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Sita, amidst laughter and tears
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Kate Millet, the firebrand feminist who made the world sit up with her work Sexual Politics in the Seventies, was in Bangalore. She read out excerpts from her work, Sita, and also launched her installation, American Dreams Go To Pot.
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An animated Kate Millett . — Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.
THE CRY went around Bangalore: "Do you have a copy of Sexual Politics? The author wants to read from it.'' Well-wishers scoured bookshops, phones rang incessantly, messages flashed across computer screens, but nobody seemed to have a copy of the 1970 Ph.D. thesis-turned-bestseller by a pioneer of the second wave of feminism in the USA.
Kate Millett was in town, but her books were nowhere to be found. Well, they managed to locate someone's well-thumbed copy of Sita, and this is what she read from on March 17 evening at the green and spacious home of her host Smita Shah. A sizeable portion of the house and garden had been turned into an exhibition venue. Just outside the front door was the whimsical The Artist's Life, consisting of a pinewood box containing marbles, paintbrushes and a pack of airline tissues stamped "Tee Hee'' on one side and "Boo Hoo'' on the other. Inside the house were photographs that Kate had taken, of her home in New York city and farm in New York State. A 36-inch TV screen continuously showed snatches of her installations, which seemed to consist mainly of caged objects — here a boot, there a bald white mannequin.
In the backyard was an installation she had done right here, called American Dreams Go To Pot. It featured a US flag flushed down a toilet that had been enclosed in a wooden cage. "I hope they let me back into the country,'' she rumbled in her deep, Lauren Bacall voice. "They might have an ambulance waiting at the airport to take me off to Bellevue (mental asylum).''
It was past six o'clock when the 20-odd guests dragged white plastic chairs into the back porch to listen to Kate. And then the barking began. A neighbour's dogs peeped over the wall and decided they didn't want company. One barked while the other howled. "Shush,'' yelled an ebullient American woman. "Can't you see you're in the presence of greatness?''
The dogs quietened down and Kate began to read a passage from Sita. She had hardly gone through a couple of paragraphs when there came another beastly interruption. Kate simply had to laugh. "They'll keep me from crying,'' she said.
Crying? Suddenly one realised that her occasional sniffling wasn't the result of a cold. A deeply personal memory lay buried in the pages before her. Muted whispers went around: "Sita was the one she lost. Her sweetheart, who died.'' And then a passing train began to blare its reckless horn. By now, Kate was laughing and crying at the same time. Everyone decided that indoors was the best place to be, so they sat on the floor, in chairs, on sofas.
Kate turned once again to the abandoned chapter, reading an intimate scene full of tenderness and pain. "Our bodies are like a letter fitting into an envelope.'' Tears fell like oversized raindrops from her eyes and splashed onto her cheeks. A woman quietly got up to fetch a blue Turkish towel from the bathroom. Kate wiped her face and continued: "As Ruth is to me, so am I to Maud...''
It was over in a few minutes. Kate left the room briefly, leaving a hushed audience. She came back, leaned against a wall, and began to speak, her words flowing, meandering, leaping, lingering. An old love, lost but not forgotten, had seized her mind in a fierce grip. "She was Italian, half-Indian. She is supposed to have committed suicide. I wrote a whole formal elegy — I feel like a fool — she might not be dead!'' Kate had seen her 10 years ago at the back row of a lecture hall in Italy — it was her, wasn't it, and not some Italian countess?
She had first met her in California. "She gave me a big rush. No one had ever sent me flowers five times a day.'' But then she had wanted Maud, and told Kate so before she killed herself. "She called me a spoilt little princess. I told her, you don't want Maud. Maud, she's Robespierre!''
Her intimate thoughts poured out, leaving her listeners moved, or uncomfortable, or nonplussed. Now she was talking of California in the Seventies. She had made a film and some people came to her and asked her for it. Why? "They wanted to burn it.'' Why? Because it contained a wild party scene where a few women had taken their shirts off. And now these women were worried about their careers!
She talked of carrying placards during the pacifist movement. And then the phone began to ring. "Oh that's a killer,'' said Kate. The mood was squashed like a ton of bricks landing on a daisy. While detailed directions to the house were issued over the phone, Kate wandered off to the kitchen. On the way she told the American woman: "I wrote Sita in '75. I haven't read that passage in a long time. I never cry, I don't know what came over me.'' She shook her head. "It's India.''
India now took over. The mood turned upbeat as there were calls for a song. A young man with a guitar couldn't be persuaded to sing until Kate herself implored him to. He sang a satirical song, to the tune of the well-known Surangini, called American War Paar Da. It was a song about Bush and Bin Laden and world politics, and it made Kate shake with laughter. Soon, she was joining in the chorus with everyone else, singing: "America, America, American war paar da.''
It was an unusual evening, an evening that reminded one of Kate's piece, The Artist's Life. For, what is life if not "tee hee'' and "boo hoo''?
C.K. MEENA
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