Ruby Woo and the associated insubordination

(It isn't wrong to say crises can make you or break you. Whatever I am, as of this August, reflects the slew of emotional changes I've been through over the past few months. The direct manifestation of this rather obnoxious disturbance was my inability to express. I have been extremely distant from my usual articulate self.

Today, though, something stirred within me and the corpse of writing was bought back to life.)

A smidgen of a deep purple lipstick, black eye liner, shimmery eye shadow and a bindi that overshadows thinly plucked brows. This is what the appearance of an average lower income group Indian woman has come to. Income classifications aside, Indian women have begun wearing makeup and I for one, could not be happier.

I have originally been the sort of person who associates makeup or any upkeep in appearance with anti-feminist notions. In sharp contrast, more recently, I have moved on to regarding even a dash of kajal as a secret handshake between women, saying, “Hey, this is the uprising we are a part of.” Having witnessed scores of women asked by their fathers/brothers/husbands to not wear ‘loud makeup’, a bold lip is my favorite symbol of defiance on another woman.
I do not care if you can contour like a supermodel or not, but seeing a maid wearing a nice pink lip gloss, makes me feel like she is overlooking the drudgery of living with a unemployed, drunken husband and accepting her responsibilities as the sole bread winner, proudly.

 Also, this is in no way discriminating against women who do not wear makeup because ultimately appearance is a matter of personal choice, but nothing satisfies me more, than seeing ten different women with the most intense and intricate winged eyeliner in a crowded Churchgate bound train at 8 am.
Multiple Indian middle-class women finally reaching their global counterparts in makeup application might seem like a vain idea but it signifies the snail-paced but growing voice of the Indian woman who is unafraid and unapologetic about her red lip terrifying you. And yes, she will wear it as often as she wants to, lest you sexualize her or her sisters.

Deep inside.

In some convoluted heart, a miserable emotion reigned in all its glory. It was less of an emotion, more of a sentiment. What is the difference, you might ask.
A sentiment, is just the less passionate version of an emotion. If emotion were a dark haired, dark eyed, bipolar beauty, sentiment would be the more sober version of that woman after attending rehabilitation.

It had started to feel like an emotion again. It was like an ocean wave, rushing towards the shore and becoming a tumulus, powerful emotion and the very next instant, it was retracting from the shore to go back to being a sublime and muted sentiment.

An undying obsession with wanting admiration. Admiration that would lead the admirer to ruin. An admiration which would destroy the admirer and empower her to a whole new level. An admiration which would mark itself by the twists and turns it made the admirer's wrist take while he held a brush, soaked in paint. An admiration which fed on his happiness and fed her with arrogance. An admiration that left him drowning in misery, with her being the only glimmer of hope, an only chance of survival.
An admiration that makes the admirer's blood run dry and fills her blood stream with an intoxicant.

Ah the pleasure, of having ruined someone's life. By not belonging to them because this emotion, admiration, is not love, no ownership exists. Destructing someone's inner temple where deities of self-respect have received adulation all their lives, razing that temple and filling it with turbid, putrid waters of self loathing and feeling an immense pride at having reduced the admirer, a monument, before he met her, to a mere pile of ruble.

The glory of having been admired and having become immortal in the work of the admirer.
The glory of being a muse.
The glory of being a conquerer.