Virginia Wolf famously said, women need a room of their own and money in order to be able to write. Dr. Swarnamalya revisits this need in the 21st century to ask if women who have a reasonable access to a room and some money, need something else today. What can the middle class woman need to be able to fill her pages? If she is a creator; actor, dancer, singer, writer, she perhaps needs more than a room and money today.
There have been so many hours, if only I counted, they would run to days, months, perhaps over a few years; the number of hours I have spent inside a room. Born in a family which never once denied me a room of my own, I have had the luxury, the privilege of space and privacy to think. Thinking, in solitude-what a blessing.
Valli woke up to the sound of her phone beeping. It was a message from her mother. “Are you up yet? What time is it there? Hope I haven’t woken you up? Love you darling”. Lazily she walked to the bathroom to wash herself up. As she was brushing her teeth she tried to recall what she needed to do for the day. Walking out of her room, she made breakfast; a bowl of cold 2% milk and cereal, some cheese and crackers, orange juice. She walked back into her room and drew the blinds open. It was a cloudy day. Her window over looked the apartment swimming pool and gym, she saw some children with their escorts readying to swim. That’s a thought, maybe she should go swimming. But even before she finished the thought, she decided “not today” and shut the blinds.
She walked across her tiny room and into her clothes closet. Stacked neatly on one side was her wardrobe. Everything she had brought with her to travel to the US for her short -term stay. Jeans, tee shirts, salwars, some sarees that she hardly found any use for. On the other shelf was her jewellery, accessories and hand bags. A few things she had bought during some of her shopping trips to downtown Santa Monica. Not very expensive things, but pretty things. She picked up a pair of earrings, held it to her ears and walked to the mirror over the washbasin in the room. “What a pretty earring, such a steal” she thought, but quickly added “where am I going to wear this here?” she sighed and returned it to its place and shut the closet door behind her.
As she sauntered back into her room, her eyes spotted the picture frames she had laid out on her study table. Her mother, sister, friends and a few dear mentors stared back at her. “Must I return Amma’s call now, or perhaps write back to SGR sir, who had so kindly enquired after my progress, here at University as a Post doctoral Fellow?” she opened her phone hastily to make a call but before skype app opened on her iPhone, she changed her mind. She swiped it out and locked her phone to set it aside. It was lunch time. She hadn’t the enthusiasm to figure what to eat for lunch. Her Indian palette was getting bored of the make shift Indian-ish food that she lazily cooked up each day. She began losing much taste for it, so much so that she no longer looked forward to meal time. As she sat at her chair staring into the depth of the plain white walls of her spartan room, she was thoughtless. Truly thoughtless. “Why am I here? Where else would I rather be? What must I eat? Should I eat? Maybe I should read a book? Maybe I should eat”.
Mustering a bowl of something, leftovers, she sat looking at the walls. One, two, three, four. There are four walls to this room. Golly! Aren’t there four to every? Half way during her lunch, she had a moment- an epiphany. She felt utterly charged. “What am I doing? I am here, in the USA, a country away from mine, invited to research and write. By god’s name, I must be able to surely write” she affirmed to herself. Pushing her food bowl away, she hurriedly opened her laptop and word docx on it. First, she saved the file with a name that read “Writing”. Then she began. WRITING. She stared at the screen. The words were going to come. They were on their way. Her perfectly white screen which matched her perfectly white walls, I dare say matched her perfectly blank mind. She blinked at it for several minutes. Nothing. She didn’t force the words on to the page. No typing and deleting. She couldn’t. She waited for the words to pour out. It will come. “It should, after all I have everything that one is supposed to have. As a woman, I have a room, white walls notwithstanding, with a door, shutting me off from the world that demands so much from me. I have had a hot bath. Lovely clothes and earrings, even if I don’t use are hanging in my cupboard. I have family and friends who are rooting for me to produce something extraordinary, waiting with baited breath, I must say. I have food, cold and insipid, but food nevertheless”, she thought. Write. Nothing. Nothing. She shut her laptop and gently set her eyes to rest, on her pillow.
It was a bustling street, so noisy. People busily walking, driving about. They had no time to stand and stare. She walked past these streets trying to listen in to every conversation. Each person’s statement of business and purpose, more interesting than the next. She was walking on, even as she was eves dropping. She was walking away from this maddening town square. After a good half hour of a walk, uphill, she was sweating and mildly panting. It was exhilarating, the view. Trees, green and blooming. Yellow and red flowers. She began walking faster towards a stone bench she has spotted at the corner. The gentle breeze was such a contrast to the humidity she felt at the town square. The quiet, such a relief after the noisy chatter her ears were filled with. She sat down to catch her breath. She put her hands inside her gunny bag to fish for something to eat. She was hungry. All she found was an old half eaten packet of chips. She smiled, she was grateful for it. As she sat munching her chips, someone called out “Valli… come here…hurry…you must see this.” Unable to take another bite into her chip, she hastily crumpled the packet back into her bag and stood up. She was now half running, half walking as the voices got louder and louder, “hurry, come on, it is urgent” someone shouted.
It is the 21st century. 2020. I dare say, I have had a room of my own and some money. But I cannot walk around my room nor sleep on my soft pillow or eat my bowl of rice and curry something, in order to write. A room and some money, as I have, I need to roam and with my own mind . I want to see the world. I must walk, run, pant, sigh, sing, dance, cry and laugh with the world. Often people say joy is pedestrian and that only sorrow is intellectual. Ursula Le Guin chides us for this obsession with pain and despair. Sure enough, my perfectly white room; simple, uncomplicated, spartan, yet no hindrance to joy of life, at any rate at least simple joys of life like good sleep, good food, fancy clothes and a midmorning swim in my apartment pool somewhere in America, should help fill my pages?
The voices of shouting people, urgently trying to solve life’s problems, the sweat of the afternoon sun, the long and strenuous walks uphill to reach a park bench, the inconvenient rain clouds that threaten to pour down, ruining my long walks, the cry of women and children who suffer one or the other problem, their call-out to me to help, at least to be a shoulder to cry on, the fights, banter, hatred, the inexplicable hurdles in reaching my place of work, or the library to refer to books. The lack of a studio to practice, the lack of silence, the lack of time- it is the lack, the binality of it all; I roam as I fill my mind with thoughts. They are what will fill my pages. Thank you for the room and money. I am grateful. Very. But I also need to roam and need the mind to see and fill it with sights, sounds and feelings of pain, sorrow and suffering. I will also see joy, dancing, lights and festivals, I promise. But, the sorrows will feed my soul to write. The experiences of my sisters around the world offers a view that is a far cry from the vapid swimming pool view, Valli had. The dreadful world that witch hunts me, is the world I will draw the ink for my pen from- I am an artist and therefore I am allowed that treason.
Roaming the world with a Mind of my own
Swarnamalya Ganesh
2020
Summary
The privileged 21st century woman needs more to fill her soul. The whiteness of the page and her walls is representative of privilege. The vapidity of the joys of life like her fellowship, iphone, good food and clothes, represent the ignorant life, middle class women lead, blissfully unaware of the suffering of women from other strata, elsewhere. The room and money in her life represent her social mobility in society over the last century, but her pen has no ink because she lacks the access to see the world- the real world. Especially if she is an artiste, she must see the world, not the white world, but the world in all its colours, sorrow and pain and that will lend the ink to her pen. To write (write, dance, sing, act whatever) she needs more than a room and money today, she needs to know that she must roam, with her own mind to see beyond her white walls.
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