A Feminist in Pieces – Testimonial

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A    in
Pieces

By Smita
Shashank Pendharkar

 

 

I am a Feminist In Pieces. With a
thousand grains of life scattered over three continents, I have no real home
nor a sense of real belonging. The voices around me often say that I am living
in three diasporas, breathing-in three cultures, communicating in three
distinct idioms. I often feel less like a citizen of the world, and more like a
nomad of the imaginary, traversing a terrain and incessant borders that exist
only for me. With roots that barely grip the earth I stand on and a voice that
seldom resonates with the souls around me, I am a walking contradiction
belonging to no particular world, to no particular continental womb.

 

I am a Feminist in pieces. Born of a
Black mother miles and miles away. Birthed of a culture that celebrates color,
rhythm, and unity, I am weaved into a brilliant quilt of reds, blacks, golds
and greens. I have stood with my fist clenched in revolution against police
brutality, for “taking back the night” and towards building a stronger nation,
but in the end I have always stood alone at the crossroads of this deeply
matrixed life and wondered about which one leads home.

 

I am a Feminist in pieces. Fighting
for the rights of my Sistas. With a headwrap as my crown and a body studded
with symbols of “my history,” I have taken more than one journey towards the
light, towards the freedom that my Sistas and I sought in honor of Sojourner
Truth, Harriet Tubman, Assata Shakur and Angela Davis. Still tied to my
mother’s umbilical cord, I walked tall knowing that I was Black, African, Beautiful,
and destined to fulfill “the dream.” I walked tall, Black, African, and
Beautiful…or did I ?

 

I am a Feminist in pieces. Struggling
to hold myself together. Bursting at the seams with Black pride, American
patriotism, and an indescribable Indianness, I am a cocktail for which there is
no recipe. The voices inside me say that I am less a rooted revolutionary and
more the seasonal pollen that floats above the fields. Settling wherever the
gentle and furious winds take me, I belong to no one place, no one culture, no
one ideology. I am an alien wherever I go simply because the soil that I hover
above never takes my roots, never beckons to me, never embraces me.

 

I am a Feminist in pieces. Asking
questions for which there are no real answers. Breathing movements of which I
am never really a part of because They
say that I am seated, by birth, at the top of the social hierarchy. A heathen
of sorts because of my Brahminism; an oppressor because I have light skin and
Aryan-esque features; and, a perpetrator of violence against the invisible
masses because I own much more than a shack situated on the banks of a polluted
city.

 

I am a Feminist in pieces. My voice
now suffers from spiritual and moral laryngitis, consumed by a guilt that I
understand but will not own; bothered by the social infection of poverty and
oppression, I have cared for and cared about those who have laid blame squarely
on the shoulders of my ancestors and I. My sense of conviction and pride,
rickety from accusations, tremulous under the rage of the benighted beasts of
My caste-ocracy, and erratic in the presence of contention, are reduced to that
guilt I understand but will not own; that guilt I understand but will not wear;
that guilt I understand but cannot feel.

 

The Broken People[1][1] all over the
world, in sync with their hatred of everything I embody, rebel against the
permanency of their untouchability, reviling everything that reminds them of
centuries of collective humiliation, dehumanization and a life entrenched in
suffering. But I too have suffered. My gender, My feminine mystique, My voice from the lips that cannot speak, have
also been exploited, battered and forced into a deep slumberous silence. So now
I often wonder, am I not broken too?

 

I am a Feminist in pieces. Seeking to
deconstruct that which I am to re-construct that which I think I should be.
Willing to rage against the winds of resistance, I am a Feminist carrying my
pieces with heart and passion for a Cause that I cannot even call my own – for
a Cause They will not allow to be my
own. Caste aside, Raced aside, all this enGendering has collapsed me, unraveled
me, crippled me, left me as nebulous as I was before the union of my parents’
spirits.

 

But still I rise, with my pieces in
tow because I see why I was made a Woman and why Feminism nourishes me. So I’ll
look forward to the day when my Black mother draws me into the strength of her
breast; when I am no more just an alien Buffalo Soldier trudging forth past the
red rock giants; and, when this country of my skull accepts me as a Woman
without deference…and reverence of pativrata[2][2].

 

A Feminist in pieces no more will I
be, I will have transcended the chaos of three diasporas, three lives, three
distinct Women. My holy trinity will meld into one, and I will finally be a
Feminist in peace, in one whole piece.