I was going through a time when I was not tagged to any specific project at work. They have a name for such unclaimed baggage like me – I was an ODS (On Demand Service) resource. I was the extra hand who could be handed down the last minute erratic demand from strangers that no one foresaw coming. I was on a career limbo, so to speak. So while I waited for that random thankless chore to pour in, I wanted to look busy at my desk, lest they tagged me as disused excess. There is a corporate jargon for such frills around the workplace - the bench. Hah, as if it was any less inglorious than the wobbly seats on wheels they provide the unbenched. But there was that demon called 'cost cutting' - you never knew when you would be queued up to whet that pink axe. It was all about a lean, mean enterprise. Skinny still in demand, I tell you. Fatty, out!
Enough loose prattle, I am lying! I am trying to turn my histrionics on just for the effects. I am switching full-on my random unrehearsed drama because demand calls for it. I needed a context that shouldn't have sounded outlandish. I am not sure if I have been able to muster some reason, salvage some excuse for the casual rant here. That I am going to muse on demand - specifically mine, or the lack thereof, in the world that I inhabit. Demand - the word kind of bugs me. I turned to my friend, philosopher and my vocabulary guide - yes, you guessed right - The Google God!
And here is what I found:
Demand is an economic principle that describes a consumer’s desire and willingness to pay a price for a specific good or service. Holding all other factors constant, the price of a good or service increases as its demand increases and vice versa.
Quite a disappointment, that was. Here I was pinning my hopes on one glorious word that rationalized my existence - to tell me that I was On Demand (both in and out of office, as I liked to think). And as capricious luck would have it, I was rendered a mere pawn in the larger scheme of the world's financial machinations. I was a commodity! A product! I was buy-able, sale-able. I came in with a price and also had a well defined market to determine the tag. What was worse, I realized all women (or men?) were similarly positioned. And I found there were levels in availability, visibility, to make judgments on a woman's worth remarkably easy.
So what/who determined my demand? How much was I willing to give of me at a given point of time and what price my consumers were willing to pay for it. In short, you never defined your own value and therefore, never your own demand. Your availability at a given point in time and your consumer did. But who were these consumers, I wondered and realized it was all those people around you and me - friends, colleagues, partners, kids, parents. People who chipped off parts of you every day. People, you fed each of your waking hour, with varying degrees of your existence. Strangely enough all existence smacked of business and profit, supply and demand. The better the supply, the lesser the demand, Google said. So going by my track record of giving way over than was necessary, I could see a distinct possibility of my demand dwindling in future. So I had to make sure, I wasn't giving too much.
Where should it all begin then? They say charity begins at home. And the home is where the heart is, right? By that logic, my mission of being uncharitable had to begin here - right at the heart of the matter. The idea was to become unproductive, under-utilized, un-reproductive, undesirable, and unlovable. In short - unthinking, unloving, and ungiving. That wasn't quite so short, now was it?
Did anyone have a problem with that? Yeah, you bet, I did. I was on a mission to ensure that my supply was artificially diminished so that I could be looking at a rising demand curve. Curve, eh? Well, ahem...yes curve. I had them aplenty. Of the mental kind - all that thinking had rounded off all my dents and caves into convex mounds of adipose. All that exercise of the cerebral kind had left little time to pay tribute to the divine chisel that must have once intended to carve out a potentially decent body. I often think if there is a scan done of my mind, the report will run into reams of zigzags of winding lines. But for a woman, curvaceous or otherwise, her demand had to be measured (almost always) in her ability to lay bare her curves - quite literally and figuratively. But wait, who said anything about the curves of the mind?
A woman who has a curvaceous mind, had twists and turns and alleys and by-lanes down her head, and can proudly lay it all bare for the world to see - can never be on demand. I for that matter have found myself increasingly unwanted by those who would prefer a mindless bimbo to a mindful one. Most men still fall for women. They profess eternal love at the start. Most begin at the bust-line and travel as far as the hem-line to unravel the mystery called woman. Out aloud they swear it is only the beautiful mind that they see through all that is on display. And then stupid woman, there you are, smiling blissfully at the thought of having found someone who doesn't want your clothes. You think your skirt is held high not by that elastic or the hook, but by your dignity before you find yourself ugly. Yes, ugly. Because what you have to offer them, is not what they actually want. They are after a more tangible topography.
So you see, I was wrong at the very beginning. My mission of being on demand by cutting the self-supply short would never work. Because I had limitless supply of a mind that thought freely. So zero demand by the law of demand-supply. And very slim supply of voluntary fleshly offering as the culmination of man-woman bond, which might have triggered an initial demand of sorts but was bound to wear even the most patient waiter out in the end. Though I have nothing against the corporal bond and think people who can willingly engage in it without attaching much thought into the emotional implications are remarkable by all means. But was I not limiting my demand theory only to the field of sexual politics between man and woman?
What about friendship? I drew an equal blank even there. Whoever said 'friends never judge' was an imbecile of the top order and I am sure was left without any. You think your friend is going for the wrong job? Or choosing the color for her wedding gown that makes her look like an aubergine in a bed of roses? Or that her latest Facebook profile picture shows too much of a cleavage that could let loose a brigade of booty-hunters spamming into her inbox? Or she is settling for the guy who you know should be tested for STDs? And you want to tell her all that, right? Well, think again. You might be losing a friend for life. So you think the idea is to cut short your supply of friendly advice in fear of a lifelong loss of camaraderie. And keep fueling your demand as her best friend? Sounds easy? Not really. When your friend falters, fails, cuts and bruises, she would jump to blame you for being the non-committal bitch who was never any good. What about your workplace? You end up sidelined for peripheral stuff if you play hard-to-get. And if you are ever so visible, you could be risking an over-exposure. Working too hard for too long could make you kind of taken for granted. Who cared, anyway? So no luck there as well.
What about your kids' then? Surely there wasn't any transactional aspect in there, right? Could you possibly risk your child's well-being by limiting yourself when you gave them your love, showered them with presents, guided them in life? You couldn't train your heart to stop when it came to your offsprings. Or your parents? Would you hold back anything from those who raised you, nurtured you, except maybe the blame that they could have done a better job of it? I know I couldn't.
So I came to the end of my mission. And I concluded that no matter what I did, unless I changed my charitable heart, I would never improve my demand. Change, I might, someday. But not for a demand enhancement of my breed. I realized I really didn't care for relationships of the conditional kind. There would always be "a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite." I was unwilling to feed that appetite stooping to mediocrity of the mind - which I assure you, is the first casualty in any advertised drive to artificially augment demand. All this while as I went harping on the dynamic economics of a consumer market, I was not for once thinking of myself as a product or a commodity, but of a woman who could be loved, desired, cherished for her inherent womanliness. All that neediness in me just makes me want to puke! Ugh...
Here as some saving grace, I quickly attach another saying. The German philosopher Nietzsche once said that "the demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions." So I wasn't going to pretend to be in demand ever, to be lovable, desirable to people who wanted stuff in return. Or maybe more so to people who could love unconditionally. Because, did I deserve to be loved that well? I wasn't all that great, was I? I knew I could be very unlovable! But if I be loved someday, I demanded to be loved not without esteem for the mind I wear as my crown. I demanded to be loved with the freedom to not love in return. I would not trade in love. Balzac wrote somewhere that "Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love" - I refused to be on demand for a love that paid me little or no esteem. Payment, if at all, had to be in terms of esteem. And I held that at an higher order than mere love.
© Sudeshna Sanyal 2013 ~
Enough loose prattle, I am lying! I am trying to turn my histrionics on just for the effects. I am switching full-on my random unrehearsed drama because demand calls for it. I needed a context that shouldn't have sounded outlandish. I am not sure if I have been able to muster some reason, salvage some excuse for the casual rant here. That I am going to muse on demand - specifically mine, or the lack thereof, in the world that I inhabit. Demand - the word kind of bugs me. I turned to my friend, philosopher and my vocabulary guide - yes, you guessed right - The Google God!
And here is what I found:
Demand is an economic principle that describes a consumer’s desire and willingness to pay a price for a specific good or service. Holding all other factors constant, the price of a good or service increases as its demand increases and vice versa.
Quite a disappointment, that was. Here I was pinning my hopes on one glorious word that rationalized my existence - to tell me that I was On Demand (both in and out of office, as I liked to think). And as capricious luck would have it, I was rendered a mere pawn in the larger scheme of the world's financial machinations. I was a commodity! A product! I was buy-able, sale-able. I came in with a price and also had a well defined market to determine the tag. What was worse, I realized all women (or men?) were similarly positioned. And I found there were levels in availability, visibility, to make judgments on a woman's worth remarkably easy.
 |
| Rosea Lake's viral Judgments |
So what/who determined my demand? How much was I willing to give of me at a given point of time and what price my consumers were willing to pay for it. In short, you never defined your own value and therefore, never your own demand. Your availability at a given point in time and your consumer did. But who were these consumers, I wondered and realized it was all those people around you and me - friends, colleagues, partners, kids, parents. People who chipped off parts of you every day. People, you fed each of your waking hour, with varying degrees of your existence. Strangely enough all existence smacked of business and profit, supply and demand. The better the supply, the lesser the demand, Google said. So going by my track record of giving way over than was necessary, I could see a distinct possibility of my demand dwindling in future. So I had to make sure, I wasn't giving too much.
Where should it all begin then? They say charity begins at home. And the home is where the heart is, right? By that logic, my mission of being uncharitable had to begin here - right at the heart of the matter. The idea was to become unproductive, under-utilized, un-reproductive, undesirable, and unlovable. In short - unthinking, unloving, and ungiving. That wasn't quite so short, now was it?
Did anyone have a problem with that? Yeah, you bet, I did. I was on a mission to ensure that my supply was artificially diminished so that I could be looking at a rising demand curve. Curve, eh? Well, ahem...yes curve. I had them aplenty. Of the mental kind - all that thinking had rounded off all my dents and caves into convex mounds of adipose. All that exercise of the cerebral kind had left little time to pay tribute to the divine chisel that must have once intended to carve out a potentially decent body. I often think if there is a scan done of my mind, the report will run into reams of zigzags of winding lines. But for a woman, curvaceous or otherwise, her demand had to be measured (almost always) in her ability to lay bare her curves - quite literally and figuratively. But wait, who said anything about the curves of the mind?
 |
| Tahitian women bathing by Gauguin |
A woman who has a curvaceous mind, had twists and turns and alleys and by-lanes down her head, and can proudly lay it all bare for the world to see - can never be on demand. I for that matter have found myself increasingly unwanted by those who would prefer a mindless bimbo to a mindful one. Most men still fall for women. They profess eternal love at the start. Most begin at the bust-line and travel as far as the hem-line to unravel the mystery called woman. Out aloud they swear it is only the beautiful mind that they see through all that is on display. And then stupid woman, there you are, smiling blissfully at the thought of having found someone who doesn't want your clothes. You think your skirt is held high not by that elastic or the hook, but by your dignity before you find yourself ugly. Yes, ugly. Because what you have to offer them, is not what they actually want. They are after a more tangible topography.
So you see, I was wrong at the very beginning. My mission of being on demand by cutting the self-supply short would never work. Because I had limitless supply of a mind that thought freely. So zero demand by the law of demand-supply. And very slim supply of voluntary fleshly offering as the culmination of man-woman bond, which might have triggered an initial demand of sorts but was bound to wear even the most patient waiter out in the end. Though I have nothing against the corporal bond and think people who can willingly engage in it without attaching much thought into the emotional implications are remarkable by all means. But was I not limiting my demand theory only to the field of sexual politics between man and woman?
 |
| Two Women by Gauguin |
What about friendship? I drew an equal blank even there. Whoever said 'friends never judge' was an imbecile of the top order and I am sure was left without any. You think your friend is going for the wrong job? Or choosing the color for her wedding gown that makes her look like an aubergine in a bed of roses? Or that her latest Facebook profile picture shows too much of a cleavage that could let loose a brigade of booty-hunters spamming into her inbox? Or she is settling for the guy who you know should be tested for STDs? And you want to tell her all that, right? Well, think again. You might be losing a friend for life. So you think the idea is to cut short your supply of friendly advice in fear of a lifelong loss of camaraderie. And keep fueling your demand as her best friend? Sounds easy? Not really. When your friend falters, fails, cuts and bruises, she would jump to blame you for being the non-committal bitch who was never any good. What about your workplace? You end up sidelined for peripheral stuff if you play hard-to-get. And if you are ever so visible, you could be risking an over-exposure. Working too hard for too long could make you kind of taken for granted. Who cared, anyway? So no luck there as well.
What about your kids' then? Surely there wasn't any transactional aspect in there, right? Could you possibly risk your child's well-being by limiting yourself when you gave them your love, showered them with presents, guided them in life? You couldn't train your heart to stop when it came to your offsprings. Or your parents? Would you hold back anything from those who raised you, nurtured you, except maybe the blame that they could have done a better job of it? I know I couldn't.
 |
| Femmes by Gauguin |
So I came to the end of my mission. And I concluded that no matter what I did, unless I changed my charitable heart, I would never improve my demand. Change, I might, someday. But not for a demand enhancement of my breed. I realized I really didn't care for relationships of the conditional kind. There would always be "a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite." I was unwilling to feed that appetite stooping to mediocrity of the mind - which I assure you, is the first casualty in any advertised drive to artificially augment demand. All this while as I went harping on the dynamic economics of a consumer market, I was not for once thinking of myself as a product or a commodity, but of a woman who could be loved, desired, cherished for her inherent womanliness. All that neediness in me just makes me want to puke! Ugh...
Here as some saving grace, I quickly attach another saying. The German philosopher Nietzsche once said that "the demand to be loved is the greatest of all arrogant presumptions." So I wasn't going to pretend to be in demand ever, to be lovable, desirable to people who wanted stuff in return. Or maybe more so to people who could love unconditionally. Because, did I deserve to be loved that well? I wasn't all that great, was I? I knew I could be very unlovable! But if I be loved someday, I demanded to be loved not without esteem for the mind I wear as my crown. I demanded to be loved with the freedom to not love in return. I would not trade in love. Balzac wrote somewhere that "Women are tenacious, and all of them should be tenacious of respect; without esteem they cannot exist; esteem is the first demand that they make of love" - I refused to be on demand for a love that paid me little or no esteem. Payment, if at all, had to be in terms of esteem. And I held that at an higher order than mere love.
© Sudeshna Sanyal 2013 ~
Good read...
ReplyDeleteOne of the strongest pieces of writing in the entire blog ....have read it a few times and found it extremely riveting...the misandrist tone to it is overt but cannot be missed! Very very good read....
ReplyDelete