The Yuppie Intellect

She raises her eyes, just that little bit, to stare into the darkness before her. She feels the warmth of the spotlight on her bare shoulder, she cannot see beyond the edge of the stage, but she knows they are there, those two women of the arts, sitting discreetly among the audience, biding their time, waiting for her to speak, waiting for her to falter. One false move, and she knows they will swoop down on her. As the stage manager moves the light a little to adjust it, she spots, somewhere in that darkness that shrouds the audience, a sharp, if fleeting, glint of steel. Are they sharpening their claws already?

She lowers her eyes, and picks up the mike that lies before her. She thinks, for the millionth time today, of their promise of letting her go if only she agrees to publicly apologise and genuflect before the one among them who had felt affronted. The word ‘genuflect’, she remembers, had been important. She stands up, looks straight ahead into the darkness, and speaks.

I will not genuflect. And I will not apologise. And I refuse to concede to you the ‘Yuppie Intellect’ brownie. Hear me out, oh Fiery Falcons of emancipation, and should you then deem it just to cast me out, a pariah I will be for the remainder of my days.

Gayathri Spivak, Chandra Mohanty, Trinh T. Minh ha – all women of the Third World experience, are critiqued ever so often by others from the same part of the world that they belong to by birth and breeding, as speaking from a position of power, and having, no right, therefore, to speak at all. “Herself living in America and telling to us not to talk English”… or some such. Thinking for us as if we cannot think for ourselves. Imposing, in other words, on collective third world thought, the Yuppie Intellect.

I must bring to your notice however, that this mythology around the ‘Yuppie Intellect’ is but a misunderstanding of the understanding that dawns on you when you are trying hard to stand on one foot, pushing it firmly into the ground, as your other is stretched across to its limit, trying to get a toehold across the Atlantic.

She senses movement. She knows her last statement has spurred the Falcons. She cannot see them in the darkness, but she knows they have begun making their way towards her. She clears her throat. She will not allow them any more ground.

The other thing, of course, and the more important one at that, is that we all want to wear tiny black skirts and tall heeled pumps and charm the living daylights out of every human being out there, firang or not. Heck, why do you think I put myself through the on and off drill of working out and limping around from the pain in my muscles? Not for fitness, although that is most welcome, but, honestly, because someday I want to strut around on a beach in Barbados in a blue bikini. With a white hibiscus behind my ear. The problem, here, is not the choice that I make, because it is a choice. I am allowed that, and that’s all I need.

You fancy the sartorial experience of the little skirt, Falcon N, and I do believe you will look elegant and chic and sexy, and that you will charm the living daylights out of every human being there, firang or not. It probably is a choice you would have made at any given point, but you chose the point in time when it was imposed on you as a rule, not offered to you as a choice. Did you have a choice to go there in your pink mirror worked kurta which you, for some reason always insist on pairing with those purple stone earrings we bought off Colaba? No. From what I understand, it finally did come to you as a rule. A rule that to me, reads: Yes, I think the mirrorwork in your shirt – this thing you call kurta – is very exotic, and very pretty indeed, but I’m afraid it just isn’t good enough for you to wear when you are attending a business meeting in the West. You probably do it this way in your part of the world, well, it’s just not good enough for ours.

And that, my dear friend, is the Yuppie Intellect.

Silence surrounds her, a cold, deathly silence. She knows the Falcons have stopped, she knows they have listened. She waits, with bated breath, for their decision.