The word we use to signify the end of everything is a word that means revelation. The Greek word apokálupsis opens the last book of the New Testament, and had given the scripture its first name according to old titling norms. The dismal prophecies contained therein must eventually have given rise to the English word, and its usage. Yet in and of itself, in its original purity it meant only to see something hitherto unknown with clarity. To have it be unveiled.

Any life aligned to a sense of purpose is a life of varied apocalypses. I hesitated as I typed, wondering if the plural should have been apocalypsi. I couldn’t recall encountering the plural in text, and perhaps that is because the meaning of the word is assumed to be, quite literally, the be-all-and-end-all (this calls to mind some other canonised religious literatures, which are prefaced by “The” rather than the more accurate “A”, as one among hundreds of tellings). Within a single life are many demises, and many rebirthings. This apocalypse we are in now, on a collective scale, is neither the first nor the last one – not for humanity, not for the planet, and not even for many individuals.

In the tarot, the Death card symbolises dramatic change, transformation, a necessary shedding of a chapter or cocoon. Endings and beginnings: the contemplative way is to see these can both be found in the same circumstance, the way a door can both contain and release.

What is true of the afterwards of every apocalypse is that nothing is the same again. In the throes of pandemic, the term “new normal” has been repeated so much that it’s already lost meaning. Perhaps what’s expected to happen is only normalisation, just like abuse and discrimination are normalised. There’s no agency in this, only a shifting of responsibility. That we’ve been let down by the structures that run the world is true, but acquiescence is not only unacceptable, but also a waste of what the poet Mary Oliver called so memorably one’s “one wild and precious life”.

One of the harder spiritual lessons I’ve tried to wrap my head and heart around is how even having confronted peril, and having survived it, some people don’t change. They don’t reckon with themselves, beautify and heal the path they’ve been on, or hold close the gratitude of having survived. This is a choice. Anyone who experiences enough of, or comes out of, this time – rife with a plague, disasters and even locusts, right out myth – has been given a revelation.

In a non-fiction book on faith and art, the author Madeleine L’Engle wrote, “Creative scientists and saints expect revelation and do not fear it.” Perhaps this offers a clue about why some utilise the opportunity while others squander it the way windfalls often are. No matter one’s calling, alignment and purpose show us how to survive, and honour that survival. There’s no mandate for what to do after a test of endurance such as this. There’s an adventure here (from the Latin root, adventus – “arrival”). There is a thereafter, and if we’re in it, what will we do?

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express on May 28^th 2020. “The Venus Flytrap” appears  in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

When enough of this is over – because who knows if all of it ever will be? – there may come a day or an evening when something in the world beckons me to line my eyes and step into it again. I will venture out for something other than an errand or a dreaded obligation, and because I’ve weighed a risk and found that caution cannot convince me out of something that I crave. On that day, I’ll paint my lips and keep them secret, looping a mask over the lower half of my face. Hands that cannot touch but must speak will perform the mudras of the sequestered: fingers to the mask, then palm extended in a kiss presented but not blown; hand to the chest to emphasise the things that words have already conveyed.

Words will have more power in the new world than before, because we will need them more. We may be more easily swayed by them, because anything that contains power is always mined and misused – but we will also wield them better. We will need to, to shorten the new distances between us and fill the voids left by touch and all it does. But we won’t see each other saying them, won’t see how words take shape when spoken. Behind my mask, the lacquer on my lips could be crimson or could even be cyan. Only I would know. Perhaps there’ll be a minute or two when the person I embellish my face for, the company I risk encountering the virus for, will get to view it before we begin our meal. Separated by a clear partition on a disinfected table, served by people who’ve been rendered even more invisible and removed than they already and unfairly were. I’ll smile, vividly, before eating the colour off.

Lipstick is not frivolous. It wasn’t frivolous to the women at the Belsen concentration camp during World War II, who received a strange shipment of red lipsticks, and who (according to the diary of a British lieutenant active in the camp’s liberation) wore it even if they didn’t have adequate clothing to dress themselves in. It wasn’t frivolous for the women because of whom the economic term “lipstick index” was coined, when its sales increased during a recession because it offered a relatively affordable experience of luxury.

Lipstick as assertion of life and the desire for joy. So no, lipstick won’t be frivolous to those who still choose to wear it under their masks as they venture outside in the time to come, tinting their faces beautifully then covering them clinically, coming home to dispose of stained masks, finally understanding why women in cultures where concealment is enforced have always known that beauty is not only in the eye of the beholder. It won’t be frivolous to those who wish to wear it, but have not the means for the purchase, or who can’t for reasons best known to them.

Behind a mask, only the eyes can reveal a smile. But we’ll bring those velvety bullets to lips no one can read, always having known how their blazing colours also tinge the voice.

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express on May 19^th 2020. “The Venus Flytrap” appears  in Chennai’s City Express supplement.

How is anyone surprised by the existence of the “boislockerroom” Instagram account, which shared private images of girls and women and was filled with violent fantasies? Run by teenage boys from an elite Delhi school, it is but one such account in an ocean of obscenity. Every woman and girl in India who uses social media knows this. While teenage access to smartphones is a marker of privilege, the larger picture of misogyny in India, even online-based expressions of it, cuts across class, caste and other divisions.

These teenagers did not become practicing misogynists in a vacuum. They aped behaviours that were normalised to them, and were portrayed as aspirational. Let us remember that immediately after the 2018 rape and murder of an 8-year old child in Kathua, the top search term on pornographic websites was for her name. This is a country where too many people hoped that there was footage of such a horrific incident, and sought it for their pleasure.

As I write this, #girlslockerroom is trending on Twitter, with screenshots that allege that the person who exposed the boys’ Instagram account was herself a part of a private group that objectifies men. I’m unable to wade through the misogyny of the tweets to verify where this information originated from. The new hashtag was clearly initiated primarily in a retaliatory fashion, to absolve the male students. 

Those who truly care about men and boys address toxic masculinity, issues relating to transmen and other queer people, mental and other health-related concerns, and socioeconomic challenges such as how class marginalisation and capitalism burden male breadwinners – every day of the year. Just like how feminists talk about the issues that matter to the communities they support, constantly. Those who become advocates for men only when it gives them a chance to criticise women are invested only in taking women down, not in making anything more fair for anyone. If there is to be a similar conversation about male objectification, it needs to be led by feminists of all genders. Not by misogynists.

What we know for certain is that at least one of these “locker rooms” existed. Among the hundreds of participating students will be some who could respond to an opportunity to change, and deserve that chance. No one who has experienced emotional or mental violence through these accounts is obligated to forgive them, but the murky work of moulding better human beings asks that we, who are not directly involved, don’t stop at admonishment and disgust. Otherwise, we’ll be trapped in cycles of outrage, forgetting the tedious work of ongoing resistance when there’s nothing that spikes our anger.

So when we’re done fixating on this group of teenagers, treating them like an anomaly when in fact they are the norm, here’s hoping that more people will trace their shocked “How could this happen?” to a logical conclusion: the hidden malignancies of the institution of family, and the inadequacies of the education system when it comes to teaching empathy and ethics. The blame rests somewhere bigger than on any one kid or the people who raised him. There’s so much more to fix here. 

An edited version appeared in The New Indian Express on May 9^th 2020. “The Venus Flytrap” appears  in Chennai’s City Express supplement.