The Dress I Left Behind
The colour orange
The Dress I Left Behind.
It was a tangerine orange. Full length. Strappy shoulders. Paired with a thin gold plated necklace and open sandals.I didn’t hate how it looked. That was a big win. I couldn’t immediately point out 17 flaws of possessing a human body. But I only wore it once and realised I could never wear it again.
I watched the news and doomscrolled endlessly. Mandir Yahin Banega. News reports of Muslims being lynched. Manipur burning. Ladakh losing it’s autonomy. Farmer protests in Punjab. Joblessness. ED raids on anyone who dared question the supreme leader. Journalists in jail. Comedians in Jail. Banning of the BBC Modi documentary. Non-partisan NGOs losing their FCRA license. Adani becoming the 11th richest man in the fastest time duration. The new parliament. The men in robes who shouldn’t have been part of the inauguration. The endless drone of Jai Shri Ram.
I and India had been socked hard in the face. Our left cheekbone ached and burned at the same time. People stood around the supreme leader with deafening roars. The exchange dripping of sycophancy. And then I couldn’t unsee it. They were all wearing orange.
My body viscerally reacts when I hear the chant, when I watch the bows of obedience and the glazed eyes of adulation. A sea of orange. Every nerve ending is frayed and I’m waiting for them to unleash a fresh bout of violence in physical or verbal form. I’m clenched in anticipation for unpleasantness. I hate these men in orange peddling ‘Hinduisms’.
My immediate association with what it means to be Hindu is not the life I’ve led with my family. We have Ganeshas all over my childhood home but none of us pray except Paati. When Paati is staying with us she will pluck flowers from the garden and place it around the Ganesha closest to the dining table. She will also light a single agarbatti before she sits down for breakfast. That’s as close as we come to ritual.
On festivals, Dad’s work partners offer prayers at their office which last a grand total of 2 minutes before sweets are distributed, coffee is made and a game of pool is played. Every year it’s chance for me to revisit, how terrible I am getting at the game.
Prayer in my family is a quiet act. Noone is instructed to pray to any god/ higher power or even believe in it. We’ve been encouraged to arrive at our own conclusions about how we would like to perceive the world and understand the inexplicable. Proving superiority does not enter the equation. It’s about co-existence. And about how inter-mingled ideas are on this subcontinent where trying to establish linear chains of attribution seems to be a banal exercise.
Of late, I’ve been angry at myself for letting the orange robes dominate the “Hindu stereotype” even though I’m not sure I identify as Hindu. Texts I didn’t want to read because I was scared I would turn fanatic or religious as a child. Almost like I have no faith in my own ability to discern. Maybe it was time I read the text, the RSS handbook. Learn from their ability to convince educated people that Muslims were the problem and Not the Government.
June 4 2024.
Nagaland, Mizoram, Pondicherry, Lakshwadweep, Chandigarh, Daman & Diu, Meghalaya, Punjab , Kerala , Tamil Nadu and West Bengal sent a clear message. The people had had enough. They also lost Ladakh. Manipur. Maharashtra. The icing on the cake; Uttar Pradesh. Most stunningly Faisabad. Where they rushed to build the Ram Temple and claimed their Hindu victory & supremacy. Ayodhya wasn’t having any of it.
In the words of Ravish Kumar “ Not all battles are fought for victory. Some are fought simply to tell the world that someone was there on the battlefield.”
Hope surges through me this week. My energy level to do things and ability to stomach setback has increased overnight. It’s time to reclaim what belongs to India. Tolerance. Curiosity. Celebrating our plural and multicultural existence. Working together to find solutions to our intractable problems.
And Maybe, just maybe the colour orange. And with that my orange dress buried deep in the back of my closet.
🧡🧡🧡🧡🧡 thank you for this! so so relatable (but could not have articulated this): “My body viscerally reacts when I hear the chant, when I watch the bows of obedience and the glazed eyes of adulation. A sea of orange. Every nerve ending is frayed and I’m waiting for them to unleash a fresh bout of violence in physical or verbal form. I’m clenched in anticipation for unpleasantness. I hate these men in orange peddling ‘Hinduisms’.”
In awe of how powerfully u’ve expressed, was so succinct Smriti! The battle of harrowing down from all colours to a narrowing obsession with orange from a religious prism is quite troublesome to witness.
Hindus i’ve grown to believe are intrinsically most inclusive and largely as u mentioned quite personal in their religious beliefs. I still remember the song ‘ Mile sur mera tumhara, woh sur bane humara’ well that speaks volumes of the idea of India i’ve grown up in.
btw i have an orange kurta that i’m more at ease wearing at this point :)