The sustaining power of feminism

Much of my present well-being is tied to the choices I made because of my feminist beliefs, the best decision being allowing myself to be loved by someone who cares unceasingly for me and our child

It’s been almost 10 days since I was discharged from my 10-day stay in the hospital in Meran—the most scenic spot I’ve ever inhabited while convalescing. The most vivid memory I have is of the watch that lay directly in front of my bed. Sometimes I was sure at least 15 minutes had passed since I had last looked at it, but when I would check, I’d feel baffled to learn barely five minutes had transpired. Time seemed to move in this excruciatingly slow way and feeling cognitively challenged meant I couldn’t do very much to occupy my mind. I didn’t feel like reading. I didn’t feel like doing crosswords or puzzles. Staring at the mountain, at dolomite rock, felt somehow more comforting. Because I had lost three days of consciousness, my home in Tramin seemed so far away. I wanted to be back, but I also knew it would be challenging to return half-healed to a toddler. It wasn’t up to me anyway. I had to surrender completely to the will of the doctors and nurses.

Since I’ve been back, though, I’ve been trying to rebuild the lost narrative. Never have I encountered such gaps in my memory. Never had I been sedated over a three-day span, with some general anaesthesia thrown in during the surgical procedure. As a writer, it throws me off to think about all the sensations I couldn’t consciously feel during that span. The severity of the condition I was in before my partner sent me to the emergency room scares me. When I wrote last week’s column, I hadn’t yet learned that my partner thought I was possibly having a stroke because the left side of my body was beginning to malfunction. Since the column was published, friends have messaged to tell me about instances they know of when people in a similar situation as I ended up with a half-paralysed face! I stopped reading about bacterial meningitis—what I was diagnosed with—because it was beginning to freak me out that I got so lucky, that too while pregnant in my second trimester.

Instead, I’m trying to focus on this new consciousness I have of feeling fortunate. There have been many moments in my life when I have felt genuinely blessed. This word has followed me through my life, because I grew up catholic, and after every rosary at home, we followed the practice of going to our elders with our hands joined to ask for their blessing. They would make the sign of the cross over our palms and move our hands up, saying in Konkani, ‘may you grow big’. As I was drawn closer towards feminism, it was important for me to understand what role I could play in bettering the conditions of my own life. I think the smartest decision I made through my 20s was to stay unmarried. I hadn’t met anyone who I felt loved me for who I was, who truly ‘saw’ me. I was always left disappointed by potential relationships. I think this was why my closest friends were so shocked when I decided to marry my partner within less than a year of knowing him. I was in my mid-30s then, and everything about him felt so right. In fact, in the beginning, I was so suspicious of how right it felt, I was convinced there were skeletons somewhere and I felt intent on finding them. But then, I came to Tramin a few months before he came to India to marry me in a court in Delhi, and I lived with him and his parents for about two months and that’s when I felt absolutely positive that I had somehow blessed myself by pursuing this relationship, which, in the beginning of our courtship had made no sense, considering I had met him in 2018 two or three days before I was to leave Italy with no plans of returning.

Perhaps the gaps in my present memory and the residual brain fog steers my brain in the direction of the past, of which I definitely have a stronger hold. Since I’m taking it easy and not over-inundating myself, I feel a certain clarity about the last four years since my move to South Tyrol. I’ve been thinking more and more about the significant role that feminism has played in charting out the sequence of events in my life, and the empowering role of therapy in helping me navigate my emotional well-being. I’ve felt humbled by how many people have come up to me in Tramin to ask me how I am doing. ‘Gott sei dank! [Thank God!]’ they tell me… I don’t want to discount the potential role of divinity in keeping me alive, well, and happy, but I also feel the need to acknowledge how so much of my present well-being is connected to the good choices I made thanks to my feminist beliefs. The best decision of course being to allow myself to be loved by someone who cares for me and our toddler in ways I never imagined possible. One of the songs I sing to my child at night is Nat King Cole’s ‘Nature Boy’, and these days I choke a little more at the last line, because it couldn’t be truer… ‘The greatest thing you’ll ever know is just to love and be loved in return’. Maybe it is through the acceptance of love that we allow ourselves to be blessed.

Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.

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