Friday, July 31, 2020

Uncanny among Canny


     People hardly know me as a rebel. For them, I am the same girl who sits in the corner without spelling a single word.  When you are too tiny among so many people they hardly realize your presence. They can take you like a tiny object which has nothing to do with the world around them. I am one of them. Smallest in the group from school to university.  They identify me as a brown tiny girl in their group.

            When you always feel like an outsider it makes you a different person. I am one of those. Who hardly have a feeling of being an insider. And always considered myself idiosyncratic and weird. When I go back to my formative years I remember being an odd among my own extended family.  I was not pretty and fair like my siblings.  It is not easy to grow up as a darker girl in a traditional  Nepali society. It is harder when you enter your teenage. That is the time when everyone feels a lack of belonging.  When you are continuously judged by your skin color and body type it makes you feel more outsider. I used to feel the same. Because of the same reason, the girls around me had never been my inspiration. I just observed them but never wanted to be like them. I never thought they would be my inspiration.  At the age of fifteen, I had already realized that my life wouldn’t be like theirs, I had to make my journey unique. At that time I was quite unaware of the journey I would like to go through. However, I was sure ..... my journey would be different.

            As I said  I am not a rebel in a traditional sense.  I am the rebel on my own terms. I was not like my friends, I was not like my siblings. So, I started observing my own life differently. I started observing people and realized that I am unique as well as beautiful. That feeling of being different but beautiful inspired me to take a different journey in life. I started writing. I started writing about my own weird journey. I started writing about the people who were around me. When you feel there is no one to understand you,  pen and paper are the only things that give you the company of compassion. Writing is the job of a loner. It is a journey from silence to silence. Perhaps I took the same journey I walked through silence and I wish I would walk on the same path.

            For me, a rebel is someone who walks on his or her own path without being apologetic. I think I am one of them.  People hardly attracted or intimated with me in any sense but it turned out as a liberating experience. It made me a different person, different than the rest. If I was pretty and fair like my siblings, like my friends  I may fall into the same trap of early marriage. I wouldn’t fall because  I wasn’t like them. Writing and reading gave me a new dimension and somehow broader worldview. At least it made me realize I am living on my own terms, I am beyond my tiny body and my dark complexion. 

            When you believe that beauty is something that is constructed you cannot easily deal with the things which are so regressive. For example, I never use fairness cream, I am always against it although I am the first one who gets the suggestion to use it.  Even my high school students already suggested me to use it. I never believe in vanity because I see the hierarchy and discrimination people are facing each day just because of how they look including me. But for my mom and grandmom’s generation that is something a girl needs to deal with.  They wish to see me as society wants to see me as beautifully married.  I always feel marriage is so regressive in many terms. For marriage, a girl’s look is the first and foremost thing to negotiate.  I never believe and never want to negotiate with it at least just for the sake of marriage. Also, I never think I am the one who is considered to be perfect for marriage. I have my own unique flaws as a human being. So, being an outsider of many institutions and concepts which are celebrated in society whether you want to or not you need to fight for your uncanny thought. I think I am doing the same.

            It’s not easy to articulate something so personal on a public platform. I think  I did the same and unapologetically consider myself a rebel. Maybe it is as similar as being uncanny among the group of canny.


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