...the hopes and despair

her prison...

In those days, being born a female in a middle-class family in Northern India had its own restrictions... stresses of being a female, of living in a first-generation nuclear family, of the claustrophobic and self-contradictory middle-class values, of being oneself...

To question those boundaries required courage - and she did that - but it also took its emotional toll. For Geeta, this seemed to be an ongoing experience... As an 19 year old, she wrote this in her diary in August 1975:




This is the most haphazard diary I’ve ever written. I have to put down a lot, and I’m trying my best, but no one can deny the fact that I have still no control over what is happening or will happen, and I don’t know what to do. Not that I’ve done anything wrong as such but there’s the awful feeling of fate - a sort of an apathy - a desire for activity, and terrible deep loss of faith in everything, that has possessed me these days.

I’m not yet 20 years of age, but having traversed about one third of my life’s path, I’ve suddenly to change my perspective on the world. Not only this, I’ll have to rearrange all my conceptions about myself and my influence. The worst part is the molding of my thoughts about myself.

Spec-ulating - that is what I’m doing these days. On 12th of July, I was taken to have my eyesight checked... and they found out that the right eye was weak - short sighted and myopic. It came as a shock. No one spoke to each other for the whole day without spite. I, for myself, felt that this was the climax of all the flabbergasting situations that we had been facing up to now. Petty quarrels, spiteful dealings, hate, ignorance and neglect, loss of faith and love, and deliberate misconduct on everyone’s part - and all this in a small family of six! God knows how we survived . Oh, the awful everyday petty affairs that had racked my brain last year!... Why kindle hatred in your offspring?... I have suffered the most in all of us children, My brothers were never burdened with all the rigorous orderliness of the mind that was placed before me since the age of 10. The brooding, silent hatred accumulated through the years had ultimately found its outlet last year. The situation was hopeless. Once in hand, the threads slipped again and again, and I underwent the most tremendous strain mentally...

...I still feel awfully woebegone to think of those days. but perhaps they are better entered in my mind than on paper... Mostly I am jumpy, sleepy and sanppy these days... All I want is long hours of sleep and blissful oblivion. The charred memory of days gone by is yet to be washed out...

...I hereby promise never to enter any personal disputes or family quarrels in any of my diaries. I am fed up of them to the very core.

{the bundle of raw nerves} (a world she felt responsible for}
{the inexplicable fears} {her self-doubts} {her resentments} {the inner life}
{the flapping of wings} {the cold as steel in her} {her intense independence}
{depth of insights and feelings} {her romantic self} {the seeds to unfold} {the hurts and pain}

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Geeta's Poems

Stories She Wrote

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Poems for Manasi

About Geeta

• refelction, churnings and insights
• the point of it all
• remembering Geeta

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