Rainbow Dreams

Those were blithesome warm afternoons during Dehradun winter. While baba was busy in office and mom was away for household works, Thammi and I had our share of good time.

The large courtyard attached to our British Era Govt accommodation, which was allotted to my father then, was a perfect place for our hangout in the winter chilled afternoons of Dehradun.

 

 The sun kissed lap of my Granny (whom we fondly called thakurma and sometimes thammi too), was the perfect place for this one hour after-school break. The milky white saree she wore was my pillow of the hour.

 

Thammi used to sit with her thread box and would complete the kantha work with coloured threads and needles. Red, blue, green, yellow, pink, magenta those threads were the only colours in her otherwise white colourless life.

 

While her ever sunken eyes were always concentrating on her stitches, her lips would never stop telling me tales from her childhood where her memories were not all very happy.

 

Born as a girl child she was bestowed with another curse of losing both her parents at a very early age of 5, Lacking opportunity of formal education or forced for early marriage by the strict society and cladding in complete white after the very early demise of her husband she had seen it all in one life.

 

Forget gender equality or feminism, she was not even allowed to take many of the favourite delicacies guided by the norms of society as she was a widow, she could never select a colourful saree for her even in her entire lifetime. These rituals or rules were so injected in her that she gave up her love for the non-veg food forever and could not take it up again after many years even on our request. And this was the story of many others like her during that period who were marred by their circumstances.

 

In one such tête-à-tête with me, she dreamt of a world of equality and shared it with me. It was her dream to see every girl to be strong enough to get the right education, support her family, go for a job, earn a living as well as cook food for her family and nurture their babies sharing the responsibilities with their partners and where her self-respect and dignity will get the prominence while she reciprocates the same to her male counterparts.

 

She could not live to see these in her life but I strongly believe that when we girls will start leaving our ‘ladies’ seats for the tired or sick men in the buses or metros around us, or when everyone will choose their dress, food and thoughts on their own irrespective of their gender, few of her dreams will see the light.

When we will condemn our undue privileges and work on our responsibilities towards the society in tandem When freedom of a girl will not just mean to be single or not having a male in her life rather sharing her thoughts freely with her male counterparts,

When Men’s Day will also be celebrated with the same enthusiasm and equality as we celebrate Women’s’ Day every year from a decade or so,

 

“That day, we may see the colors of her threads of Kantha as a rainbow in the sky.”

 

(Excerpts from my book “Rainbow Dreams” which I may write someday)

 

 *** I learned about Kantha, the heritage of Bengal, how almost all ladies back in Bengal used to stitch kantha at home during their leisure afternoons after completing all household chores by stacking their old sarees.

 

My granny too created wonderful masterpieces then.  I just tried to recreate one such work through my painting.

This is done in A4 paper with coloured pencils borrowed from my son.