Having grown up watching and experiencing my mother always, almost always working, not knowing how to or why to simply sit or simply be. Her perpetual state of a mental list of pending works in the house, dreams of what life could have been. What if she had some time after her Masters? What if she had had a different path to experiencing the life; what could have been if she was a different woman? What if she was a woman of purpose, outside of household?
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I saw her as a woman who created a sense of self-worth based on ideas of a complex patriarchal family that traumatised its women regardless of their education, stature, age, profession, homemaker or otherwise.
All my life I held my ground not to become my mother's silence, burnout, stigmas, abuse, adherence. It was only later that I experienced her as a holistic being, her bare and layered persona and mind. With curiosities so beautiful she can consume the stubbornness of men around her. A woman so quiet outside and so talkative within. Her mind and resilience has been her closest.
Images of her are 'my being looking at her becoming' of a woman who is finding hope, looking outwards from inside.
I lost my mum in her household chores and anger and found Madhu (my mother and more) in the times of her rest, of her un-leisurely leisure, of her momentary sun soaking, mid-chore outbursts, her short naps, during our short trip to Mount Abu, where she experienced flight for the first time.
That I want to be her, in more than one way, is a realisation of a lifetime for me.
Kiran Dayal (b. 1995) is a socially engaged art practitioner and researcher based in Bokhakhat, Assam, and originally from Satwas, Madhya Pradesh. Identifying as a privileged cisgender woman from a backward caste, she defied familial expectations by dropping out of English Hons at Kamla Nehru College and pursuing a BFA in painting from Arunachal University of Studies. Her growing interest in gender and identity led her to a postgraduate degree in Social Design from Ambedkar University, Delhi, where she focused on gender-based violence and oppression. Kiran’s work includes being an SBI YFI Fellow on Menstrual Narratives and a Design Manager in the social impact sector. Currently, she documents women’s everyday narratives on menstruation, sex, leisure, and unpaid labor in Bokhakhat through her participatory art project "Ghar Ki Mukhiya ki Baatein." She also works as Design and Development Manager at Uninhibited.org.
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