Look around

40 days would have been fine, I said to myself.

After all quarantine came from the idea of keeping ships at bay for 40 days in case the sailors were infected with the plague. 

From the Venetian word Quarantena , says my trusted dictionary. Of course, i asked myself why 40 days, not 60 0r less ?

Of course, like all things at that time it was a  period chosen from the Bible: And the Lord made it rain for 40days and 40 nights, before i presume Noah and his motley crew found deliverance.  . It may also be linked to Jesus wandering in the desert. “At that time Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil. He fasted for forty days and forty nights and afterwards was hungry. “ It could be also inspired by Moses fasting for 40  days. And of course Lent is for 40 days too. 

Why 40? Haven’t a clue.  

I had been in quarantine before : once for measles and then for jaundice, the latter based on my Grandmother’s  mistaken notion  that jaundice was highly infectious

Those did not last 40 days .

So this was new to me.

Stay in, don’t meet, can’t meet anyone and stay away from all ships carrying the plague.. so to speak.

Then 40 days came and went and it’s still going. 

I realised that this was not a quarantine . This was a lock down. I was now in prison. I am socially imprisoned.

We are beginning to complain about the lockdown. As soon as it is lifted the young , kept caged , come charging out. The infections spike. Lockdown again. Trumpians feel that is an infringement of their rights. Others like me whine and groan from time to time, before we sigh and return shoulders bowed to our corners. Articles are written about depression. About the effects this has on old people who are afflicted by dementia. The psychological effects on behaviours, such as online shopping, online working, online food ordering, are debated and dissected.

I tried to boil this down, a decoction that  could make for a strong cup of thinking.

What has happened:

Choice has been taken away

Those who basked in public adulation and derived their sense of value form that have had to contend with only social media surrogacy. And that’s not enough.

We are , some of us at least redefining what is important or not

And we are beginning to realise  the difference between want and need.

These are four layers of filtration. 

But the first layer… aah the first layer is fundamental. And does not depend on our social situation, our mental acuity or philosophical ability..

Choice… that wonderful word, a term oft used as a synonym for free will.

A smaller than small organism with the motiveless malignancy of Iago has taken away choice.

Choice of going outside from our inside spaces. Choice of where shall we eat today. The choice of theatres and live music bands and museums and carnivals and cruises and holidays in destinations chosen for the express purpose of saying ‘I went there, so there!’ The choice of people you would like to meet and share a drink or a snog with. The choice of going to work or staying at home with an imaginary cold. The choice of transportation : ooh I feel sociable and I will take the metro. The choice of going to toilets in public spaces . The choice of running with the bulls in Pamplona: as strange as that almost suicidal choice might be. The choice of going to school or university and on a whim running the old undies up the flagpole. 

And the list imagined or real goes on. In fact you start thinking of things you have never done, and that you would never do  in a normal world do and you miss them!!

Another word for choice is Option. Choose Vanilla or Chocolate. Pick the blue shirt or the pink one. Make a choice between. One and another. There doesn’t seem to be  an “another”.

Lastly choice is also expressed as “I would rather”: I would rather go out or stay in, I would rather have a girl baby than a boy baby. I would rather marry that person rather than this one. I would rather  live in a village than a city . I would rather be in the mountains than live by the sea.

“I would rather” does hint at the degree of difficulty in getting what you choose; but it’s important to have if you have the strength or the courage to overcome obstacles and do what you would rather do!

So we are all locked down, locked in, locked up . 

And it got me thinking about how for centuries we have done that to women all over the world.

We have locked them up and locked them in: in the name of religions and social customs created by fearful men, who were afraid of themselves ,terrified of  the weaknesses within, and scared of the strength of mothers and sisters and daughters. 

Look around.

A woman in the north of india. She is a Hindu woman, in case you though this was restricted to  puritanical Islam. She can’t go out of her immediate neighbourhood, which may be 4 houses surrounding a  clearing and a village well. She has to tell ‘him’, never calling him by his first name, though he can call her anything he wants, what she needs as provisions for the week or months, and he writing the last down, for she cannot maybe read and write, will journey to the nearest shop in a market village,  and get it for her. But she can never ask him for feminine essentials, for how can she tell ‘him’ something like that? So she makes do with pices of cloth when she gets her periods. And contacting an urinary treat infection, she suffers. She may die. *

Look around. 

A man hacks his pregnant wife to death in a village in India**. Because she is pregnant with their sixth child. and he has learnt that this too may be another daughter. Never mind that he never used protection for that would interfere with his pleasure. Never mind that he has no way to support two children let alone 5. 

Look around.

A girl , brilliant at her studies in a small town, is removed  from school by her grandfather who belongs to the patriarchal village authority, The Panchayat. Because she has had her first bleeding. She is now property, she needs to be preserved for her marriage which he and his spineless son will arrange. Now she and her dreams of being a poet, an artist, a mathematician, a scientist, a doctor are silenced. She is now reserved for breeding.

Look around.

Covered in black from top to bottom, slits for her eyes, a woman walks in the busy streets on a big metropolis. She walks into a giant department store. She goes to the perfume section. She asks for a tester . She gets a whiff , though you can’t see her smell this. She shakes her head and she walks out of the store.  She wants to smell a bit of freedom, though she knows that is not hers ever in her life.

Look around. 

We are now  in Africa. A Imam is called . There he will circumcise the clitoris of a young girl .For here is not to experience pleasure. That is only for the man to take.

Look around.

Asking for permission , accompanied by a man , women are allowed to go shopping, visit a restaurant where cloaked in anonymity, they can eat, never meeting the eyes of other people. 

Look around.

Walk 4 steps behind. Never walk by his side. He points and holding your daughters hand, he holding  on to the sons’s, they enter a temple to go pray . The irony is not lost on the Goddess they have come to ask favour from.

Look around.

The young Juliet sees her Romeo for the first time, her heart begins to beat a rhythm she has never heard before. They try to meet secretly. It is innocent and pure and extols the very essence of Love. Her brother sees . And gathering his hate and his male relatives he kills her and her lover . This celebrates his family’s honour.

Look around.

A young woman’s husband dies tragically  before his time. Her head is shaved and she must wear white signifying that her value has come to an end.

Look around.

I would like to fly she says. They laugh. You can’t even drive a car here they say. 

Look around

See the girls in schools who can’t go anymore because they dont have toilets to go to.

Look around. Look around . Look around.

Now look at the girls  in cages trafficked for the  appetites of old men in faraway lands. Look at how rape across every country gets more brutal. Look how freedom means one thing to men and what it means to women.

So here I am writing this ,getting angrier by the minute.

And for the first time I realise I am not angry at the virus, about lockdowns and about quarantine .

Because I am beginning to see , see just a glimmer of what having no choice rally feels like

So now maybe I can now go out and be truly grateful  for what  I have..