I wish I wrote:Diary of kasturba

World celebrates 2^nd October

Mourns on 30th January

Nobody remembers when

I was born and when I died

Because I didnot write

As I sit on chair and rest my head on the wooden table, my eyes rest on the almirah that has more than thousand books on Mahatma-some are written by him and then there are endless writing by the people who wanted to know and understand the life of Mahatma. There are collected and preserved pages from newspaper and magazines of anniversary special editions–for 2^nd October and 30th January that discussed various perspectives and narratives on life of Mahatma. He indeed was a great personality; he did what nobody could have done. His messages of non violence and truth are the legacy for the world to follow. (It’s different thing altogether that world leaders though blow trumpets of peace but prepare for war all the time).

But as I read books and history, I find, I only play foil to Mahatma. I am invisible all the time. I have never been talked as an individual but as wife of Mahatma. Today while I was walking I was wondered, what was that, which made me insignificant, despite I participated in marches ,independence struggle, went to jail, mobilized women, cooperated with Mahatma. May be I did not have mass appeal, or may be because I did not write.

Those were the different times; I get overwhelmed to see how women write today. The social media –web2.0 has empowered them to tell their stories and share their life experiences, desires fearlessly. In my time only intellectuals wrote, Illiteracy was one of the reasons but absence of a democratic medium too was a significant reason. I wish I wrote my version “My experiment with truth” .I doubt if it had any takers in the market that time. It would have been another development to see how world perceived my writing and morality, If I discussed my sexuality and my desires. Had social media existed in my times it would have given me the power to write, even if publishers didn’t show any interest in my manuscript or they didn’t find it to be profitable venture. I would have posted it on my blog.

If publishers rejected my manuscript

I would have posted it on my blog

So easy. So democratic.

I would have written how wife has to pay price for husband’s greatness. He used to think me as an illiterate woman, no wonder why history tells he had intellectual affairs with woman, because I was not intellectually stimulating. Men are still same when I listen to current Prime minister of the country, it reminds me- times have changed but some men still are same. He called his predecessor ‘Dehati Aurat’, because for him rural women know nothing are therefore useless .But doesn’t he know India according to Census 2011, 68.84 % of population (making up 833.1 million people resides in village. He should know that rural women constitute a little less than half that population. India is home to 405.1 million rural women.
Out of 310 million workers in rural India, 111 million workers are women. 42.95 % of the women in villages are working as agricultural labor.  He should also know India has 90% of the total marginal workers in the country. Women head around 11.10 % of rural households (16.67 million).
Recently he has given ugliest compliment of his times to Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina when he praised her efforts to combat terrorism despite being a woman. Who voted this man to power, by the way?

Coming back to Mahatma.He was too overbearing once he was about to throw me out of house because I refused to clean toilet. I married at the tender age of 13.Marriage for us that time was just meant an opportunity to wear –good clothes and good food. When he left for England to study and my achievement was- I got pregnant. I wish I maintained my dairy the way he did to provide the evidence that I was more than the wife of Mahatma.

My diaries would have told the world what Mahatma never told in public and penned in ink. My daily life frustrations, my political ideology, how I saw what happened in independence.

My frustration when in 1906 he took abstinence, without my consent and I was deprived of sex. Man is independent creature to exercise his sexuality; He had all the rights to do it. Well who asks for a woman’s consent? What am I saying? God Forbid!I  did not like when he used to sleep naked with woman to test his bhramacharaya. If I did the same, the world would have bashed me and I would have become uncultured.

My writings would have erased mystery

From the hidden things

Only if I wrote

My writings would have given my identity.

People say Mahatma was the great journalist; he published newspapers, journals, traveled and documented what was going in the country. I just didn’t miss writing but I missed my fair existence in history. I never championed as protagonist but remained a footnote in the history.

I bet my writings would have been

more interesting than that of Mahatma

 only if I wrote.

People should not mistake that I would have just written about the daily chores, pain in pregnancy and in menstruation but also about politics, conflicts and wars. Often it is a perceived that if a woman starts to write she would just write about women and womanhood. Woman's mad love for a man,in whose absence she writes poems of love and despair.All she can write about is 'the miseries', 'the grief' and 'anti-men narrative'.I would have broken shackles in women writing.I would have penned how I helped in motivating woman volunteers. I would just have not written about woman’s life in the 20 th century but what was men’s status in the family and society. I would have written about children and games children played that time.

I would have loved to lampoon the men I didn’t like. I would have quoted them and their perspectives. I would have written about the man on whom I secretly had crush but could never confess.

PS: I was born on April 11, 1869 in Porbander.

I died on February 22, 1944 during quit India movement. I had pneumonia and my husband didn’t like my idea to get in penicillin.