Rosalyn D'mello: A celebration of my feminist patakas

Diwali is the perfect time to celebrate the wonderful women who are firecrackers and fire-starters, unafraid to confront misogyny head on

Since it is Diwali, I've been thinking about how this is a great moment to celebrate the feminist patakas in our lives. pic for Representation/Thinkstock

Pataka!" the word popped out of my mouth like the exuberant sound itself, in an impulsive, combustive way. I was at a party, we were in the courtyard and Justin was searching through his brain for the adjectives that best defined his partner, Bee Rowlatt. It was her 47th birthday. He was raising a toast to her. She looked amazing in a lehenga with her teenage children standing around her similarly rocking their "Indian" outfits. Before he could say "beautiful", I blurted pataka, but I don't think anyone heard, because I've been so sober and well behaved these days, my voice wouldn't have carried too far. Later, as we watched the fire dance that followed Justin's beatific speech, I did think about how fitting the word "pataka" was, especially since it was barely a week till Diwali.

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The word also personified in its delicate brevity what had drawn me to Bee earlier this year. We were both on a panel on the memoir at the Jaipur Literature Festival. She was speaking about her brilliant book, "In Search of Mary," in which she recounts her adventures as she decided to follow in the footsteps of Mary Wollstonecraft, the world's first celebrity feminist, from Norway to California to Paris, toddler in tow, just like the woman who wrote one of the most prominent feminist doctrines, "A Vindication of the Rights of Woman."

Bee articulated herself so eloquently. But beyond that I suspect that she was able to sense my nervousness and insecurity about being on that stage, and through her questions and observations about my book, cajoled me into speaking out. By the end of our session, I had already deemed her my festival crush. The next day, though, was when I became aware of her pataka attribute. She was on a panel being moderated by a friend, writer and journalist Amrita Tripathi, which had a range of incredible women on it, including Anuradha Beniwal, a former national chess champion, Ruchira Gupta, a writer, academic and women's rights activist, Antara Ganguli, author and gender specialist at the UN, my wonderful and outspoken girl crush, Bee, and Suhel Seth, a man who is well-known enough to not deserve an introduction.

Seth stood out on the panel like a criminal at a police line-up, especially since it was titled "Manelists, Misogyny and Mansplaining." It would have been so easy for all the women to have completely ganged up on Seth, but they resisted, instead they openly questioned his presence. "Why are you on a panel on mansplaining?" Bee asked him straightaway.

He blurted out that we should ask one of the organisers, as if he had been forced to participate and had no agency of his own. I had expected a half-dignified answer from him, but I have learned since to have no such expectations. In fact, all of the women on that panel were patakas. And that's what I've been trying to get at, this wonderful abundance of women who are firecrackers and fire-starters, unafraid to confront misogyny head on and call a penis a penis when it is inserts itself into women's business.

And since it is Diwali, and since the Capital has been superbly collaborative, its denizens choosing to wilfully keep this Diwali relatively noise-free, I've been thinking about how this is a great moment to celebrate the feminist patakas in our lives. My immediate friend circle boasts of many such women. Someone recently asked me about my meeting with Paromita Vohra, with whom I was in conversation with around my book a few weeks ago in Bombay. "Was she as dreamy in person as she seems like online?" was a question at a bachelorette party, and I had to say yes. She, too, has been a longstanding girl crush.

The bachelorette party was for someone who has become a very dear friend, Meenakshi Reddy Madhavan, best known for her blog, The Compulsive Confessor. She, too, is a pataka, because for so many years, before I even had a byline, she had been practising feminine irrepressibility. Someone nearer to my age group — we're in fact born in the same year — is Sharanya Manivannan, who looks and is a pataka. I think also of women I will never have the privilege of befriending, women in the West, like Tina Fey, who really did redefine comedy with 30 Rock, and Chris Krauss, and how my encounter with her book, "I Love Dick" actually changed my life. Not all patakas are loud and explosive, some stand for that which is powerfully quiet; linguistic blasts that spill out of your tongue—I'm thinking of Anne Carson, here, and the brilliance of her poetry.

Then there are women from the past who were firecrackers too, like Kamala Das and I imagine Akka Mahadevi. The residual echoes from the crackling explosions they made long ago still resonate in the atmosphere. They will never be silenced.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com

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