Wearing Off of the Make-up

Salma and Kim Longinotto, who made the documentary on Salma's Life

How do you be someone you are not? How do you hoodwink your own self throughout your life?

Sounds peculiar, right?

This is the story of all the girls of Thuvarankurichi, of the Tamil Nadu’s Thiruchirapalli district.

The ‘jamaat’ council at the local mosque have decided the fate for all the girls of the village.

After they attain puberty, they are forced to be locked up in one dull, dark and lifeless room, forcing the girls to live those dull, dark, lifeless lives until their marriage. As if anything is going to change after they marry. They still continue to lead the life with bondages, which they don’t even realize have become a part of their world!

These girls who are lively, talented, happy, sharp and intelligent start living a life as a mere puppet who’s even the strings are broken

They become someone else, a girl who rarely is happy, who rarely nurtures her talent, or should I say the forgotten talent, hoodwinking her self with a quiet, frail girl sitting by a window, almost becoming the girl she was forced to be!

“My life is ebbing away

Beyond the reach of my will

With a loneliness that shall never end,

I am living here still”

This stanza of the Poem ‘A deserted place’ by Salma, explicitly explain the loneliness of every girl in that village, the tamil poet was once the victim of the same orthodox, inhuman culture, which she break free of and changes her own fate. She didn’t let her dreams, or should I say, the freedom of watching dreams fade away.

“Is this it? Do I just have to live within these walls like my mother and sister, marry, have kids…and die?” says Salma in the documentary made on her by Kim Longinotto.

This frightful thought in some way gave some motivation to Salma, to fight with her own destiny.

A lover of reading and education as a young girl, Salma used to read from the crumpled newspapers, taking them out of the bin, her mother had thrown after taking out the vegetables that had come in it. That was the level of desperation. There was frustration inside her, she wanted to crumple the society who had laid those rules, not like the crumpled newspaper but in a way that would change its shape and form. She started writing poems at the age of 15 to take out her anger, and fill that place in her heart which was so hollow till now. The place where she then resided a tigress.

Now, it was time that she should be married off with the local boy who was decided as her life partner when she was 11. She resisted, she protested as much as she could. She put thin metal stick into an electrical socket to get away with the marriage. Until one day, when her mother made her say Yes on the grounds of her fake life-threatening condition.

She was shattered!

Salma's neighbour, a 17 year old girl, getting married, while she wanted to continue her education.

The man she was married to was a local politician, a man overwhelmed by the patriarchal society just like her father. They would fight all night, he would beat her, threaten her, rape her.

Salma did not stop writing poems, she would be awake all night to find a time when ‘Malik’ her husband would be asleep and she would write her heart out. Many a time, Malik would find out and would snatch her poems and throw them away. Salma would still write, she would write in the toilets, and hide the pieces of paper in her blouse.

2 of her poems were published in a Tamil Magazine ‘Kalachuvadu’. Surprisingly, her mother had posted them to the editors. In the documentary, Salma’s mother describes how she also hid those poems from everyone and sent it slyly. She is proud of her daughter, she read her poems and maybe even her hollow heart started to fill.

Salma never wrote to achieve fame, she wrote for herself with the desperation of freedom, desperation of living life of a human not a puppet.

“When those who are afraid,

And those who are ignorant,

Of Death, are dying still,

I have a strange dream:

There’s a newspaper story

On my being raped by some men

While walking alone on the road

This life- impossible to pursue,

With a myriad of lifeless objects

And one man-

Goes regardless,

Inside the same room”

A Chennai based journalist, intrigued to know about this writer, who writes with so much brutality went to meet Salma. He quotes the lines of her poem in the movie “we are sleeping beside each other, but we could also kill each other”.

He interviewed her in the village. He also wanted a picture, he knew it was forbidden, he still gave it a try.

“May I take your photo?” he asked.

Salma looked around, seeing that there was just a little boy there, she said “Quick!” and lifted her veil.

This story created a sensation, around south India, but more so in the village. It torn the orthodoxy, revolted with the patriarchy, and changed the way a woman was to be perceived.

Did this also change how Malik thought of her, or was it something else that Malik gave Salma’s name for the women seat in the panchayat?

She won!

Reminiscing the time, when the window was the only connection with the world outside.

This gave the voice to Salma’s freedom, her anger and her frustration. She did everything she could to empower women, to change the society, to find her own old happy, lively, talented self.

It was more than she asked. Now Salma lives in Chennai with her sister and her two sons.

Yes, this is a story of a tigress, but for me this is a story of everyone related to Salma. It is story of MAKEUP.

The makeup every girl does, to be the quiet girl with no dreams.

The makeup Salma had to do.

The makeup, Nadjma’s ( Salma’s Sister) son do of the religion, condemning the act of going to cinema, while still doing the same.

The makeup Salma’s sons do, to be the man of the society, angry and rude and ruthless.

The makeup everyone does to be with the society, to be soaked in the mindsets, and to apply the rouge of the village customs.

The mother wearing off her makeup and helping her daughter to publish the poem.

The father wearing off his makeup, when he forgets about the patriarchy and makes tea for the wife and Salma.

The husband, Malik wearing off his makeup, when he starts to accept Salma’s god gift talent and empowers by giving her the wing of politics.

The sister, wearing off her makeup when her son his away, and being the free bird she always wanted to be.

Actually, the story is about wearing off of the makeup.

#travel #salma #documentary