Blog

Life events can sometimes surprisingly cycle. Say, certain types of events happen again and again, and repeat a pattern over time, which might seem too familiar for us, as in the past. It might seem weird whether they indicate a connection to each other, almost like a loop of cycle. Such cycles can be both good or bad. If it’s good, fine. But if it’s something bad, we might definitely want to break the cycle- say Cycle of pain, Cycle of violence, Cycle of abuse, Cycle of oppression.

Let me explain. What comes to your mind when I say “Violence”.. When mentioned, the word immediately brings to us images of physical torture or harm or weapons, blood, right?. That’s due to the popular connotation of the word. But also true, violence is not always physical. It could be financial, verbal, emotional or psychological also. Infact, those are the more types of occurrence of violence, than the former. It’s also mistaken to think these are just the initial harmless stuffs that lead to actual violence, which is physical. Violence is violence, whatever form it takes and it harms the person or group who experience them. Sometimes, violence can also be legitimised by societal norms or fascist laws of state. It can also be systemic, meaning influencing and evading every part of the bigger system, that makes it almost impossible for one to escape it.

Violence can be messy. It can be known by anyone who has partaken in it or experienced it. Messy enough to affect every part of us in some way. To deshape us, depress us and lose our original self. We might even change into someone whom we are not, even beyond recognition. Another bitter truth is that violence is almost always a cycle. If it is, can we possibly break it?.. How can we?.. That’s what I am trying to break down in this blog.

After we go through violence, manage to breathe out somewhere and eventually come to slowly see the real weight of it, there are many kinds of responses it can create within us.. say, anger, sadness, helplessness , grief of everything we had lost along the way, shame etc.. sometimes we might want to take revenge, other times we might just want to escape from anything and everything that remind us of the past, or try and reverse everything that happened by some magic. Nonetheless, the scars remain for us to heal. But if you are someone who doesn’t want to do the same thing to someone else, then here is the hope of good news. You are a cycle breaker.

Being a cycle breaker is a choice. But also a persevering choice. I remember catching myself in shock, more often, doing the very same thing I have promised myself I will never repeat to someone else. Simply to say, it’s not easy to break the cycle of abuse or oppression. It takes a sustained effort, new discoveries, patience, awareness, courage and a lot of self compassion. It’s like almost we have to carry this cycle breaking coin everywhere in our pocket. From the experience of my own healing journey I have learnt 2 Sides of this cycle breaking coin.

1. Victim/Oppressed side
2. Perpetrator/Oppressor side

VICTIM/OPPRESSED SIDE

Cycle breaking involves embracing, soothing, listening to, comforting our wounded self❤️‍🩹. It’s seeing what we have missed, lost, violated of. It’s the side of self compassion. It’s distancing oneself or taking our space out from the sources of harm. It’s lamenting, crying our hearts out, talking through with those we trust, say our safe spaces. It’s standing up for one self, putting necessary boundaries in place, so you can heal. It’s like band-aiding of the wounds. We need to do this as long as we feel we need it to move on slowly; even if that means life long because some of the times our new healing discoveries hit us at points of time we don’t expect and it has something to offer at every instance of our life ages and happenings. I can’t stress more the importance of embracing this side, because trust me, the bottled up past emotions or unaddressed scars pops up later on in places and ways, we don’t want.

PERPETRATOR/OPPRESSOR SIDE

This side of the cycle breaking coin involves processing the abuser/oppressor side. Trust me , we all hate to do this. But as much as we strongly vouch, we are not going to do what our perpetrators did to us, that we are not the same, we can still end up doing just that. This happens for this one primary reason-we fail to process this side, letting victimhood define ourselves. The seeds of the perpetrator enters us during the instances of violence, and remains with us, for us to analyse and uproot. It may demand us to ask the difficult questions. Why they did what they did, how did they arrive there, what they failed to do.. For us, the paths may be different from the perpetrator, but the same questions remain. This is not a one day event, but an on going process as and when we begin to discover patterns. It takes integrity, humility , self awareness, courage, compassion for others and unbreakable commitment to break the cycle of violence💔. We have to go through this, not to forgive the perpetrators but primarily to relieve ourselves and sometimes, miraculously even the perpetrators from the cycle.

When both the sides of the coin go hand in hand, trust me we are good. There is still hope. Good news is noone is alone in this journey, though it often feels so. We can reach out to support groups, people who are in similar healing journey of abuse or oppression. We are all in this together. After all, “Nobody wins unless everybody wins”.❤️🍀

‘Luck comes to those who make efforts’, people say. I partly agree with that. But why does Mr.Luck never visits everyone based on a same scale? Why does some have to make more efforts than the other? Why does some have to wait longer? There is only one possible answer to these hard questions. It’s called privilege; or rather, the lack of it.. It can be anything that discrimates like gender, color, caste, class, race, ability etc. These come in direct conflict with the universal truth that every human is equal and has equal worth.

If you take a privilege or its lack , even they are not distributed equally in this world either. That’s how the oppressive ideas surrounding the basic notions that affect one’s life deeply have been constructed and more often, frustratingly intersect! Who created ? well, the greedy and the selfish, I guess. If you have felt lucky or unlucky at some point in life, then you have most definitely personally witnessed atleast one of these rigid, otherwise invisible structures.

No one is fully lucky, and no one is fully unlucky either. I like the word ‘privilege’ more than ‘luck’, because of its helpfulness. It feels more accurate in terms of explaining causality and gives some agency to influence and steer it. Privilege could be physical, social, financial, familial or any realm thats an inherent part in making life happen for everyone across the universe.

So the next most important question is what to do with privilege/s or the lack of it. I have been struggling with these questions myself for years now.. We can be privileged in one or more aspect, while also being under privileged in one or more aspects. Behind every privilege and the lack of it here is almost always a “social structure” backed by false ideas and customs that sustain those inequalities. To admit the privileges one has experienced is difficult, since it demands us to do something about it, but it’s almost evil not to , since it directly affects those who lack it. It’s also difficult to admit the lack of a privilege since it could shatter our notions, could make us sad, angry and make us feel unsafe, but it’s almost disrespectful to self not to.

So how to destroy these structures which perpetuate unequal privileges? What role can one play? And How?

Let’s call this “Dismantling Structures”.

I would like to share 5steps which I have learnt and have been trying.

1. Identifying and admitting a privilege in our life or its lack is the first step.. Like I said earlier, a person with privilege in one aspect may not be in another. Both should not be confused together and should be addressed separately, unless there is a clear instance of intersectionality.
2. The second step is to know and understand how a social privilege affects us and how it affects others. Listening to the “other”, without getting defensive gets crucial here.
3. Having understood the effects, how should one respond to all that? Most probably there are already a lot of solutions that are already laid for you by those who fought ahead of you. Test them with the “others”. But, be authentic! Knowing these and preparing oneself is the third step..
4. The fourth step is to try and take those actions, no matter the challenges..
5. Find your allies- who are open, like minded and mutually supportive for the journey

you can ask me what’s worth wrestling through all these endeavours?..Now the answer to that can be given only by you.

Nevertheless, remember one thing. Love, Truth and Hope, have always been the timeless proven methods that make life happen in this vast vast universe ❤️🔑.

Throughout human history, while reporting the crimes against the oppressed, the victims themselves are almost always misframed to be the perpetrators. Think about that for a moment. It’s almost shameful as to witness how easily it’s done and accepted. This is an age old tactic of the oppressors to hide themselves, to keep their power structures and status quo unquestioned, and worst, helps perpetuate the violence.

So this trick to evade all accountability is usually carried out by indirect blaming/gaslighting, manipulating the common public opinions through controlled major media outlets. In Vengaivayal case(pls Google it if you haven’t read and would like to know)- it’s been happening quite literally** , that too with support of ruling state machinery itself. Only the laziest of all investigations would start and end with the whistle blower victim self. How far were the whistle blowers listened to? Not to mention, the ‘most’ targetted, yet most important provision for annihilation of caste, “SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities” Act part has now been repealed back in the case papers, giving rise to more suspicion. When I say suspicion it’s not an empty assumption. If one cares enough to see the increasing dalit violence, and anti dalit sentiments -all masked behind the progressive image -all across the state, one would know.

What better justifies the need for CBI investigation? Whats stopping the ruling govt to restrain from announcing it, if only truth matters to you too?? The Dalits are ready and are choosing the constitution today. Well, to remind ourselves, this is precisely why CBI -like independent constitutional bodies, and other such checks and balances were put in place. Thanks to Dr.Ambedkar and many other leaders who did what they did inorder to bring these into force.

This is definitely an important wake up call for all the democratic forces , atleast in Tamil Nadu, on the wake of this 76th republic day. The VCK and communist party have already pressurised the govt to move the case to CBI. More groups have to join them. Hoping Periyar’s vision and spirit will awaken us.

The light never waits for the darkness to leave, rather the light shines and darkness automatically begins to vanish!

If we are silent today and wait, tomorrow before we even realise, this casteist shit will mix in our blood too.