When inclusivity spills on to streets

If there was one spectral emotion from whose lurking shadow I was able to unentangle myself more easily last year its FOMO mdash the Fear of Missing Out I had been introduced to the terms counter mdash JOMO which replaces Fear with Joy and revelled in its subversive potentialHow much time and energy had I spent in illusive pursuits I believed were significant to me when really they werent or were dreams of others I had adopted through either peer pressure or osmosis So many art openings and private dinners Id only attended because I felt some compulsion towards registering my presence there I had bought into the notion that my being invited was a validation of my having arrived of my being taken more seriously by the art community or the literary communityI confess I actively sought acceptance and a corollary sense of belonging I reasoned with myself that I had earned my seat at every table within the worlds I wanted to inhabit and then felt disappointed each time I received no invitation Until finally sometime last year I was able to relinquish almost wholly the sway these notional tables had held in my imagination I began investing instead in reconceiving the form of the table and how it could be incisive yet inclusive accommodating of ideological diversities within the stable of feminist urgencies I began cooking more intensely I began collecting recipes I began the process of feeding and learning to be fed and I read more and more about love as a revolutionary act of kindness that stems from the self and yet extends beyond its boundariesAll of this learning and thinking and feeling enabled my experience of the perfect New Years Eve I felt zero pressure to party to do something to post about what exciting thing I was doing on social media I spent the evening drinking chamomile tea with my husband and my parents and reading Chayanika Shahs introduction to Zubaans recently published edition of Sara Ahmeds Living a Feminist LifeIve spoken before about Ahmeds proposition of the feminist killjoy as that subversive figure that no one wants to have at any dinner table because she inevitable asks inconvenient questions and pokes holes in patriarchal discourseShah paraphrases it eloquently in her introduction She questions and rants more than she needs to She is never happy she is perpetually angry She upsets the peace at the dining table Her continuous challenge of everything at and around the table is seen as a challenge to the happiness of the family meal Gratitude is demanded for the fact that she had happy meals Gratitude is a price to be paid in exchange of not challenging the peace Shah reminds us that this price is demanded by all tables in exchange for inclusion Also participating at tables whether across them or around them is frequently a negotiation with power The question however is how do we make our tables the ones that we make in our homes in our organisations in our collectives feminist And how do we interact at around and across themThe Muslim women of Shaheen Bagh in Delhi had been inadvertently answering many of those questions while I was reading Shahs invocation of them As I lay in my bed in Goa grateful for time with my ageing parents anticipating upcoming months of hectic fieldwork I felt an intense pang of FOMO Mona sent me a picture of her mother accompanying her to the antiCAA dharna at Shaheen Bagh and I longed suddenly to be with this my other family my activist familyI longed to experience the energy and warmth of these housewives who had taken to the streets 18 days ago and have since decided to stay there extending the parameters of their domestic realm As a student of JNU I encountered protests on a regular basis I was even present at one a day before I left for New Delhi where I spent a lot of time running from the police because I had a train to catch the next day But the idea of these women hosting the protest by feeding not just fellow protesters and each other but also the figures of authority whose brutality they were protesting of them running a community kitchen accepting ingredients being brought by anyone expressing generosity made me want to weep with joyFrom all accounts these women seem to have dismissed with the limited notion of the table entirely in lieu of radical inclusivity irrespective of religion Theyve taken their religiously specific concept of fasting roza and transformed into a revolutionary hunger strike which isnt confined to the Gandhian ideal of withholding from eating for sustenance until a demand is met but extends to a communitycentred breaking of the hungerstrikefastJournalist Samrat Chakrabarti reports If the Shaheen Bagh stage has a bias it is towards women and those from academia and elsewhere who can educate them not just on CAANRCNPR but also the freedom struggle Ambedkar Gandhi and the ideas that animate the preamble to the Constitution The absence of a singular person becoming the face of the struggle is another unique advantage No one dares speak to the women directly And without a leader who do they approach writes ChakrabartiIt would seem that the Muslim women of Shaheen Bagh have evolved a feminist prototype for contemporary protesting My only selfish complaint is its doing nothing to keep my FOMO under checkDeliberating 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 mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individuals and dont represent those of the paperCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updates