Absent
presence

Karachi

Click drawing

Listen

Transcript

Kajal

6min 10s single channel audio of compiled whatsapp voice notes.

Translated by Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri

I have a ten year old son. I am from Pakistan. Karachi. I’ve lived here for the last 5 years. I am a pure housewife. So the second question was that “if we take out some time for ourselves from our busy life and tough schedule, which corner of the house would we get renovated according to our own taste?” I wanted to share what I had in my mind and I wanted to share that if I ever had this chance in life, I would renovate the gallery of my house. For instance, I love gardening. Some of our plants like coriander, mint, tulsi–these plants I grow myself. I would place these in my small gallery. I would order some plants also. Like aloe vera, and cactus. These are the plants I would place in my gallery and take care of them, clean them. These days, you know the artificial carpet that’s trending in the market–it’s green, like artificial grass, carpet–I will spread that on the floor and then you will have the plants. Then you will have the morning sunlight, so cool. Then I will sit in that light and– I love yoga– I will do yoga there. Then after that, to relax myself mentally and physically, I will have a mug of coffee. How amazing it feels when you sit with your chai or coffee by yourself. You have your own personal time that you enjoy in your own way. Whatever you do: mediation, yoga, aerobics–I love Yoga. That’s all. That’s my life’s dream. To take time for myself, personally. Think for myself. That’s all.

The balcony has a covered roof and then there is a grille, from where we get sunlight. If we have rain in our direction then water comes inside as well. Only when it’s raining heavily.

You remember that I am a coffee lover, no wonder you placed a coffee mug in the drawing!

OK, let me think about this in a little while and tell you what else should be added to this. I will tell you by tonight or tomorrow morning.

And, what about you, is everything well? We never spoke again after that day, you also became busy and me too. May Allah bless every desire of yours. (Azaan plays loudly in background) And our Diwali! Our Diwali is a grand celebration. Our Diwali is amazing. We start celebrating a week before. I have my own group, and we do a ladies’ celebration. Then after that we also have a big extended family in my in-laws, so we do a celebration in their bungalow, in Phase 6.

Hello assalamu alaikum, good morning! How are you? I think the chair should be exactly where you have put it. The exercise cycle I think should be brought forward. Or bring it to the other corner. Next to the coffee mug, place a water bottle. Or move the coffee mug and place a glass of juice. That will look better I think. If the water bottle looks good though, maybe you can also draw that.

If we had rooms of our own

Yaminay Nasir Chaudhri

If we had rooms of our own draws imaginaries of personal space by six Hindu mothers who live in Karachi, a predominantly Muslim, Pakistani metropolis. I asked these women to describe a desired room inside their homes that was designed only for them. The project gathers longings for that ‘room of one’s own’ by Hindu mothers who live in a place that pushes them into the shadows as members of a minority community, as women, and as mothers. My project is sited in the homes of these mothers, where home, assumed to belong to women and often described as ‘women’s domain’, paradoxically leaves little room for them.

The audio and drawings shared here were made in a slow and intimate process of connection facilitated by WhatsApp, between Pakistani women living in Karachi and Guilford, CT (Hindu in Karachi, Muslim, me, in Guilford). My role as an artist was to listen, edit together, draw and redraw the minutiae of rooms described by these mothers in multiple voice notes until they were happy with my final iterations of pencil on paper. The drawings were then shipped and hand delivered to the mothers in Karachi by Ammara and Suman.

Compiled on our website, you will find the edited voice notes, the final drawings, and the documentation of those drawings in their intended homes photographed by the mothers in Karachi.

Listening to and drawing these imaginary rooms defined a process of making space for the distinct desires of caregiving women. It was an opportunity to build solidarity with marginal figures who disappear both behind the many facades of Karachi, and beneath the endless labors of homemaking. It was also a reflection on Virginia Woolf’s well known 1929 essay, that seems valid 96 years later, pointing to the absences and inequities, even within domestic space, which persist to this day. To draw the minutiae of a room of one’s own then is an exercise in solidarity; as we seek traces of ourselves in our imaginary rooms, we also find them in the desires and longings of others.