Fury. Fire and fury. My teeth beg to not be ground.
By: Harini Narayanan
Tags: Fury, Anger, Feminism

Sometimes I have to remind myself to not grind my teeth in anger. I have to remind myself to lower my voice and calm my tone. I have to remind myself to just chill out sometimes. Because if I don’t, somebody else will anyway.

My fury as a woman has no place in this world. My fury as a brown person has no place in this world. My fury as barely a 21-year old has no place in this world. I’m reminded time and again by the world around me as to how I should behave. My life’s handbook was written way before me and it’s taking me all my strength to tear it apart.

I don’t know when I became a feminist, I think I was always one but I’m getting better at being a feminist these days.

It started with this stupid story in my stupid textbook about a girl with a parrot who was given less food than her brother. I don’t remember anything else, I don’t remember the ending or the gender roles it subconsciously imbibed, but I do remember taking it upon myself to fight anybody who told me I was not good enough because I was a girl.

Maybe I owe it all to my brother, because it was sibling rivalry that sparked the feminist rebellion inside me.

All my life I believed I was not a rebel, that I gave in too easy because I didn’t need the trouble. I was wrong. You are born a rebel if you’re born a girl.

My school was not a great place for a feminist. It was easier to not stand up to your teachers, it was easier to follow the rules, no matter how incredulous. And that’s what I did. But rebellion came to me in lunch breaks filled with passionate talks for women’s rights. I sat with my friends in a circle, our tiffin boxes were passed around, and we discussed everything under the sky. I remember a friend of mine complaining we didn’t discuss guys enough. It felt like an accusation then, and I remember getting very defensive, but in hindsight, I’m happy. In a life that was going to be filled with talks of the men and how their being and non-being affected us, I’m happy I let my school girl self talk about sex without it being tied to a particular man.

We sat in a circle, as hypocrites, because we were also the studious ones, we were the rule-following, we were the prefects and the teacher’s pets. We realise, yet again in hindsight, that we could, and should have spoken up more, then maybe the students that came after us would have had a more feminist school. But we didn’t, and we haven’t, even after leaving and the school continues to be what it was, churning out women who as girls learnt feminism through rebellion.

When I started college, I almost believed that it was the feminist haven of my dreams. I couldn’t have been more wrong. We didn’t have a dress code, but we had a curfew. We didn’t have rules about not talking to boys, but we also didn’t have rules about how they spoke about us. Outwardly, all was equal but my girl friends and I still had to work twice as hard to get half the recognition. It chills my spine to think how my workplace is going to be. Or how in this world which is constantly out to get me, am I ever going to find a man for companionship!

I am not like my father. My anger doesn’t hold. It usually melts into sadness and disappointment. My anger is a fistful of sand, the harder I hold, the faster it eludes me.

And that is why my moments of anger are important to me. They are so fleeting, and yet so common that every time somebody tells me to chill, to not take things so seriously, I believe they are robbing me of my right to be annoyed. I do not want to let my microaggressions turn into resentment for the world. I, of all people, know that the world isn’t fair! But every time I’m angry at the injustice, it is only because I still have hope. So I cannot believe I have to ask for this, but don’t tell me to chill, let me hope that we as humanity can do better.