Useful tips for a woman
1.
When the drawstring comes off from the petticoat, you need to look at it as an opportunity to learn patience.
Pin a safety pin to the end of the drawstring and push it in the hole with right hand and pull it with the left. In the middle where two parts are joined, it needs more of a tactic that comes with experience.
This is your midlife crisis.
Crisis is you 'becoming', a tea cup full of ants devouring leftover sweetness, an absence of sense.
2.
Be a potato. It goes well with paneer as well as beef. No matter if the city burns, your father calls you a feminist/leftist (sounds slut), neighbours plot to kick you out, he beats you blue or even if the world is gasping - be a potato. Put your opinions safely in your thyroid pill bottle. You anyway have only a few.
3.
If the bottom of your pressure cooker is burnt, throw lemon pieces and let it whistle. You will see
how easy whitening or even white washing comes to us. It comes from my mother and yours too.
4.
Make naphthalene balls an obsession. Throw them in every corner. Empty squares can mirror
screams for spaces. Ignore them to be blissful.
5.
Use the softly bent side of a bobby pin to clean your ears. There's no philosophy to this. It's just a
suggestion.
Rage as an emotion
"Rage must be like your bra. You wear it but you don't show it to the world", says Amma as she scrubs the utensils with an unusual vigour. She forgets that I hate wearing bras or that I have breasts. I imagine walking past the man on the cycle rub his crotch with one hand and telling me that he knew I wanted his dick. I couldn't have dragged on like an apologetic Mugambo. I paused, gathered my rage and hurled stones at him one after the other with sweaty palms and trembling hands. Rage is never instant. It is a slow roasted brinjal on a stove before becoming a delicacy. I let anger rest between my thighs because there is not shame left there. Rage is my vulgarity. I mother it.
As I think of ways to put this up, my radio sings -Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage ..
