Category Archives: The daily grind

13 days entangled and excited

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Hi loves,

So many things have been going on lately. I get up feeling really excited every morning. I have poured my heart and soul into reading, job applications and re-strategizing F.I.’s work. I spend most nights call-after-call. There are just so many interesting things going on. I only eat two times a day and I have not combed my hair for 13 days.

Nishma has moved to Delhi for 6 months, Raz is going to Delhi for a spiritual retreat — and I am thinking of joining them for a few days, subject to work. Nishma has a really cute blog: http://inthewindmillsofmymind.tumblr.com/ I really love Nish. She is so energetic, full of ideas. She was/is also FI’s UK Project Coordinator.

Been having infinite calls with Helena. When we start we never stop. The other night I was up till 6am talking to her. We started with F.I. and went on and on and on about everything else – Helena has a way of approaching work that resonates with my principles and ethics. We value people (our interns and researchers) and we value their contributions. We work as hard as possible to ensure their work with us is substantial and fulfilling and we are thinking of new ways to do this. How are we giving them a sense of ownership over the project? We are moving into letting them take over the working group discussions — so really excited about this. You can access some of these here: http://www.feminijtihad.tumblr.com

When we say we want to increase the accessibility of academic and activist scholarship on women’s rights —- it opens up a whole separate discussion on what we mean by accessibility, the levels and dimensions of it – flirting with multi-media and multi-platforms, thinking about we attempt to bridge the gap between academic theory and practical activism. We spend a lot of time deconstructing scholarly work, dissecting it into its single elements and working with those elements to ask ourselves ‘How can this argument be reframed so we can make a case for its utility in practical projects?’ — it is a different way of analyzing text — text is now being analyzed with an additional criteria — how does it enrich activism and development work? How does it inform lawyers, social and legal activists, policy makers, NGO executives, human rights officers, and specialists? I think F.I. has really been as rigorous as it can be with the scholarship we research, gather and analyze.

The start of the year has opened up new paths for me. I see myself travelling (between borders, paradigms of thinking, words on pages), meeting many people, and creating new projects, …I am really excited to start work (though I am not sure which) – and re-locate myself. My friend told me something interesting, a concept expounded by Naseem Taleb. He said the future is very unpredictable. Our job is not to speculate — but to put ourselves out there and increase our odds/chances to get somewhere.

Lots of love, hugs and kisses. I’ll write back soon.

xx

My impatience waits for me

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F.I. is like a bright light in my life. The women I work with are so intelligent and passionate. None of us are being paid for what we do. But we do it with professional ethic, combined with passion and intelligence, respect for each other, critical analyses of scholarship, open-mindedness to variety… Its a constant inspiration, for me. Really it is. And I value every single person, every small contribution. You Small pieces make up the whole that we are.

–

Unrelated Poem.

Maybe you expect that by 23,

my impatience will mature

and not see that instead

my patience has sunk down to my feet Continue reading →

Happy Hallloooweeen

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Poesia

(If indeed halloween haunts, then this haunts me)

Let’s not carve mountains out of mole-hills. I have not loved many enough to tell grandiose stories of love.

‘Sweet-heart’, he calls.

At the dying seconds of ‘eart..’ when vocals stagger, when notes lose breath, start to die out.

Ah, that haunts me. In those dying seconds. How not to forget.

My dance is now my origami

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Dearest,

Today was an amazing day for me. I woke up, answered all F.I. emails, did yoga, detoxified my body, and Danced (with a capital D). It just felt great to be in touch with myself and finally feel my body. My numbness is subsiding. I feel alive.

I feel my spirit finding life in music and finding music in life that seemed to have faded out in the past two months. I am happy and thankful to God. And grateful to those who picked up little pieces of me, and found the right fabric to hold this body together. I spent last weekend sewing myself together. And this love for life now tastes like honey in my mouth.

I am excited for life and I am not even sure why!

My dance is now my origami. I am using my limbs to fold into myself and form shapes outside my streamline. My toes are as orange as the peaches in your orchard. But they are ugly because I keep twirling. My hair is like wild-fire. If I express my personality, my dance becomes eccentric – so my hair burns in the heat of this dance. With the right rhythm, even a stomp of my feet can feel as light as a feather falling. And you can see how the music breaks me. How the lyrics take me.

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