In the Last 10 Years she has become a successful 'Social Worker'.

In the mid 90's, while I was engaged in my pursuits as a Graphic Designer, juggling with a new mother hood and trying to create a niche in my profession in a small town, I encountered three women that changed the direction in my life in too many ways. All three came from entirely different backgrounds and while two had deliberately chosen to leave their paternal families, one had been abandoned. My natural instincts, partly as a designer and partly as a concerned citizen of a society in conflict I extended a helping hand to clear the bumps and creases in their life. Out of the three, one took it’s toll on me both professionally and personally throwing everything in my life into a turmoil. It began with the innocent act of accepting a request to help the woman in designing a diary she had been struggling to make since days and weeks. After a few encounters with her, I was given to feel that I was dealing with a woman in depression, extremely lonely and isolated in a new town, struggling to find her feet. She clung to me for help in every sort of way – extremely persuasive to put it gently, but many of her actions were emotionally violent, crude and crass acts of desperation. What was different about Nimisha though, was that, unlike the other two, who had allowed their depression to make them entirely helpless, this woman was struggling to be independent. It was this spirit of hers that I allowed myself to be talked in to helping her set up her woman's organization for the next nearly 6 years. Being a designer with artistic sensibilities, ill equipped to deal with cases of depression and violence as belted out by her, never a politician, what transpired in those 6 years, took me another 10 years to overcome that ordeal. What was most traumatic to overcome was the realization, that for six years, I had allowed a politically ambitious woman of unknown credibility, doing social work, but treating people as her whipping horse, spreading ungrounded, unfounded statements that were taken out of context, as ‘facts’.

Being the eternal optimist, battling with my own now sinking morale, for 10 years I struggled to keep my head above the waters of depression, battling along, juggling my life personally and professionally. During the course of this journey, I made important discoveries in the personal, professional and spiritual spheres.

In this journey, I discovered beautiful men and women who are my family.

The Dizzying Spiral of Words

It helps to sometimes just talk........to a silent non-judgmental listener. The words will fall out like the mountain river, gushing, noisy and turbulent and then slowly it will run calmly like the smooth flow of the river of the plains until you will be at calm and one with yourself, able to go into your own depths to understand yourself.

The world appears to go into a churn, with so many words swirling around us - each word revealing myriad meanings drawing from the deep recesses of memory. Memories are helpful- but often they can sink one inside with the swirl of words outside, creating a whirlpool like churn sinking you in and raising you up.

Gradually, the words will sort themselves out.

Boundaries.

The concept of “Boundaries” is loaded with contradictions - it is a very seductive and a provocative word. It bears a noose of threat and ring of protection at the same time.
Boundaries surround, protect, divide, and enclose spaces.

Spaces stimulate notions of freedom.
The two are interconnected.

Key words for Spaces – physical spaces, emotional spaces and intellectual spaces and many other others’. Space - that all consuming feeling of lightness and being. Do spaces without boundaries become anchorless and drift?

Boundaries are dynamic in themselves; rigid boundaries create conflicts within and without; Yet boundaries are frequently created – mostly to protect, someone, oneself, something or the other.

We protect, only if, we perceive threat – so when we create a boundary, we must also understand what have we perceived as threat – how real or unreal that threat is. This threat can be from within and from without. This threat can be perceived or real.
Key Questions; Who creates boundaries, for who, from what and for what – these are questions that are constant to the issue of boundaries – where space is a question of – whose space and why space.
Spaces and Boundaries.
Boundaries and Spaces.

A dynamic relationship – one without the other is vapor and noose.

Any act of creativity/design begins by identifying the space and then creating boundaries to mark that space.

Boundaries infect/affect/define your status, relationship with the spaces/environment around you – the more boundaries are created, that much more complex the relationships become. But boundaries are frequently used to simplify problems by humans; they also use boundaries to create hierarchies between each other. (Will it?) If rigid, the relationship between the inner and outer slowly cuts off – the inner space is likely to rot if not connected with the outer space. The outer space is likely to drift away if not connected with the inner space.

It means different things to different people, in relation to who is on which side of the boundary and for how long. Inside the boundary, the same ring of protection can be perceived as a noose/a threat. From outside, the boundary from being a signal of limits can be threatening imposition of authority and ownership. A flexible boundary, constantly churned, can keep the balance in relationship.

The seductive boundary, protecting and creating space within, it can turn into the provocative threat of confinement.

In human relationships – we have created several boundaries. These boundaries restrict and release at the same time.

Boundaries have been created to divide/protect/confine/restrict to create a society on the basis of hierarchies of sex (feminity/masculinity, male/female), age, caste, class, religion and region.

What does it mean to have space without boundaries?

Can we have spaces without boundaries?

Must we have boundaries?

How will we know when the boundary from being protective is turning into a noose of threat?

Will My boundary be threat to Your space?

Does my boundary protect you as well?

Are we looking for common spaces? Is it possible to have a common space?

There are no quick answers’ – there are only processes to find out; the moment an answer is found – it must be churned again before it confines itself.

Death

Death
why does it not seduce me
when i look towards it
why does it stare past me
as if
i do not exist
Death
it appears
like the warm
snug lap
of my mother
and then
the oblivion
the endless wait
to nothingness
isnt this wait itself
death?

Dreams are like Vapor

A fire burns below the navel.
and the heart turns ice.
hard and frozen
waiting for time
to move
from one moment
to the next
and then
slowly
it begins to melt
a wet chill
begins to spread
the fire
dissolves
and
a dream begins to take shape
the same dream
that came to me yesterday
and the day before that...
and before that
the fire and ice
spread
warm
snug
the sun is bright
the birds sing
but nothing moves.
everything is still
still in its beauty
procrastination.

A question of Identity

A few days back a friend of mine who is also my colleague, asked me which would I choose – a job in another city to assert my identity or my identity remains linked to my daughter. This question came soon after a student of hers made a statement again linking identity only to my daughter. These questions came as if this is the only label they knew of me and as if the onus was on me for the way they perceived me.
I was puzzled and amused at the same time.
A person’s identity needs to be seen from a 360 degree view. There is not one single identity to a person. Most people see only one aspect of another persons identity, their perception limited by their own experience where experience is also acquired from a third front.
My identity is not in just doing a job but in finding a situation of opportunities to release my creative energy. Staying in one situation in one place can also stagnate and dull the mind. This though, may not be a whole fact, as immobility also enables sorting out the chaos of images and thoughts in one’s mind. Change is a stimulant but in a measure.
This question of identity and purpose of life keeps returning. I had been confronted by a similar question nearly 15 years back by a social worker woman who was starting a feminist ngo. At that time I was confronting on my personal front, the repercussions of the choices I had had to make under family pressure and was struggling to come to terms with its consequences.
My daughter is not my identity – she is my responsibility and my family. ‘Mother’ is not an identity – it is a responsibility. As my family, my daughter is a source of steadiness in my life and an emotional charge. The bonds I share with her are pleasurable. But as my responsibility I cannot make her my emotional crutch and must give her the space for her to become a responsible adult. Some relationships transform and this is one such relationship which will continue to evolve over time.
It is a gender stereotype that the ‘mother’ is associated only to the woman. A man can be a mother as well. My daughter’s father made very good ‘mother’ to my child. But then it will not be accurate to call him a ‘mother’ because the term is deeply rooted into the female – which he was not. My daughters’ father was very much a man who had gentle nurturing qualities towards my daughter.
The term ‘mother’ is rooted in the female, very much like the word ‘Maya’ is a female word. The word is female and not feminine – it is necessary to understand the difference. There is much one can read through this word and it’s connecting with the female, on the social construct of gender roles.
We are not defined by just a single identity. We have multiple identities. As my daughter grows older, I become less of a mother to her and more of a support system, perhaps a confidante and friend as well. What will remain undeniable is that her sense of root will lie in my presence as well as in her fathers’ the notion that this relationship exists will anchor her faith in life.
Our other identities are defined by our sexuality, our beliefs in life, friends the work we do, the place we care to belong.
I can say for myself, my biological is family is more distant. My real family is my few friends who have been with me in the ups and downs in my life. My daughters’ father is still a family as he was my friend first and has continued to be so. We continue to be good working partners.
Today when information has easy access and much floats around in the media as fact or fiction, the emerging nature of the way people are expressing their sexuality, it is necessary to state one’s sexuality.
I am a heterosexual, one man woman. At the same time I would like to state a few things about sexual relationships and marriage.
Marriage as I have known from my own experience and that of others, who have shared about their marriage, is about work and responsibility.
Many women have labeled me a feminist. Perhaps I am a feminist by default. Maybe, because, I have been a person driven by my own energy, making my own choices.

Interpretations and Perceptions

When the Faculty of Fine Arts at Baroda was attacked by fundamentalists and the then university head not only removed hastily the ‘offending’ works of art but even went ahead and suspended the esteemed professor and jailed the student, several issues raised their heads. The critical issues were ownership of the image and singular representation of the image. The actions of the university authority crushed the academic enquiry of image representation, down to perceiving an image with a single interpretation that can be thrust upon through aggression. It amounts to colonizing a particular image.
The act of subverting the academic process revealed the systems own lack of clarity in its beliefs and understanding of the imagery they were demanding to be removed. With their action, they rejected the existence of other languages and scripts as well. Their actions read that a particular image must be called only by one ‘name’ and written in just script and no other. So by their rationale, an apple must be called only by the name of an ‘apple’ written only in the roman script and by no other name in no other script. So an apple cannot be called ‘safarjan’ or ‘seb’ and cannot be written in gujarati or hindi or anyother language.
A layman will not interrogate these nuances of reading an image and understanding the interplay of words and images. As s/he only sees an image as s/he has been conditioned to interpret the image and any other interpretation is incomprehensible to her/him.
The academic process at the Faculty of Fine Arts is involved in viewing and interpreting a single image for it multiple interpretations. It is not necessary that every layman understand or appreciate the images created and is subject to their involvement and depth of their understanding in interpretations. The act of the university authorities has subjugated not only the image, but languages that represent those images and the enquiry that goes into creating new imagery.