#auratazadsharingcircle

[girlsatdhabas]

2/4 ... i do not have the words to explain to you what was felt and shared during this 'retreat' (oh how the words available to us limit us), i put retreat in apostrophes because it was quite the opposite : we shut ourselves up but only in the sense that we shut ourselves up in each other's company -- everything else about our time together was less of a retreat and more of a springing back to life. i cannot describe to you what that felt like but i can tell you what we did and what we talked about in the hope that you will understand. what we did = went loitering together around hyderabad. had multiple three hour dhaba sessions. went to the darbar of Shah Bhitai, where we spent two solid hours in silence, listening to the music, another two solid hours talking about feminism and Bhitai's poetry. other women joined us. the next day, we poured our lives and hearts to each other over more chai, more hugs, more high fives. when we left it felt like a lifetime of knowing each other, rather than two ridiculously short days. the things we had talked about, continued to talk about during the drive back to karachi, that are still running in my head = behenchara. periods and moon cycles. arundhati roy's new novel. choosing to stay in our cities, in our realities. workplace abuse, childhood abuse, professional abuse. but making this list is also false. these women spoke with so much fire, empathy and nuance, this list feels like a betrayal. still i want you to know, i want you to imagine: the rooftop of a dhaba off the hyderabad highway. a family on two charpais, newly wed couple. twelve women on two other charpais, us, sprawled on the surface, talking, swinging on the swingset beside charpai, laughing, sharing: what brought us into activism. what made us leave the left. what fuels us to keep going. what breaks us. the poems we have written, the songs we want to sing. the times we tire. almost give up. the generational gaps, the splintering groups, the lack of behenchara. always i come back to this : behenchara. 2/4 #behenchara #dhabajournal #AuratazadSharingCircle #behencharadiaries #Hyderabad #BhitShah #AyeshaGulalai

[girlsatdhabas]

4/4 #behenchara #dhabajournal #AuratazadSharingCircle #behencharadiaries #Hyderabad #BhitShah #AyeshaGulalai ~~~~~~ More photos from the Auratazad Sharing Circle: Personal is political: sharing personal making political https://www.facebook.com/amar.sindhu1/media_set?set=a.10159160513015644&type=3 Hum Isay Behenchara Kehtay Hain https://www.facebook.com/amar.sindhu1/media_set?set=a.10159158367775644&type=3 Auratazad Sharing Circle: Bhittai and Latifi Raag https://www.facebook.com/amar.sindhu1/media_set?set=a.10159160439520644&type=3&pnref=story

[girlsatdhabas]

3/4 ... what of a world where behenchara isn't carved out so desperately, doesn't demand such labored seeking? what of a world where behenchara is a default expectation of the world; the concept here having to do with community more than with gender. but wait no; see how i feel the need to throw in that clarification; of course foremost to do with gender. right now, absolutely to do with gender. how many women, if they knew they had a supportive system/family/resource of behenchara, how many more of us would be expressing our outrage, expressing it earlier, expressing it shamelessly? (i think shamelessness is not a slur, it is a virtue). or, how many of us would simply just be more visibly supportive of another woman who has chosen to place herself in the line of social fire? i may be young, i may be naive, but this last weekend spent with these women whose photos you can see below, those two days of discovering how easy it is to find home among behenchara, it makes me think-- this is the way. this is the answer. we can't clamp down the hypocrites, but we can build tougher foundations. us women, we might be made of skin and struggles, but what we create are scaffoldings; of shared experiences; of stories; of singing. and when the storm comes, we brace it collectively. who knows, if our scaffolding is big enough, ambitious enough, solid enough -- we might just survive. sure we might not stop all disasters, but we can hold each other up while we try. hold each other, while it tries. read each other poems before we collapse. ~SK 3/4 #behenchara #dhabajournal #AuratazadSharingCircle #behencharadiaries #Hyderabad #BhitShah #AyeshaGulalai

[girlsatdhabas]

a home of behenchara 1/4 seeing all this hate for Ayesha Gulalai on social media is making me think, not so much of the people who are spewing their hypocrisies all over our timelines, but of the ones who are raising their arms up in outrage-- saying we will not accept this, the world does not have to be like this, of the sisters who are posting statuses and defending and explaining and rallying and exhausting themselves, of the ones who are comforting each other over whatsapp groups, at dhabas, over affirmations of one another's stories. all this hate for a woman is making me think: what if we had more spaces where we were believed, not questioned? what if there were more of us -- just in sheer number -- reminding the other that her pain is valid, that her frustrations are real, that her dissent is justified? that if she rises in dissent -- whether it is by calling out an abuser, by not choosing to wear a dupatta every day, by walking out of a marriage -- we will stand by her? now I want to tell you about the Auratazad Sharing Circle. 1/4 #behenchara #dhabajournal #AuratazadSharingCircle #behencharadiaries #Hyderabad #BhitShah #AyeshaGulalai ~~~~~~