As any other profession, journalism too would call upon its
human breed to bear a few troubles and regrets. With the boastful heroics come
the lists of haven’t-done’s and to-do’s. And if you are a woman, who
walk into a Press room, fully driven to change the world, the common storyline
of your life is that you fall in love with a bloke in or out of the paper, enter the
holy mess of wedlock and bear children.
So, instead of changing the world, you watch your world
change.
You go back to your fairytales, nursery rhymes, math tables
and get stuck with homework. Only this time, it is because you have a child: a
child who quenched the fire in you to be a daredevil. A child who is alien to
the fencing skills of your pen.
And you wait and watch your orbits change.
And what about the man who wowed at the altar to be by your
side during good times and bad times—happy days and sad days! He was the man
who used to read your scribblings and say they were good. Now you realize, even
though he read them, he never understood them completely.
You won’t blame him, coz, at the end of the day, he is just
another reader.
Henrik Ibsen’s Nora is no journalist when she breaks open her cage.
Yet she isn’t labeled a bad woman for seeking freedom. It looks
extra-ordinary on stage or cinema screen yet, hypocritically nasty in real life.
As opposed to Ruwanthie’s narrator who has understandably walked the streets,
met many people and seen the world, Nora is just a closeted pet. Yet, she
breaks away from the frame whereas her modern-day counterpart is still
imprisoned in its four corners when the curtain falls.
Fairytales have cheated on us (with men).
Though they are named after women, it is the men in the
shining armour that make them happily-ever-after’s.
A woman comes to the world with a ready-made frame, whereas society sets the man free and let him pick the frame which suits him.
What makes the jubilant Kalu Maali a boy is that the frame
won’t fit any other way.
Though my lips still taste bitter from last night’s premier,
I buy it!
