Rosalyn D'mello: A celebration of my feminist patakas

Since it is Diwali Ive been thinking about how this is a great moment to celebrate the feminist patakas in our lives pic for RepresentationThinkstockPataka the word popped out of my mouth like the exuberant sound itself in an impulsive combustive way I was at a party we were in the courtyard and Justin was searching through his brain for the adjectives that best defined his partner Bee Rowlatt It was her 47th birthday He was raising a toast to her She looked amazing in a lehenga with her teenage children standing around her similarly rocking their Indian outfits Before he could say beautiful I blurted pataka but I dont think anyone heard because Ive been so sober and well behaved these days my voice wouldnt have carried too far Later as we watched the fire dance that followed Justins beatific speech I did think about how fitting the word pataka was especially since it was barely a week till DiwaliThe word also personified in its delicate brevity what had drawn me to Bee earlier this year We were both on a panel on the memoir at the Jaipur Literature Festival She was speaking about her brilliant book In Search of Mary in which she recounts her adventures as she decided to follow in the footsteps of Mary Wollstonecraft the worlds first celebrity feminist from Norway to California to Paris toddler in tow just like the woman who wrote one of the most prominent feminist doctrines A Vindication of the Rights of WomanBee articulated herself so eloquently But beyond that I suspect that she was able to sense my nervousness and insecurity about being on that stage and through her questions and observations about my book cajoled me into speaking out By the end of our session I had already deemed her my festival crush The next day though was when I became aware of her pataka attribute She was on a panel being moderated by a friend writer and journalist Amrita Tripathi which had a range of incredible women on it including Anuradha Beniwal a former national chess champion Ruchira Gupta a writer academic and womens rights activist Antara Ganguli author and gender specialist at the UN my wonderful and outspoken girl crush Bee and Suhel Seth a man who is wellknown enough to not deserve an introductionSeth stood out on the panel like a criminal at a police lineup especially since it was titled Manelists Misogyny and Mansplaining It would have been so easy for all the women to have completely ganged up on Seth but they resisted instead they openly questioned his presence Why are you on a panel on mansplaining Bee asked him straightawayHe blurted out that we should ask one of the organisers as if he had been forced to participate and had no agency of his own I had expected a halfdignified answer from him but I have learned since to have no such expectations In fact all of the women on that panel were patakas And thats what Ive been trying to get at this wonderful abundance of women who are firecrackers and firestarters unafraid to confront misogyny head on and call a penis a penis when it is inserts itself into womens businessAnd since it is Diwali and since the Capital has been superbly collaborative its denizens choosing to wilfully keep this Diwali relatively noisefree Ive been thinking about how this is a great moment to celebrate the feminist patakas in our lives My immediate friend circle boasts of many such women Someone recently asked me about my meeting with Paromita Vohra with whom I was in conversation with around my book a few weeks ago in Bombay Was she as dreamy in person as she seems like online was a question at a bachelorette party and I had to say yes She too has been a longstanding girl crushThe bachelorette party was for someone who has become a very dear friend Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan best known for her blog The Compulsive Confessor She too is a pataka because for so many years before I even had a byline she had been practising feminine irrepressibility Someone nearer to my age group mdash were in fact born in the same year mdash is Sharanya Manivannan who looks and is a pataka I think also of women I will never have the privilege of befriending women in the West like Tina Fey who really did redefine comedy with 30 Rock and Chris Krauss and how my encounter with her book I Love Dick actually changed my life Not all patakas are loud and explosive some stand for that which is powerfully quiet linguistic blasts that spill out of your tonguemdashIm thinking of Anne Carson here and the brilliance of her poetryThen there are women from the past who were firecrackers too like Kamala Das and I imagine Akka Mahadevi The residual echoes from the crackling explosions they made long ago still resonate in the atmosphere They will never be silencedDeliberating on the life and times of Everywoman Rosalyn DMello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover She tweets RosaParx Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycom