Entangled within grief is not anger so much as rage. Colossal. Loud. Embittered.  Yes, the government has failed its people. But again, the biggest losers have been women, the trans community and those in the bottom rung of the caste hierarchy. Their voices, their resistance, their robust intellectual critique... all of it continues to go unheeded and unheard. What is disseminated, instead, are the blood lust gospels of lunatics. Their hate-mongering gets air-time, not the vital discourses of Dalit and Bahujan scholars and trans activists and feminists all campaigning tirelessly for a less-broken, more reparative world.

The arts of prophecy reason in a tautological circle, I once wrote, citing a line from Anne Carson, who was talking about Cassandra. The female seer prophesies the doom that lies ahead under patriarchal systems. But no one listens to her because she is female and therefore merely alarmist or hysterical. Until the catastrophe she predicted comes to pass by virtue of her not being listened to. This is what it has meant for many of us who have been critical of Hindutva ideology not only for its fascist mindset but for its blatant disregard of the environment, its peddling of development without being clear of the cost of these advances, the human and climatic toll it would take. I mention prophecy to remind us that it doesn’t demand always any cosmic divination, often. It involves, in fact, taking off the blinders, making a conscious decision not to live in denial but to confront reality in all its bitterness, its nakedness, its horrific core because only by performing that labour can we hope for a better future.

Poll

Who will win the Punjab Elections?

BJP 32.81%

AAP 42.19%

INC 25.00%

Submit

View All In Poll

This most catastrophic thing that is happening as we speak, that is leaving us gasping for air, that is wrecking our lungs, that is taking away our loved ones is not the fault of a virus. The scale of this disaster is man-made. We must acknowledge that the greatest casualties, the most grievously injured parties are those voices that could have been. We owe it to them to demand better. We need to be exhaustingly critical about who gets to speak and why. And when it comes to the job of re-building, we must consider who we give agency to in order for our world to be repaired. The future must belong to those who have been historically negated.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.