Darlings: Thanks, but no thanks

Social media was full of ‘Darlings’ reviews. For awhile I didn’t even know what the movie was about, so I really didn’t bother until a dear friend shared that she was triggered by it and stopped watching. I took her experience to heart and knew that the plot would bring up stuff for me too. A few weeks back, my partner watched it and my knee jerk response was that I won’t watch it and I guessed that I’d feel sick. He agreed that it would be reliving the trauma.

Last night, I thought of giving it a try. I mean, I would always switch it off, right?

I was being lured to by the harrowing theme of you know, maybe, just maybe, after all these reviews, the movie might be showing a real scenario and somehow, just somehow, I might feel that certain experiences would be validated? I still don’t know what my reason to watch it was, but I watched it. But you know, sometimes, those things that you should avoid have an allure that entices you to take one bite, one tiny bite, and no harm done? I was feeling all that…

I looked at the movie cast and thought, ‘Well, if Shefali Shah is in it, the plot must be dark enough to be real.’ Let me see what this is about.

Six minutes and ten seconds into the show (I’m guessing intro credits included), I had to pause. My jaw was tight, my breathing was shallow, my mouth went dry and my gut clenched. I felt physically ill and could feel the bile rising in my throat. I had known that giving this movie my time would be a bad idea.

A very bad idea.

To set the record straight, my review of this movie is based on having been there and with the wisdom, clairvoyance, clairaudience and clairsentience of hindsight. I didn’t even need to know the theme of the movie to know what was going to happen in the first few minutes. The disrespect and the absence of value for her space, effort, time was blatant. He unceremonious and remorseless manipulation of her feelings by dangling the carrot of marriage and babies and a home… a future together… it. was. all. right. there.

Yet, she stayed.

And there will be a zillion A-holes making wise ass comments like, ‘Why is she still staying with him, then?’ Placing the onus of the survivor… sigh! Making it her burden to explain how maybe she still thought or believed that this was a hiccup that all relationships go through? Or was it to feel guilty about expecting a happy ever after? Or maybe a happy till tomorrow? Was she to be held responsible to hope and seek a loving, secure relationship?

This story was also compounded by multiple themes – almost making it an excuse in some places. He is an alcoholic. Alcoholism is a disease. He needs our pity & our sympathy. He needs her support and care to get off it. Well, if it means a couple of blows, punches, broken ribs and a miscarriage – well, this is between the husband and wife…

Sorry, but I cannot write this in coherent order. There is no beginning.. and I sense myself going in loops.

I found the humor grating. I didn’t laugh at all throughout the movie. Not once. My daughter came to the room twice to tell me to please stop watching it as it was clearly upsetting me. I didn’t watch to carry it to the next day. I would allow the poison to be drawn in one go.

That humor, was not funny. I found it insulting. I found a mentally agitated young woman’s desperation being churned as fodder for gaping bystanders to shake their heads and say, ‘Look at the stupidity she is doing! Why can’t she just leave him?’ The humor and the ridiculous music downplayed trauma, grief and brutal fear for one’s life into a rubbish piece of badly written jokes. To me, they were not funny to me.

The humor downplayed violence, mental anguish, trauma, miscarriage, suicide all that to feed an audience of bystanders who didn’t really know or care about what happens behind closed doors.

What they did show well was manipulation and gaslighting, even if it fell on deaf ears. They showed well the trembling of her hands when he bit on the second stone in his rice. They showed well the reflexive clasping of her throat when she knew what was coming. They showed well the brutality of an abusive and violent person. They were also spot on in showing how an abuser would work towards isolating his ‘prey’ from social and financial support.

The most hard hitting scene for me, was when Hamza hits Shamshu, his mother-in-law, in the cab – abusing the family of the victim is brutal and often not expressed well. I can only hope the message reached a fair number of minds.

But, in my very honest opinion, they failed miserably at showing the effects on Badru’s body, mind and spirit. There was a tendency to not showcase her grief and instead center on his abuse instead. The abuse was centered – the abuser was centered. It is typical, isn’t it? To shy away from uncomfortable truths of a woman’s experience of pain and horror?

This was perhaps a teachable movie – to raise awareness of a cornucopia of social issues – I don’t know… To me, it lacked. Just by educating the masses about Section 498A, one doesn’t really push the needle that required public outcry and a movement that motivates society to care for its members.

I felt for Badru – she was just a child trapped in the clutches of a monster. She’s right to take charge of her respect in her own hands, but the philosophy of greatness and the higher moral ground is a psychological nightmare. I can’t think how it can happen overnight – I’m glad it did, but… it just watered down the reality of domestic violence, intimate partner violence, violence against women and gender based violence.

It also misplaced the story by setting it in a lower income chawl with lesser educated individuals of a certain community. Violence occurs in all segments of society. Worse stuff gets perpetrated in upper middle class and wealthy society units. There the façade to save face for Page 3 insets is strong, the walls sufficiently sound proofed, gated communities provide the anonymity and isolation sufficient to get away with ‘this is between husband & wife, we will sort it’

Like I said, I feel a bit incoherent in my ramble. Trauma doesn’t resolve itself over night. It rewinds itself at various times and we learn and unlearn over and over again.

I don’t have a textbook conclusion to this post today… it just is a visceral outpouring. The movie was a trigger and I am still experiencing the effects of giving it my time. To those who have given it rave reviews for the effort of highlighting this issue, well… I don’t know… There must be better ways. But if those reviews were coming from a third person, unaffected place, then I really think they must rethink their ‘position’ before dissing off those of us who found the movie triggering, belittling and insensitive in many ways.

Now I need to recover from this movie. This is why I hate watching TV…

Standing up for Me

A few days ago I was challenged. I was challenged for expressing my anger and upset. I was challenged for my audacity to stand up for an unfair blame. I was challenged with anger and angry abusives. I was challenged by being questioned for my sensitivity to a remark that apparently I should have allowed. And I was challenged for not accepting the anger that was directed at me for showing my non-acceptance of that abusive behaviour.

I was challenged for saying ‘NO’

So let me be honest here and say that the incident began as meekly as most arguments – arising from a ridiculous matter – but seeing it take milliseconds to escalate into a barrage of verbal assault was nothing short of abnormal. There was a serious dysfunction at play here – and matching it with any shade of normal attempt at pacifying was just not available.

I was agitated – physically and emotionally – and I was shocked. For a brief moment, I couldn’t understand what was happening until I started recognizing a pattern – that was using every trick it the book to abuse the hell of me and attempt to ridicule, insult, humiliate and make me look lesser – and validate whatever the f**k was going on in that person’s head. (trust me, we don’t want to go there .. not yet)

And suddenly, even though I could see this pattern and a trained part of me was telling me that it wasn’t about me, the ugly truth is that it was very, very hard to be neutral and demonstrate all that big-hearted compassion we all strive for in face of it. It was near impossible to get past the immense hate balls that were being thrown on me – when the argument wasn’t even about me to begin with. Simply put, it was easier to retaliate and give back in the language the other person seemingly understood.

But every time I tried to calm myself down and breathe in some quiet – believe me I tried – I was dragged back to perpetuate the scenario over and over again and refused my time to disconnect and get out of that space – leaving me no opportunity to even slip into a corner in my head that was meant for ‘peace of mind‘

Surprisingly, though, I found myself remaining rooted in my values and upholding the boundary that was being ruthlessly violated in those moments.

So here’s what I did.

I called out the behavior. I called out the crap that was absolutely unacceptable to me and I very clearly said that I was NOT going to accept it any more. I refused to lift my head and look at the person in that state and I told them exactly why I was not going to look at them. That I wanted no contact until that person spoke decently, respectfully and maturely.

More importantly, in the face of abuse, I found myself refusing to ASK for basic courtesy and respect – instead, I demanded it as a basic right that I was not going to throw at the discretion of someone who clearly did not value another person’s sense of respect – let alone, self-respect.

In short, I bloody well stood up for myself.

As I’m looking back to that day, I can again confirm that I have no regrets about what I said. Yes, it was anger that prompted me to say the things I did, but I meant them. I meant it when I called out the behaviour and I meant it when I said that I was done with that relationship if staying in it meant that I had to put up with immature insanity. Caring about someone does not come with a defacto ‘Get away scot-free’ card that allows you to be abused and mistreated. Neither does it come with any clauses that ask of you to be mindful of being considerate but have your own respect and boundaries violated senselessly.

Many Indian families (even my grandmother) have this rubbish idea they use to have their unruly, misbehaving kids get away with bad behaviour – they often refer to their children as having a harsh tongue but a soft and loving heart. A bigger pile of BS, I haven’t heard in this context. Nasty is nasty,  rude is rude, being mean is being mean – and these people were unfortunately raised with the idea that their bad behaviour was pardonable because their parents believed in the goodness of their heart. Good heart, I agree, because I know this person, but no – it does NOT give anyone any permission to be so rude, mean and harsh and cover it with any other band-aid psychobabble.

Uh-huh – sorry – might have been there, might have done that, might have given folks the impression that it was OK – but the buck stops here! Not happening again – ever!

And just as surprisingly, I was told one thing that made me sit back and think over the days that followed.

I was told that I had changed.

At face value, my change might have been one that said, “Hey! She’s not putting up with my tantrum like she used to! She’s changed! I don’t like this version of her.”

So I thought about it.

And the more I thought about it, the more I peeked into my heart for any feelings of remorse or guilt at how I had maintained myself. I questioned myself over and over again to see if I had missed something and if my anger was, in fact, misplaced and unjustified. Was I wrong to have voiced my dissent? Was I wrong to have stood up for myself? Was I being a hypocrite with all my ‘spiritual’ take? (Yes, I was called out for being a goody-two-shoes with all my meditation crap & for having you folks read and like my blogs/ article – yes, you guys came in too!)

And no matter which way I looked at it, I felt no guilt, remorse or fear. I felt grounded and calm. I didn’t find me justifying to myself (or maybe I did at some point, I don’t know), but I recognized that I was speaking from a place of calm and deep-down genuine love for this person. I hated what circumstances had done to this individual’s sense of balance, self-worth and to some extent, I hated this new person who I really didn’t recognize – I guess change affects everyone either way – but regardless, I was not ready to trade in my changed status of self-respect and self-worth for anything.

I remember being mocked at for saying, ‘I valued those who value me‘ and this sentiment inferred as if I were only thriving on the adulation of those who put me up on a glorified pedestal. Yeah, that would be fun… only, I’m not that famous yet (but I’ll leave that invitation open). But here’s the thing, why, WHY would I want to hang out with people who would not value me? Why would, why should anyone??

Little by little, I started moving away from the ‘what just happened‘ phase and started easing into the understanding behind why and how I had changed.

Some years ago, I recall sharing with a dear friend, Mubeena, about this so-called wisdom that people were saying I had. I remember telling her that I questioned this wisdom, because I wasn’t entirely sure it was mine entirely. It was wisdom that I had read in books, scriptures, articles, courses, seminars, conferences, and such experiences and then at various times through applying life experiences to understand the karma of it all and, then, maybe somewhere somehow it became mine. That day, Mubeena held my shoulders and said that she believed it was mine. I hugged her for being my friend and left the inquiry for another day.

This morning as I was watching my tea infuse (I think I mentioned in a previous blog how this tea infusion time is my mental space time), it dawned on me out of nowhere that this wisdom I was trying to apportion was, is, collective. No one owned it. It was for everyone.

I realised that awareness and enlightenment come to us in various forms – written text, spoken words, experienced moments – and yet, what we make out of it, how we embrace it makes us who we are. At the end of the day, me moving myself outwards and upwards was my responsibility – as it everyone else’s for themselves. Whether they chose to see it and shift was their business, me choosing to shift was mine.

That is how and why I had changed.

The books I read, the teachers and mentors I followed and learnt from, the philosophies I subscribed to, had all slowly seeped into my behaviour – my way of being – and were now reflected in my responses, so different to the reactions of the past. Don’t get me wrong – I’m no saint and I have my fair share of reactions (ask my children!), and I’m your contemporary woman with contemporary tragedies and catastrophes, but I had changed.

And, best of all, I am happy and proud of what I have changed into. If this is the kind of example I am working on setting for my children, if this is the kind of grounded woman I aspire to inspire in others, if this is the soon-to-be-40 year old woman I am turning into…

So be it.