Women, Work and the Death of Rest ft. Dr. Keditsu and Prerana - InHERIT Podcast Series - Ep 4

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:07]I think leisure for me is just doing something that [music] I want to do because I want to do it.

[00:00:12]>> There is such a difference between, you know, how life is processed now because we have social media and, you know, tech going to places >> that you're constantly stimulated, so it's so easy to get overwhelmed. So, if you're really overwhelmed all the time because of a screen or because of the need to be out there, uh do you actually have leisure?

[00:00:32]>> I really do see, you know, textiles as a form of uh >> [music] >> female-centered narrative.

[00:00:39]>> This trope of guilt that women have all the time, like even in the absence of children, you you even if you entered a, you know, marriage uh institution, you have you [music] carry this guilt that if am I having too much leisure?

[00:00:56]>> Does this guilt also come from the fact that we are increasingly isolated from community?

[00:01:01]>> Mhm.

[00:01:02]>> Um I might sound sound very naive, but I think life can be fully creative if we begin to think of everything that we do as [music] creative work, and I think this division of leisure and work it is uh an arbitrary and false division.

[00:01:34]>> [music] >> Hello and welcome to Breaking the Binary, a podcast series by Inherit where we question labels that we often take for granted. In today's episode, we are going to explore the relationship between labor and leisure. A lot of times these two feel mutually exclusive, like one can only come at the cost of other. But we what we want to do today in this conversation is explore if there can be another way in which this relationship can unfold. To join us in this conversation, we have two remarkable voices. Dr. Who's an educator, author, also known online as Meenakala Mama.

[00:02:14]And we have Prena Choudhury, founder of House of Nuri, an independent researcher and textile developer. If you can help us understand what leisure to you is personally and through that if we can unpack what it can be for people.

[00:02:28]>> I think leisure for me is just doing something that I want to do because I want to do it. Not because somebody else needs me to do it or because I have to do it for some other purpose. So sometimes like I love ironing.

[00:02:43]So that also for me constitutes leisure.

[00:02:46]I think it's got to do a lot with what pace I'm doing something with because it generally, you know, such a more or less, you know, different things or trying to accommodate or fit in a certain day. Leisure would be when I feel considerably relaxed and I can span out a certain task over the hours as and how I wish without having any deadline or, you know, external arbitrary, you know, anything weighing upon my sense of time and how I'm interacting with time.

[00:03:19]>> Has it changed over time?

[00:03:21]>> I think, you know, as in the common notion is leisure is like, let's say a holiday.

[00:03:26]That that's our idea of, you know, taking a break. But especially after I became a mom, you know, a holiday is the least leisurely thing that I can do. And by that I don't mean traveling out. I just mean that, you know, when my kids have their school breaks, that's actually one of the most intensely demanding times for me. So things that would actually constitute once upon a time in my mind as work has become leisure.

[00:03:54]>> Mhm.

[00:03:55]The way I thought of leisure and work when I was say in a full-time job in the corporate sector, it was very [clears throat] different.

[00:04:04]It was very structured. Like I knew that if it's a weekend, it's a weekend. I I can stop and you know not attend to work. Uh so there was a certain sense of structure, but I think after I chose the journey of solopreneurship, that thing has majorly gone to a toss. And it's taken me a few years to figure out uh how I interact with work. There's a constant sense of pursuit in the head, in my mind, which I now understand is also the reason why a lot of us burn out very quick.

[00:04:36]>> What was leisure like when you were a kid?

[00:04:38]>> For me, I I'm living in the same house that I grew up in. You know, we went to school, we came back, and uh we walked back sometimes. Uh we had so much freedom. There were no boundaries in terms of work, leisure, spaces.

[00:04:53]>> Yeah.

[00:04:54]>> You know, and I think that um especially in an urban context, how space is structured can really change how much stress your body takes.

[00:05:05]So, uh you know, I mean, who's to say that if you take a walk now, does that even constitute leisure sometimes, you know?

[00:05:14]>> There is such a difference between, you know, how life is processed now because we have social media and you know, tech going to places that you're constantly stimulated. So, it's so easy to get overwhelmed. So, if you're really overwhelmed all the time because of a screen or because of the need to be out there, uh do you actually have leisure?

[00:05:34]But growing up, we didn't have that, and things were very fluid, I feel. You know, spaces interacted with each other.

[00:05:40]Like we have the courtyard, and courtyards continue to be there in rural Assam, uh where I go for a walk and that introduces this minimal liminal spaces, minimal liminal spaces where you can just sort of ease, you know, you have like a moment of pause before you go out into the full-fledged public world. You can chill and relax, have your tea and snacks, do your craft activities. And then these moments of pause we don't really have that specially anymore, especially in the urban context.

[00:06:13]>> Yeah.

[00:06:14]>> Just because I say that my childhood was leisurely, I don't mean that we were idle.

[00:06:18]We we worked a lot. Like I chopped wood.

[00:06:21]We didn't have geysers back in the day.

[00:06:23]So when you woke up in the morning you had to make fire. You had to, you know, get water in a big digchy. So you know, we had so many responsibilities.

[00:06:32]And then we played and our play was very intense. So it wasn't idle, but it was very very leisurely.

[00:06:39]>> It was laborious, yet leisurely.

[00:06:41]>> Yeah, exactly.

[00:06:42]>> so many conveniences now. We have 10-minute delivery services and but we don't really have leisure in that way anymore.

[00:06:50]>> Time and space are now operating very differently, in a very different system.

[00:06:56]And that really impacts us as individuals because the whole community, the whole space is being impacted.

[00:07:02]We have now taken you back on a nostalgia trip.

[00:07:05]What are or what is, if you have any, earliest memory of making? Either observing someone make something, stitch, repair, build. But did it ever feel like work?

[00:07:17]>> Our paternal grandmother who had a loom in the courtyard.

[00:07:21]And she would go on and and there were days when she would take a break from her, you know, kitchen duties or taking care of the family and the daughters and the sons would take care of that. And she would get into this feverish fit of just weaving and weaving and weaving.

[00:07:36]Was that not laborious? It was. Was it not work? It was. Of course it did not enter the commercial market. She was weaving for herself. It was all very serious work. Yet, you were having fun out of it. Yet, it was a lot of juggling. So, you know, it was so many things at the same time in the universe.

[00:07:56]At the same time, I will not commit the fallacy of romanticizing how things were because at the end of the day, everybody was really functioning and continued to function under a patriarchal umbrella.

[00:08:09]There was a given that women would take care of a lot of things even if they had 10 other things they want to pursue on the side like craft or whatever.

[00:08:18]But, I think what existed was a greater acknowledgement of categories coexisting and seeping into each other, which now we sort of, you know, in a very hyper-categorical [snorts] world, we don't really have that.

[00:08:36]>> Especially like somebody like my mother, she was very pragmatic about it.

[00:08:42]And I I I don't ever I've never really had a sense that she had what in our generation we call mom guilt.

[00:08:51]Which is for us, you know, that is uh sort of uh you know, the parlance of I mean, it's almost the universal female parlance, isn't it? Now, so um is this a condition of us entering this, you know, milieu?

[00:09:09]Uh I'm just wondering. Hm.

[00:09:13]>> This trope of guilt that women have all the time, like even in the absence of children, [clears throat] you you even if you enter the, you know, marriage uh institution, you have you carry this guilt that if am I having too much leisure?

[00:09:29]You know, [clears throat] am I having too much time for myself? Or is it something that I have to constantly fight for or demand because it's not offered or even taken as a given.

[00:09:39]Does this guilt also come from the fact that we are increasingly isolated from community?

[00:09:45]Because, you know, that the onus of raising children before was not just on the mother. It was an entire network of women and safe spaces that you could rely on.

[00:09:55]And I see that in my village even today, which I feel so fortunate about it.

[00:10:00]Okay, there are at least nuggets of that way of life still existing, which we should not lose.

[00:10:07]Recently one of the women I work with last year, she got pregnant in the middle of, you know, conceptualizing a collection that she wanted to be very heavily invested in because she was very excited to make sarees for the first time.

[00:10:19]And when she had her child, I I I paid her a visit last year.

[00:10:24]And now the child has grown up, a few months old.

[00:10:27]No, the child just, you know, goes from home to home and you know, if the mother, you know, wants to take a Of course, she is done like outdone by the labor that happens when a child enters a family.

[00:10:37]But there are still moments of respite she can earn without necessarily feeling the guilt.

[00:10:43]Because that sense of guilt I see constantly in a, you know, quote unquote modern educated woman who's in the urban, you know, space. You don't really see that sense of guilt in a rural woman who has that community at her disposal.

[00:10:59]>> A lot of times when on making in domestic spaces happen, it happens by women. And a lot of like you see embroidery circles or in weaving in courtyards or even like crocheting or knitting within when you get the small patches of time when you are doing chores, right? And that is often romanticized. That is often seen as, oh, this is leisure, oh, this is a pastime, or this is a hobby. But is that really the case?

[00:11:24]>> I I find, you know, the notion of leisure also very classist one.

[00:11:29]Um, and the second is also I find it a slightly foreign.

[00:11:33]>> Mhm.

[00:11:34]>> Honestly.

[00:11:35]I take great, great pleasure in cooking for my family. So, for me, you know, food is a love language.

[00:11:43]Cooking food is a love language. It's laborious. It's a lot of hard work. But, it's relaxing. You know, is it because patriarchy normalizes suffering in women and even valorizes women who learn to sort of you know, bear all this? Or is it just because um, is it how we are, how we're built? And honestly speaking, being a woman, um, especially after motherhood, I've also come into a certain kind of power that makes me uh, understand why the feminine was sacred in ancient cultures and perhaps the masculine was not. You know, is that how they made us feel like we're so special, so therefore we should keep slaving?

[00:12:32]Or is there innately something that is extraordinary within us that makes us, you know, capable of doing so much and deriving pleasure from it, deriving satisfaction from it, deriving pleasure through labor so that it's not work, but it is also leisure.

[00:12:52]Um, I have only questions. I'm not I'm not sure if I have any answers. I'm just wondering out loud.

[00:12:58]>> But, if I just look at women indulging in craft, two things really sort of merge the concept of labor and leisure. One is agency.

[00:13:07]>> Mhm.

[00:13:08]>> And the other is jouissance. When your mind, body, and spirit are in such perfect alignment for those few hours a day or for those few weeks a month that you're aware of the fact that you have to attend to so much in your everyday life, you know, chores that you must perform and responsibilities you have to take care of, yet you make it a point to take out time to do equally laborious work, but which is giving you a sense of immense fulfillment. How then does that come into being? It's when a woman has agency. She must have the say in when she wants to do her creative work, when she takes a break and for how long. Like I have worked with this particular woman who loves weaving only sundowner onwards. And it's weird, right? Because you don't have electricity supply constantly or in some villages you still don't have electricity properly. So, she goes and she does it in a hurricane lamp. Why does she do it? She's tired, but she does it because it brings her a sense of fulfillment. So, to what extent do we have agency?

[00:14:19]Is agency something that we get more when we enter the modern context? Or is it just something that has always existed, but we haven't acknowledged in a rural setup? Because there is a binary even there. You know, certain things are played as black and white.

[00:14:36]With more formal education, with more exposure to the modern, you know, way of things, you're expected that you will have more agency. You But are we really?

[00:14:48]So, we need to also sometimes question these assumptions that we have, most of which come from a really urbanized way of looking at things.

[00:15:00]>> You know, nowadays we call it a shawl, but that's actually a very sort of uh wrong way to it's a wrong term to assign to what it was that we wore. If you look at all the old photos, it was a body cloth.

[00:15:15]It was an entire thing you you wrapped and it it almost reached to the calf.

[00:15:19]So, all the yarn that a family had would go into making that body cloth for the man first.

[00:15:27]Then it would go to the children. And the last, whatever was left over would go to the woman. And that's why when you look at old Naga textiles, the woman's mekhela, like now I'm wearing this full length, there was no such thing as a full length mekhela for women.

[00:15:44]And I don't think it was it was it was just that design was born out of necessity and because of the scarcity of resources.

[00:15:54]A woman wolf all she could or whatever with whatever she had left to weave. Like the Angamis, we have this very iconic way of wearing our mekhelas, right? Which is a tilted It tilts because that's it wasn't wide enough.

[00:16:10]And one thing that I've seen, you know, sort of it's a memory that's been passed on, you know, through the body from generations of women is when you go to some villages is when women walk, I'm going to stand and show you this. They walk like this.

[00:16:28]They hold the mekhela like this and walk. And now we have enough cloth.

[00:16:34]But why do they do this? Because some generations ago all they had was enough to weave just to cover themselves. So they had to hold it like this. And so that memory has become embodied, that habit, and you find it even now. So again, you know, there it's it's it's it's that conundrum, right? Like on the one hand, weaving was, at least for Nagas, it's an exclusively female practice. I usually don't like to call it a craft. I like to call it an art form.

[00:17:06]Because I think by any parameter it's art.

[00:17:13]You know, and why is it that only when men do it becomes art and when women do, it's some skill or craft. So, I find that, you know, this is the way that we can resist categorization. It was something that women did when they wanted time for themselves. It was a way, an excuse, a strategy to remove themselves from the madness around them.

[00:17:37]On the one hand, it was that, but it was also very much dictated by, you know, sort of a patriarchally uh pleased distribution of resources. It At least in my research in textiles, this is what I found. Is it's both. You know, so how is it that uh you can take what you have and create something beautiful for yourself. Is that the condition of being a woman, hm?

[00:18:01]That's something I ask myself sometimes, you know.

[00:18:05]>> I wonder, is it not better now that the women can perform this labor that was performed for the patriarchal institute, for the community, for the identity markers that were majorly worn by men?

[00:18:19]Now she can perform the same skills and earn a livelihood for herself.

[00:18:24]Which, again, that is also contentious, how much of it she gets to keep.

[00:18:28]>> From from my research, uh a woman who could weave and a woman who could weave well was, like I say, now when I try to explain to, you know, our Naga people, we love our civil services. We, you know, for in within the Naga social imagination, IAS is the top.

[00:18:49]Huh? If you are a woman and you're an IAS, you're there.

[00:18:54]And a woman who could weave was exactly that.

[00:18:57]So, even within a barter economy, if a woman wove, she could weave for her family and ensure that everybody was clothed, and she could barter cloth for.

[00:19:08]You were the woman that everybody wanted to marry. You were the prized daughter in law. You were the one who was bringing extra income into the family.

[00:19:16]Uh and how did we get here? And one of the reasons why I started my Mela Mama work is because I would meet young students who will say with a lot of, you know, do I get it back to that? And the one of the ways that we can return agency is two levels is simply just uh the prestige and return social capital back to the skill set one. But it is because capitalism is inevitable and we are here, you know, the money matters.

[00:19:47]>> Are there other intersections that also exist and and play a role in this in this whole conversation around labor and leisure?

[00:19:56]>> Uh at least in Nagaland we don't have the concept of caste, [music] but we do have tribes.

[00:20:01]For me, again, in my uh academic work, I really look at religion because that's uh one element of the intersection that um either we do not speak of our name or we just take for granted without realizing, you know, the kind of um power it can confer on uh people and also the trouble it can make.

[00:20:29]Here in Nagaland we have 17 recognized tribes. How Christianity came to us has really uh impacted the hierarchy of these tribes. You know, like the hierarchies within. By virtue of us learning the language because education and religion, you know, went hand in hand.

[00:20:50]Uh becoming conversant in English and becoming Westernized, all of that, you know, we were employable.

[00:21:00]And because we were employable, we got into the government jobs and, you know, everything follows from there. The second is class, you know, um I think I was so blind.

[00:21:10]And it's only um Well, yeah. What to say? Thanks to education.

[00:21:17]And that was a Western discursive one.

[00:21:19]But, you know, finally my eyes were opened.

[00:21:22]Um Uh and so now I've I try to practice the discipline of uh naming and recognizing my own generational privilege. Uh so, I think it's very important to be careful.

[00:21:37]That just because we want to champion our textiles, we're not forcing women to weave.

[00:21:41]>> Yeah.

[00:21:42]>> But, I think within capitalism, the danger is also then to start imposing uh our values that come from very elite educations.

[00:21:52]To say that we need to What is the word that I hate? Scale up or upscale or what? Yeah. Nonsense.

[00:21:59]You know?

[00:21:59]>> Yes.

[00:22:00]>> And you take agency away from women.

[00:22:02]>> Yeah.

[00:22:02]>> Okay? Because especially loinloom weaving is something that you cannot mechanize. The minute it becomes handloom, it's a completely different entity.

[00:22:10]>> Yeah.

[00:22:11]>> Because it is labor-intensive, because it is very idiosyncratic, because it requires that a woman do it, uh you know, in that liminal space of leisure and work. So, in a sense, only certain women can afford it.

[00:22:26]>> So, we can't make it cheap also. But, on the one hand, it also is it becomes exclusive.

[00:22:32]>> A certain tendency sometimes, even with good intent, women develop um which is like a savior complex. You know, we're out here uh being, you know, evangelists for a tradition that we think needs surviving.

[00:22:46]And definitely it does because it holds on so much of, you know, uh memory and nostalgia and a certain way of life that is fast getting lost.

[00:22:57]Uh But, then the danger there of, you know are we putting all our voices into the sustenance of a tradition without really paying attention to what the practitioners are saying. I remember when I first set out, you know, to explore the villages, the first thing I noticed and I thought I would love uh for my work to sustain more than anything else was a woman's whimsy.

[00:23:26]It was so important for me when I saw that spark because I think it also got imprinted in my head because I saw the women in my family, you know, being absolute, you know, whimsical creatures when they were with their tools of their choice.

[00:23:41]Uh and maybe there's there was the subconsciously leaning towards that. I see the scenario change so much since 2019. Like with climate crisis, every year it's getting hotter.

[00:23:54]Earlier, before the rains and even through the rains, you know, it was possible for a woman unless and until the flood situation happened, they could weave throughout the hotter months of the year. Nowadays, it becomes impossible because most of the looms are in the courtyard or with a simple shed.

[00:24:12]It's near practically impossible for her to sit there even if she wants to even if she desires to do that work, it's not possible because of the climatic conditions. So, under such a scenario, you know, what right do I have to impose a certain number of pieces to be created by her?

[00:24:30]So, there what I have understood I think with 6 years of practice is that more than anything else, craft is about relationships. You have to see them as an equal or even above you because they are the ones who have carried forward the tradition for so long and under changing socio environmental conditions, they are the ones who will ultimately decide how they want to practice and if they want to continue practicing, how can we ensure that it can happen in a way where they don't have to compromise on their physical health, for instance?

[00:25:05]So, the whole dynamic that capitalism brings into these things sometimes becomes um very uncompassionate towards these changing, you know, conditions.

[00:25:18]Uh you just see craft as something that needs to be scaled up.

[00:25:22]>> Mhm.

[00:25:22]>> Fairly, I understand that we want to have a world where we're bringing back craft in the way it used to function before. That's an ideal world because are we in a, you know, similar world in all other ways?

[00:25:35]>> Yeah.

[00:25:36]>> Absolutely no.

[00:25:37]>> Mhm.

[00:25:37]>> And in the absence of those contexts where craft was made possible physically, neurologically, do we have the right to impose, you know, a certain way of working or doing things?

[00:25:49]>> We need to become comfortable with enough.

[00:25:52]>> Yes, very important.

[00:25:54]>> more?

[00:25:55]>> Yes.

[00:25:55]>> Very important.

[00:25:56]Do we always need more?

[00:25:58]So, for me, I would rather wear my mother's polyester, which is 30 years old, than to buy something new that is cotton.

[00:26:08]You know, so when like she said, when you put all these things together, I think on this side we want to uh ensure that it doesn't become a dying art form.

[00:26:19]We want to ensure that it lives because it is a way for women to speak. I really do see, you know, textiles as a form of uh female-centered narrative.

[00:26:30]>> Yeah.

[00:26:31]>> Uh I always use this example is one of the best ways that you a woman can exercise her power is just to refuse to weave a shawl for her husband or a man.

[00:26:42]You are denying a man his identity. That is real power, you know, social power.

[00:26:47]So, we have that. So, we want to ensure that that not only survives but continues and thrives. But on the other hand, we also need to um resist and quash this scaling up uh you know, uh mindset.

[00:27:09]>> Just because uh production is happening in the craft sector or you know, you know, handmade way or with quote-unquote sustainable materials, which is also so problematic in a lot of ways.

[00:27:20]You can just go on producing and producing. Is there no overproduction when it comes to the craft sector? Where does it stop? Like why is the conversation about overproduction only related to the machines?

[00:27:30]>> Yeah, absolutely.

[00:27:31]>> I think when we are talking about how leisure and labor are intersecting, are fluid, one thing that Prerna you said was how creative work holds the scope of of holding both of these things fluidly.

[00:27:43]Like cooking is for you, like craft is for a lot of women.

[00:27:47]Is creative work then the way for us in our everyday lives to hold these things that feel like binaries in ways that they can exist together? Does creative work provide that answer to us?

[00:28:00]>> Anything can be creative if it has that right combination of pleasure, of uh effort, of you know, giving it your all and um honestly speaking, at least in my experience, something of the transcendent.

[00:28:18]You know, whether you believe in God or not, you know, having that experience but that kind of sense of something that is beyond and eternal.

[00:28:29]You know, I think that for me is what defines creative work. It's I I really feel that even as a human race, as necessary as it has been um we have been made to believe it is.

[00:28:49]We are beginning to see that capitalism is, you know, anyway, why are we beginning to see Look look at what's happening now in this world. I mean, my god, you know.

[00:29:01]>> [laughter] >> So, I think now, you know, there are enough of us that have begun to realize that there is something beyond, you know, that the cracks are coming and we're beginning to see that there is a world beyond.

[00:29:12]And um I might sound sound very naive, but I think life can be fully creative if we begin to think of everything that we do as creative work. And I think this division of leisure and work is an arbitrary and false division. It was created with, you know, certain vested interests for a certain kind of purpose.

[00:29:42]I think it was created to oppress, you know? I think it was created to divide and separate. And I think the more we open up our eyes and begin to see that, you know, um it doesn't have to be this way, that we we we can find joy in what we do.

[00:30:00]Uh that transcendence, I think that element also we need to bring in, you know?

[00:30:06]Because when we look within Western discourse, it's all, you know, sort of this very rational and objective, this sort of very removed, and you know, it's only us and our mind, etc. And I think that's something maybe us indigenous people or perhaps us from the global south, I think that's something we can contribute and teach the rest of the world that, you know, work is leisure, leisure can be work, and work can be joy, and that, you know, sort of the purest form of joy and fulfillment can be by doing, you know, truthfully and joyfully.

[00:30:40]Um and I think the biggest uh uh blow that capitalism has inflicted on all of us is the robbing of that spirit.

[00:30:50]Either by virtue of the fact that we don't even realize what spirit is, or even if we do realize, we may not find the time to exercise it, or we may not have the privilege of executing it even if you're well aware of having it.

[00:31:05]So, I think privilege also dictates so much about how you approach work and leisure, because a lot of us who are, say, doing jobs that we don't want to, but we have to because we have to make do with life. So, I think it becomes very important to really recognize every step of the way without that becoming, of course, like an large imposition, but just to be conscious of the fact that we have privileges to indulge in something the way we want to that somebody else might not.

[00:31:38]Um, and then does the idea of privilege then shift or change from the urban to the rural context?

[00:31:46]Does space dictate privilege? Because for me, I find the rural women who are getting to weave now, and who are getting the choice to say no, very privileged in a lot of ways.

[00:31:57]>> Absolutely.

[00:31:58]>> You know, that they have such large spaces at their disposal even today, that they can understand leisure in each other. While I think all of us will agree that at the end of a very tiring day, we'll choose not to see people because we are burned out. But they will find leisure with each other. So, that's also privilege, but because they belong to a certain context. And in a lot of ways, I might be more privileged than them.

[00:32:22]>> I don't remember the name of the village, but if I think anybody from Meghalaya hears the story, they will remember the name of the village, but I was told about a village, maybe fairly, I don't know, remote or whatever, but had really bad roads leading to the village. So, I'm told that some politician said, "We'll make the roads for you. You know, we'll make it so good that even Shah Rukh Khan will come to your village." And they said, "Who cares?

[00:32:50]>> [laughter] >> We're happy the way we are. We don't need the road. We're happy living here with ourselves and we don't want any visitors." So, you know, again, you know, sort of that again the prosperity gospel of tourism.

[00:33:01]>> Oh my god, yes.

[00:33:01]>> You know, isn't it so beautiful to hear the story of a village who says, "We just want to be your village. We don't necessarily want to make money off it, nothing.

[00:33:13]We're happy. Our stomach is, you know, our stomachs are full.

[00:33:17]Our relationships are great. We're fulfilled. Our leisure is our work, our work is our leisure and I mean, I would even I mean, I'm a Shah Rukh Khan fan.

[00:33:27]So, >> [laughter] >> so to refuse, you know, a Shah Rukh the promise of a Shah Rukh Khan visit, that's something, you know.

[00:33:33]>> Yeah, there's so much power Yeah, yeah.

[00:33:35]There's so much power in there, you know.

[00:33:37]>> stuck with me. I thought, "Wow, that is, you know, some village."

[00:33:42]>> [laughter] >> But there's one important aspect which I want to understand how that got shifted when the idea of labor and leisure got separated is has there been any shift in how knowledge is passed when both of these entities got separated and were viewed as as separate categories?

[00:34:01]What is knowledge now? Today when a woman or a group of women despite the labor and thousand other, you know, missteps, they're choosing to weave on the domestic loom, it's because they believe that textile is the language they have in the absence of a spoken language also. A lot of these communities have lost their spoken dialects over time. So, textile becomes their identity assertion. So, when you approach craft from that and then you identify and understand that that is also where knowledge is passed down, you know, ancestrally, generationally.

[00:34:38]And then you of course come into the point where those pieces now have to be sold.

[00:34:45]But to people who bear a certain understanding of what the you know what design should be, of how much needs to appear in a piece of cloth for them to consume, and for it to be trendy, or for it to be whatever word you use. So, there's this constant negotiation even there.

[00:35:02]And so then what is knowledge?

[00:35:04]And how much of it is getting preserved?

[00:35:07]Number one, because of people who are not willing to learn how to weave anymore or practice any kind of craft.

[00:35:15]And because, you know, we hold certain knowledge forms, you know, hierarchically more hierarch- ically more important than what is passed down in the communities.

[00:35:26]>> I'm very, very deeply influenced by Ngugi wa Thiong'o and his work.

[00:35:30]And how sort of the colonization of our minds has uh not only diminished our indigenous knowledge systems, but sort of relegated it to a place of shame and abhorrence.

[00:35:47]You know, where we laugh at the knowledge of our ancestors, where we think let's not even speak about it, you know.

[00:35:56]Uh you know, we take great pride in sort of learning all these ridiculously convoluted, useless sort of ways to um attain and display social capital.

[00:36:10]Whereas, you know, if something like the pandemic happens again, you can't even feed your own children, right? So, I think literacy has been, you know, that double-edged sword. It has been sort of, you know, the our deal with the devil.

[00:36:23]And I think that is how, you know, we have begun to see certain things as work and certain things as leisure. So, it's no point diagnosing something, you have to say, you know, what are the interventions?

[00:36:38]And so, you know, I think this is these are, you know, my small little interventions.

[00:36:45]Is to bring back prestige to indigenous knowledge and to see it as knowledge.

[00:36:51]To see it as on par with other knowledge forms and systems.

[00:36:57]Uh with all the work and research I've done on textiles, I've always been encouraged.

[00:37:03]Uh forget encouraged, I've been offered, I've been uh you know, commissioned, offered commissions to write a book on textiles.

[00:37:11]And I've always refused. And I'm never going to write a book on textiles because it's not my knowledge.

[00:37:17]And I think the danger with literacy and the danger with turning what is oral into word is, you know, the various layers of epistemic violence that happens. When you take knowledge that belongs to a community and you appropriate it for yourself, you confer authority upon yourself and you fix it, you know? The beauty of um uh our knowledge is that it is contextual, it is fluid, and it is, you know, I hate using this word also, but in a way, there's no other English word, it is democratic in a communal way.

[00:38:03]In the sense that everybody has a right to weave what you want, right? Everybody has the right to make knowledge.

[00:38:11]Everybody has, like we say, there are different ways to kill a chicken.

[00:38:15]We can all kill chickens in different ways.

[00:38:18]And that is what orality affords us and that is what writing um robs from us.

[00:38:28]>> If leisure and work are not seen as separate, that like we have discussed, and if they're if they're intertwining part of everyday life, then will something change in your life and your practice, or are you already looking at it in that way?

[00:38:44]>> The question is not just do I inhabit a place where work and leisure are one, and that it is joyful, but I think then the responsibility falls on us to say, how do we create spaces? Uh not in a patronizing way, like she said, you know, not in a way where we're doing it for, but I think um I like to use the word gossip, you know, in a subversive sense. Why don't we gossip about uh you know, the possibility of work being joyful.

[00:39:19]You know, why don't we spread that idea?

[00:39:22]I think these are ways that we I think because gossip is a place where you can gossip with your maid, you can gossip with your superior, you know? Gossip is actually a very egalitarian sort of uh space and act. So, uh I like that concept. I think for us um reclaiming, you know, our feminine wilds, our feminine ways, our desires, you know, our gossip, our techniques and strategies. I think reclaiming that and, you know, spreading the joy through these methods.

[00:40:04]All the networks are already there, right? So, um I think uh that holds the possibility of intervention without um hierarchy, or at least sort of you know, resisting hierarchies that are put in place by I think not us.

[00:40:23]Yes.

[00:40:24]>> True leisure, what do you think true leisure looks like for a woman?

[00:40:29]>> The child version of me, I used to get so anxious that I used to see women moving all the time.

[00:40:38]You go on vacations, you go to your you know, relatives place. You expect that you know, all of us will have some merry time. Which means merry time with the women, you know, because you know, all the interesting things always happen with the women.

[00:40:50]And they are just not on pause anytime.

[00:40:54]They're constantly moving and I used to, you know, be a sucker for those few moments when all the women would just pause, like physically just pause, sit on the bed and just share a few notes of gossip or family drama or whatever the was going on in the neighborhood. But those few minutes and which which used to be very scarce and for very short span of time, I used to just devour those. So I think I grew up with a sense of anxiety.

[00:41:24]Like I would get anxious just noticing women constantly moving.

[00:41:30]Like and I'm sure that has translated to modern women being constantly turned on in the head even if they may be physically, you know, burnt out and in pause, but their minds never pause. I think it's just constantly on.

[00:41:44]So I think the child me, um, my inner child would really I felt a I find a lot of respect and I see a woman just be still and do nothing.

[00:41:56]>> Going back to the same answer I gave in the beginning. Doing what I want. Just doing what I want when I want to without having to explain to anybody why I'm doing it, you know, just doing what I want, you know. So it's uh, because I think when um, I I have an academic mentor who's you know research work was on loitering.

[00:42:21]How disturbing it is, you know, to sort of society to see women loitering.

[00:42:32]You know, just why are you sitting here with no intent or anything, you know, but this idea of taking from her idea of loitering, you [music] know, to be able to loiter in many ways, you know, whether it is why are you cooking when nobody is hungry, you know, why are you wearing what [music] you're wearing, why are you saying what you're saying.

[00:42:55]You know, up to like why do you have a face, you know, that resting [music] face. Like I just have it, like you know, deal with it, [laughter] you know.

[00:43:04]I think that is true leisure is just, you know, just having agency and you know, having no reason for why you're doing what you're doing and [music] not having the need to explain. Yeah.

[00:43:17]>> I think this has been such a fun conversation. I I felt seen and I felt heard and I I felt that I'm taking away so much with me as I go out in the world and I think our viewers will feel the same.

[00:43:29]Uh thank you so much for your time both of you. It was >> [music] >> absolutely amazing to get these insights to talk to two women about these things that and get that perspective that only women can give.

[00:43:40]>> [laughter] >> Was a lovely conversation. Leisure and labor both exist today as almost isolated entities. Like we feel that one cannot exist when the other does, but but yeah, this sort of helps us reimagine ways and that imagination can only as you said lead to us pushing for making space for those outcomes in our lives and I hope I get to do that and I hope people outside get to do that too.

[00:44:05]So, thank you so much.

[00:44:07]>> Thank you so