From Yama Gilgamesh’s book pen-jypsikalude jeevithakalam (The lifetimes of Women-Gypsies, 2023). Translated without permission and with considerable leeway for picking the words.
Yama is a writer, theater artist, and an actress. Contrary to popular usage, yama is also defined simply as something that has a double.
The extract refers to an incident from the time she was in drama-school. I could relate to it at first perhaps because of the lightness with which cis-het men talk about, and act upon, other genders. Later, many months after I first read the book, I went back to it because the section I’ve translated below had seared itself to my mind—all the violence and grime and shame. It reminded me of my own guilt, shame, and moral fragility, and the responsibility to deal with it.
Days and nights are merely ways for the universe to trick us. They whoosh past us without yielding to any meanings that we want to assign to them, and without a care. One evening, a senior student invited me to getting booze from a store outside the campus. I wondered why he asked me this, all of a sudden. Even though I did not like him and did not trust him, I went with him on his scooter. I figured he must have thought that I, as someone who always roamed around in the campus, must be freely available. I wondered how I could even think so. The pretension which filled his voice made it even thinner. “Some random guy”, I thought. I tried telling myself that I am ready to welcome whatever comes my way, like a woman without a future. I am sure whatever he said fell on deaf ears. I drank with him in his room after we got the alcohol. I ate. Someone knocked on the door and tried to get me back to my place. The guy who knocked told me he wants to make sure I was safe. I don’t know why, but I acted as if I did not see his goodwill and love. I laughed. I drew stars on his wrists without any paint. He went back, gloomy.
I went back to drinking and slept off. I could feel, in my sleep, the guy who brought me booze touching me and mating with me. He started talking to me when I was half-awake. He told me that he broke up with his girlfriend recently because she was a ‘slut’. I wondered why he told me that. I did not ask him anything. I felt sobered down. Sitting in that dimly lit room and thinking about the high ideals he preached in his plays, I could feel my hatred boiling. In the darkness, I felt that his face looked abominable and ugly. I was shocked by what this man had just told me—a guy who talked about proletariat revolution and liberation of women. I shouted at him on my way out. I had learnt the language of abuse from my stay in the campus. Whatever language I already knew was not enough to fight my male antagonists.
I walked through the darkened atmosphere of the campus, very much like a vampire on her way back after sucking out the blood of a man.