Reflection on movement

Movement

As I am sitting here writing, reminiscing. I wonder where the life force goes? The life force that existed within me as a child, what happens to that? Sometimes I find my younger self locked up in a memory box. I go back to that place of darkness to be reborn again and again. Sometimes it gets so exhausting, I wished I had a different mother.

I recall trying to take my first steps. “Hainsay!!”, My mom exclaims, following me from behind as I try to climb the stairs one at a time. The floor is made up of pink marble tile, which makes the house very cold. The stairs are barricaded by the wooden railing that look like elongated buds of flowers stacked. Trying my best to climb these stairs, I place my small hands as if placing them on my mother’s round, bulging belly when she was pregnant with my siblings. This is how I learned to walk. I loved walking the stairs with my grandfather.

During the morning hours when I was a toddler, I always stayed with my grandparents in the living room. My mom has to make breakfast for the entire family, and Baba has to take business calls and look into accounting books for the day. The only empty hands were of grandmother’s, who raised my siblings and me. My grandfather would join us in between his calls. He sings songs of “ghin- tang ghin tang” holding our little hands. He raises my hand upward, making me stand on my feet. As i look back into my relationship with my grandfather(hajurbuwa) holding his hands, walking beside him was my favorite memory.           When adolescent hit, the intimacy we shared sharing quiet walks together was taken away by patriarchy.

 Once I learned how to walk, I started to fall. There are a total of 13-14 steps from one floor to another. My mother describes that I was so chubby that I had arms and thighs like a tight twisted rope.  

I was 4 years old when I rolled down the stairs like a rolling stone. My mom and grandmom are shouting for their life from upstairs. It was too late for anyone to save me. I was already on a roll, and my head banged on every tread of the stairs. I hadn’t cried so hard since my birthday. That story always became a cautionary tale for my brother and sisters growing up, as they were learning to walk. Regardless of that, falling and tripping was inevitable even for adults. Although they never had it as bad as me.

I also fell a lot during track and sports, marks that are still etched on my knees and elbows. Also, the ditches were a scary place to go to school. My dad would tell me i feel often because I was chubby. According to him my body as a child was not able to carry its own weight which was the reason i feel often. This narrative that was fed to me ultimately became the reasons I never excelled in sports or anything that had to do with intensive use of the body. Unknowingly, I was carrying those beliefs, meeting it every night after school. This belief never allowed me to fully be open to life, to fail and learn, to grow, to cultivate. I became a fierce competitor with very few wins. But I tried relentlessly, looking for someone to believe in me and accept that I could too. That everybody is equally capable, especially when you are young.  This forced narrative was how they tricked me into staying “bhalajmi(well mannered),” so I never could exist outside of the narrative. It was the safe boundary created for my father to feel comfortable around my body. If I exist outside of the narrative he has of me, and how I should be, it threatens him, which mostly resorted to me getting abused.

He had a sub category for me, coming out of the category that my mother was put under.  The subcategories came with colors, too. This sub category took me away from my choices of colors too. I was never allowed to wear any clothes that were too bright for him, such as green, orange, or purple. He usually made us change nail polish that existed in those colors. Even while purchasing a dress, the thought that bright colors might make my dad angry would always have to be considered. So, I usually existed in hues of pale yellows, pink, or simply black and white. I was supposed to be a girl, to act my age. In the age when I wanted to wear these different colors, I was made to please the male gaze. This has been the biggest reason why my love for colors and color theory exists today. Since then, I started to paint mostly abstract, putting very off tone colors together. This was also the reason why I started to paint my imagination with different colors. My escapism from the trauma became my imagination, along with singing and dancing to music. I colored my world out of all that was not possible for me in Nepal.

This was how I created space for myself where everything I did openly had to be under the supervision of my dad. I created space in my imagination, space by singing and dancing. I was able to create a hidden space because i saw how my mother kept us safe in her own hidden world.

Anything that did not perfectly fit in his palms was chubby for him. After 2 abortions and 3 pregnancies, her body was changing in an unexplainable way, but my dad always claimed that my mom was constantly gaining weight after her pregnancy because she had married a rich man who was able to feed her. His anger turns into abuse if he ever has to step into the kitchen. His greatest anger is when her has to fetch water for himself. His greatest anger is when my mom is not around to fetch him food, to get his clothes ready for the day, to iron them, to wash them, to make his bed. When in fact all of the organic honey, milk, spinach, pears, corn, and other produce came from my mama ghar. My mom’s side of the family took up occupations of farming with strong communist values, and my dad’s were industrialists with capitalistic values. Caught between the war that my father had waged on my mother’s body, we were separated.

The world says your purpose lies in your childhood. At the urgency of my body, I played. And danced.

DANCE DANCE DANCE!!!

My very first recollection of dancing was in my living room. It was the early 2000’s. My grandparents have just returned from America, visiting my uncle, and the smoke from 9/11 is still lingering on with a strong, pungent smell in our lives.  My grandmom explains the story of how close she was to the World Trade Center when 9/11 happened. We had a very small TV with a wooden case, and I had turned the channel to zoom which is basically Bollywood’s MTV. “It’s the time to disco” is playing from the movie kaal ho na ho, with pretty Zinta. It was also the era of Bollywood taking over New York. My grandad is seated on the floor with his landline pressed against his ears. My brother, who is a toddler, is just crawling across the floor, and I was standing close to the TV on the other side. I am wearing white pajamas and shamelessly mirroring the dancers, trying to learn their moves. Even my grandad claps to the beats and raises my brother like he did me, and makes him dance. This memory is so vivid in my mind because it was filmed by my dad. I wonder how much of my childhood my body would have retained if technology had not existed. The stories I hold would not be there.

I don’t know what would befall my parents when they decide to watch our childhood videos. But all I know is we watched it many times for me to remember the scenes. In these elaborative videos i had my own little world where I am seen dancing quietly. Even amongst crowds of relatives gathered in my house, I would find a little corner to play pretend. I did not even have music to dance i would have the songs learned by heart and play pretending stories. Turing weird and empty spaces of my house into the space of wherever my imagination took me. I still have memories of my childhood, where I used to play pretend all the time.

One of the treasures of my childhood is the video cam. A Sony V-Cam, which my dad held in his palms all the time, even the hand strap has taken the shape of the arches of his hands.

In my childhood videos, I was always seen dancing or playing make-believe out of nothing.

I did not need music; memorizing lyrics was enough. Seeing this, my grandmother admitted me to a dance studio two houses away from my house, which was very short lived because getting me to the class was not anyone’s priority.

Right after joining S.T. Mary’s around grade 3, my body started to take a weird turn. My growing body was supposed to hid somewhere along with my legs that could never spread too far apart. Lengthy restrictions on self-expression, too much make-up, too few clothes.

I had two choices: either hide myself or let the men handle me. I did move freely amongst my siblings, mothers, and my many sisters, but it was when my dad came around that I lost myself. I would lock myself in a room and come out to him not as myself but only as his. This was promulgated more by St. Mary’s where we were expected to walk in straight lines with hands tied back and sit with our legs knitted together.

One activity that helped us transcend the differences in our bodies was swimming.

Every summer during a family gathering, the elders would join my siblings and me. We would swim in the smaller one and the elders in the bigger pool. The adult men pretended like they could swim, all the while they had their feet touching the ground. My brother, at a young age, was taken towards the 5-6 feet; he had special arm floaters and was encouraged with the intrinsic confidence of being a boy.

I was left in a small pool, 1-2 feet, along with my first cousin Divyata, she was more confident than me because of the amount of openness and transparency she had with her parents, which made her feel safer in my body. This transparency gave us safety because she would never be abused or questioned for her decisions. Whereas everything I did had to be under the strict regulations of my father. My grandmother became a mother figure towards me, who operated under his direction. She refused to take any responsibility when the plan they had for how I would turn out went sideways. For example, lying to my parents to go meet my boyfriend, or getting caught reading fifty shades of grey at my catholic school. Lastly, finding that I was into heavy drinking and smoking a day before I left for the US.

Divyata and I were the only ones who were actually learning how to swim. I even nearly drowned once, teaching myself to go underwater.  We would also take many pictures during the get-together. My dad always came around with his other camera, which was a Nixon digital camera. He would give us his directions. I was too shy to make a pose in front of him, so I chose the default. This is sad as this is rebellious. I choose to stand there like a statue, fisted hands straight down like a soldier with a smile drawn on my face. For the longest time, that became my pose.

My father repeats his stories about male dominance to me like it is some kind of prayer etched in his brain forever. This phenomenon showed up in other activities like biking, walking, and running. I was never going to be better than my brother or any other man because of their better abilities. Even now, my brother cannot see me do good at something. Patriarchy has instilled the male ego where he is afraid of his own sisters doing better than him when it comes to sports, driving or any activities that is labeled to be “masculine” thing to do. Something that women’s bodies are not able to do.

 My anger has stemmed out of this very inequality in play, the freedom to play. This has costed me my joy and the breath of the body. Losing without even being allowed to open up.

The lucky ones who had fathers who allowed them to play without that disparity won, alongside and became leaders of school and community. Not only did they win in patriarchy but also were able to create trust and community amongst women themselves.  As I stood besides, losing, questioning all along the way. Was he right? That I was born less able than the fathers and the brothers? Was it because i was born out of my mother?