the rest of this entry «
So I was reading Mary Oliver again today, after a long time, and thought I’d share. Not because you haven’t read this (you probably have) but because it’s one of those rare ‘happy’ poems. For various reasons, I’ve been on a quest to find these lately and it’s hard! Poets are a gloomy lot ranging from the philosophical-sad to the downright macabre.
It also poses a small difficulty that happy poems often end up sounding like something from a Hallmark card. I’m not sure I don’t feel a slight twinge of that even with this one towards the end. But the beauty of the earlier lines and the fact that you can’t fault the essential truth of the missive redeem it. It’s interesting how “the family of things” here is not neat, gift-wrapped, ribbon-tied. There is the “soft animal of the body” early on and the placidity of “mountains and the rivers” is broken by “wild geese, harsh and exciting”. Because family–of any kind (the universe or otherwise)–is hardly all warm apple pie by the fireside, is it? It is often “Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.”
Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
I’m not the kind of person who likes participating in marches. Most of the time, I’m not sure what difference they’ll make. But in a country where homosexuality is still illegal, the sheer visibility of the gay pride parade on Sunday made it something worth talking about. (It was Bangalore’s first gay pride parade.) And because sexual freedom is something I feel strongly about, I actually stirred myself (and A) post lunch and made it to JC Road where we joined the parade halfway.
