A Deceptively Simple Question
This project began with a deceptively simple question:
“What did you wish for when you were younger? What remains unfulfilled?”
1
Mapping wishes, voices, and collective well-being
“What did you wish for when you were younger? What remains unfulfilled, Amma?”Why did the women in my family gradually lose their tendency to smile as they grew up? Is their age inversely proportionate to the degree of their curved lips? Was pensiveness regarded as the sign of maturity in a female?
The question was addressed to my mother. It was followed by another addressed to my grandmother. What surfaced from these conversations was not simply nostalgia, but a pattern: a pattern of small denials that accumulate into emotional, social, and bodily consequence. Listening to them revealed an archive of withheld freedoms, a constellation of desires that never materialised, and a lineage of women whose lives were shaped as much by what they could not do as by what they did.
Personal Encounters as Method
As I listened, I began to understand that these wishes were not trivial. They were indicators of psychological wellbeing, social capital, mobility, and bodily autonomy. They formed a domestic archive of health, in the broadest sense of the word. When I thought about how I, as an individual, reinforced the already existing suppressive system by my ignorance and negligence in my personal setup. The best option which I could identify was to listen. To give the voice of women in my family the diligence it deserved. Though I have heard the following story from my mother earlier, I lacked an objective lens. But this time, I tried to listen intently.
My mother answered, " I love this song! I have always wanted to jog in track pants just like Suhasini,” My mother said in Tamil, followed by a chuck, mentioning the ‘Paruvame' song from 80s Tamil movie Nenjathai Killadhe.
“ Was there anything else?”
“ I cried so much when your grandfather didn't give me five rupees to buy Ponds cream. We were all so fascinated by the advertisement for the foreign cream. But then, I wanted to go on a school trip to Karaikal, which is 30 minutes from our home. All my friends went. Though some of them came and tried to convince, your grandfather didn’t budge. Even the reassurance of the teacher's company wasn’t enough for him to let me go. I was very much heartbroken. And then I was given the five rupees as an alternate for the outing.”
This project attempts to treat these desires as evidence—evidence of systemic gendered restrictions, caste-inflected cultural norms, and the moral conditioning often described as the Sita Syndrome, where women internalise endurance and silence as the measure of virtue.
I then talked to my grandmother,
“ What else?! I wanted to study, I was a bright student. I studied till 8th grade. I cried so much when I was stopped from school. I just wanted to study, I liked it,” she said impetuously, paying no attention to the hands that were weaving a basket. She is artistic, I could only imagine, how her education could have shaped the life of my mom, and me in return. But mostly how it had been a psychological emotional scar over the past 70 years.
From Personal to Collective
To expand this inquiry, I shared an open call:
“What are the unfulfilled wishes of the women in your life?”
The responses that arrived formed a collective emotional and social archive. Before presenting them, it is necessary to outline the analytical framework through which they are held.
These wishes operate as:
micro-data about freedom, mobility, and care
indicators of psychological safety and restriction
testimonies of caste-gendered social norms
intergenerational narratives of women’s health
sites of emotional labour and structural deprivation
They reveal a pattern consistent with feminist, Dalit feminist, and health humanities scholarship: that small denials compound into structural harm, shaping life trajectories and emotional possibility. They demonstrate how patriarchal norms are enforced not only through violence or law, but through daily discouragement, moral instruction, and controlled desire.
These responses are reproduced verbatim, without editing, to honour the oral and emotional integrity of each contribution.
The everyday restrictions on Tamil women’s freedom to speak, smile, move, choose are not isolated incidents but the social architecture through which bodily autonomy, safety, and political participation are shaped. These unfulfilled wishes reveal how patriarchy functions as a distributed system enacted by men, reinforced by women, and naturalised through generations of moral instruction. What appears as small domestic denial is in fact an index of wider structures that determine who feels entitled to desire, to rest, to dream, to exist without surveillance.
Religious and political narratives deepen this conditioning. The story of Sita in the Ramayana, retold across centuries through oral recitation, temple discourse, and moral pedagogy, has scripted ideal womanhood as endurance, silence, and self sacrifice. This internalised model, often described as the Sita Syndrome, shapes emotional possibility and circumscribes women’s health, mobility, and psychological safety. Imagining an alternate narrative in which Sita speaks, refuses, and resists reveals how different the trajectories of my mother, grandmother, and the women who responded to this project might have been.
Dear Sita treats these unfulfilled wishes as a collective health archive rather than anecdote: evidence of how emotional deprivation, interrupted mobility, and withheld opportunities accumulate into structural harm. Transcribing the responses and shaping them into a performed letter to Sita became a method of giving voice to desires that were historically silenced. The hypothetical Sita in the poem is all of us, and the plea addressed to her is a call to each other to build conditions where women’s wishes are not deferred but recognised as central to wellbeing, autonomy, and future making.
This project works toward a curatorial ethics of listening: mapping domestic desire as public knowledge, transforming individual longing into collective data, and foregrounding women’s voices as a foundation for community health. It asks a simple but generative question: what futures become possible when everyday wishes are treated as essential to our shared wellbeing?
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2
Oral archives through listening
“ When my older sister, myself and my younger brother all went to school, Amma was very present in taking us to school, speaking to teachers, coming as a chaperone on school trips etc. Because of this she always had a good relationship with our class teachers throughout the years, so was asked numerous times to work as a teaching assistant for their classes as they could see how good she was with children generally (on school class trips etc.). Although Amma really wanted to take this on, Appa wanted her to focus on bringing us up and being there all the time for us as well as - in his eyes, he didn't want Amma to strain herself from working, especially because she only moved to London from Sri Lanka after marrying him and for her children's lives. The more I think about it as I've gotten older, I realise it's a lot to do with South Asian culture - the women being the main ones in marriage to look after and bring up the children without realising, asking or acknowledging what the woman desires to do. To this day, she always brings it up because she feels it's a missed opportunity for her that was almost quite easily offered to her, but she couldn't take it up."
“ My Amma's wish is to learn swimming and cycling but she couldn't and whenever we have a conversation about our childhood experiences she would always come up with this wish which she couldn't get fulfilled."
“ It was my cousin's weekly activity to ask about our grandparent's unfulfilled wishes from their childhood if they had the opportunity to .so when we asked our grandma about it she said” well, when I was in my 5th class the neighbourhood didn't have any schools for classes from 6th class. If one had to go study 6th class they should go to the town high school which is around 7-8 km away and requires at least a cycle to travel across, a cycle was something she looked forward to riding an away to schools well and the pathway leading to the town isn't any protective as well, so for a girl to be able to avail education was denied and we all know how that ends! Not so well... My grandma wanted to study 6th class but she couldn't. And she still feels she would've excelled in it and would've become a person who had a respectable profession and would've led a different kind of lifestyle rather than being married at a very young age and a stay at home mom of 2 sooner in life. She even remembers a moment from her 5th class, where she was doing some homework on the 'thinnai' of the house while a passerby (maybe a relative ) asked her to write and show something and she did that correctly, to which she felt immense pride and was proud of herself. It's so true that "one never forgets how they were made to feel," not even after 61years!"
“ My mom and her 4 siblings would get hard toffees, that cost 25 paise each, only when their Grandpa, who wasn't extremely fond of his son's family, brought some along. If not, they need to save their allowances and get them once a year themselves. They need to save their allowances and some did that better than others. This story has stuck with me because their sibling rivalry and crooked ways to get more candies always made me smile conspirately at my own sister. My mom talks about the good ol' days when her father was alive and all his five children used to wait once a year to get new clothes that my grandma had stitched for them. Those are their main new clothes for the year. And my mom wanted to be able to get new clothes so she learnt how to stitch and has stitched many of her clothes after they all shifted to Chennai but her regret is not developing it into a proper business because she loves it still. She even stitched me my last grand clothes just a year ago. It's funny how the littlest things from her childhood are further from reach because of the generational gap and the way time has rendered some things just impossible.”
“ My mom was not able to complete her education. She was given a scholarship for mbbs in the 80s but ya family members happened."
“ My mom got married to my dad just after her high schoolings. She always had the wish to get into college but sadly it didn't happen. But she was passionate enough to read and our shelves are filled up with various collections of novels and books."
" When I asked my mother, she said “ there is nothing of that sort. I wanted to study and learn a lot.” And she did. She wanted to do her doctorate and she did. In her 50s. but still, there was an exception. That she also wanted to perform in a greater league. National level and so. Also, pass on what she was gifted with to her siblings. Being the eldest kid and the first graduate in the whole taluka. But she had to give up those for her love marriage. For which she had a sarcastic tone but that was not all how she felt."
“ My favourite. Most favourite person. My Chithi. The one had to grow without a mother. She said “I wanted that தங்ககலரு கண்ணாடி வலையல். அப்புறம் நெயில் பாலிஷ். இது இரண்டுமே கிடைக்கல” ( golden coloured bangles and nail polish. Didn’t get both) thinking of this she cried. She said she didn’t think it had such an impact on her."
“ My mom wanted to learn to ride a bike and she wanted to go wherever she wants on her own. My dad never acknowledged her wish saying "vandi otturengra paerla keela vilundhu kai ah kaala odachupaa.. Adhulam sari varaadhu unaku”( For the sake of riding a bike, you would end up breaking your arm or a leg. I don’t think this would work out)".
“ My mother wanted to buy a golusu! (Anklet) from her school days, she has had always expressed this to my grandmother but could not buy one when she was wishing it for. They bought her during her wedding time as a ritual. She was definitely happy but not like how she would have been if she had gotten it during her school days.
I realised this a lot when she bought me a golusu half a month ago for my wedding purchase. I bought an antique silver golusu, I could see her smiley face by touching it while her mind was thinking about her days :) "
“ My mother was an achiever academically and athletically. She was vowed to be married during her studies and unfortunately, she couldn’t complete it. She is a proud grandmother now but never felt bad about what has gone by, but the sense of regret and absence of support because of social pressure was paramount those days. I’m happy I got her as my mother, I have learnt a lot outside of my books because of her.
She will always be the North Star for me and my sister and for people around her. A very enterprising and able lady and a humble one at that. I wish she had her chance to complete and see how her life would have been when her simple wishes had come true!"
3
Rhythm/ Rhyme as a curatorial tool in critically analysing oral archive
If you hadn't fancied the deer
but some respect from your dear
If you hadn't succumbed to mythological
paneer,
Soft and complacent,
and the chapatis
behind the permeable veneer
and the wishes of his
If you had striven to wish
for some respect,
rights of yours,
pockets for your trousers
some freedom,
Would it have helped us out of our Sita
Syndrome?
If you had spoken your desire
by the fire
of not wanting the duty of making tea
every single day
the non-negotiable duty of making tea
If you had denied the wanting of purity
“ Patient as the earth,”
They say
If you had denied the underhanded
praise
for being soft and complacent
a mythological paneer
If you had broken your veneer
your silence
towards them
your tolerance
towards oppression
If you had wished
more for you
Maybe it would have been easier for all
the women
who came after that
to have
dreamt
wished
lived
a bit more easily
If all the wishes of all the women
before me, have come to fruition,
The big ones
The small ones
The silly ones
To run
To read
To study
To sing
To swim
To dance
To drink
To dream
To work
To live
To love
To wish
If all of these wishes were realised,
Could I have dreamt easily?
Could you have slept peacefully?
You, the ones eavesdropping
Could you have slept peacefully?
Without the patriarchal pea in your bed
Not being categorised as a princess in
need
If you had wished for your freedom,
Sita, we could have been spared from
the syndrome
Let me tell you a story of
a women
yes a women
I acknowledge the incompetency in
grammar,
But yes
A women
Isn’t her story mine,
and mine, hers
Listen and maybe then you might
wish for more than the deer
Saroja Devi danced with the sway,
“ Love birds, Love birds,
Thaka thimi tha,”
She just saw,
Remote control in hands of his
Switching through news and hues,
She just saw,
couldn’t have a say,
On her everyday
On the channel or personal
She watched through the parapet
Of everyday chores
Love birds metamorphosing to crows
She just saw
Caw caw caw
Oh
She had to make hay
Make vadagam if she may,
It was May
She made vadagam, hay without a say
She did pray
Praying she did
She prayed
She prayed
She wished
She wished
She could
She wished
She prayed
She wished
She wished
She could
She
My mother
Yes my mother wished
She could
Run
Run?
Run
Just Run
She wished
She prayed
She could
Run
In track pants and suit
The way Suhasini did
" I love this song
It was so popular then
I have always wanted to jog
in track pants just like the heroine ",
My mother said
Maybe the first time aloud
“ Paruvame....,”
The song went on
On
And on
And on
And on
And on
What is your wish?
The ones here
Put it on this dash
Your wish?
Yes, You?
Your wish?
I will wait
hold on to that,
we will come back
So the song
“ Paruvame…"
Went on
And on
And on
And on
I ask her to repeat the story
my mother
Now and then
Hoping
If words could turn into action
If she could run with just her thoughts
The song
A jog
The rhyme
Her breath
The song
A jog
The rhyme
Her breath
She perambulates
( googled the word for the rhyme)
through pentameters
( It doesn’t! Does it?
I just wished )
She perambulates
through pentameter
Trips over the vicarious grass
Oh, wrong punctuation,
Falling back into the story,
And story it remained
Again and again
I ask her to repeat the story
Now and then
Have you ever asked your mother,
or your aunt, or that maternal figure?
Hither and thither
To miss and the missus
About their wishes?
Talk
Will you?
Now
Yes now
My mom wished to run
I wish I could run
At my hometown
In my place
Without the piercing eyes
of the mid-noon guys
My mother wishes to run
Your mother wished
Go on say it
And you wish
Say it again, please
Do these rhyme?
Do these wishes have a scheme?
If all of these wishes were realised,
Would my poem be more poetic?
If the rhymes had a scheme,
and if the wishes were home
Could I have slept peacefully?
Could you have dreamt easily?
If you had wished for your freedom,
Sita, we would have been spared from the
syndrome
So listen
She wished
She could
Run
In track pants and suit
The way Suhasini did
Oh so candid
What did she want to run from
What was her dream
Her wishes
Was she running from the piled up dishes?
Spoons?
Pans?
From her cant’s and towards the cans?
Mustering her must
On the mustard monster?
Maybe
yes
Maybe
she wanted to run away from
Spoons
Pans
Cant’s
Cans
Pans
Pans
Pans
Spoons
Spills
Spills
Spills
Oils
Oils
Spills
Spoons
Pans
Cans
Cant’s
I know its boring
but it's your fault, Sita,
you have to bear it
If you had wished more
these women might have
ran, jumped, skipped,
laughed, rode, studied,
worked, lived,
dreamt
wished
So you listen
Maybe she wanted to run away from
Cant’s
Cant’s
Cant’s
Spoons
Spills
Oils
Yes
the oils
She was burning the midnight oil
Thinking
Wishing
Praying
She was burning the midnight oil
Decanted oil and water
Talks to women and their wishes
Silly wishes
Oily wishes
Didn’t go well with her gender
Just like the oil and water
the wishes and her gender
She just wished
The oil would go off
She just wished
Scrub
Scrub
Scrub
She wished
She could
She wished
She could
She
Yes
Her that Akka
She wished
She could
Swim
Swim?
Swim
She wished
She dreamt
A bicycle
rented
One hour for a nickel
Could she rent a dream?
or buy her freedom?
economic or phallic
She wished
She could
She wished
She could
She,
Yes, me,
I wish an economic fickle
If rhyme were a viable currency
nickel and fickle, the rhyme
Could I trade it for my dream?
Oh, Sita, I pray to you,
I will light lamps for you every day,
Even skip my breakfast this Friday,
I will repent all my blasphemy,
They say you are a goddess and know alchemy,
So I pray to you,
Spare her and me, and you
We don’t want to be goddesses,
I don’t believe in being a goddess,
Spare us,
They say you are a goddess and know alchemy,
grant me my economic fickle
make the rhyme into the nickel
to buy all the wishes wished
and the dreams dreamt
If you had wished for your freedom,
Sita, we would have been spared from the syndrome
So grant us this
grant us this wish
of the ability to wish
not for a deer, or a flying fish,
Just to live, to love, to dream,
to learn, to swim, to ride, to run,
Away from my cant’s, towards my cans.
Footnotes / Citations
These references anchor the project within feminist, Dalit feminist, decolonial, and health humanities discourse. They function as a conceptual foundation rather than academic justification.
1. Sharmila Rege – Writing Caste, Writing Gender, theorising Dalit women’s testimonies and oral narratives as epistemic labour.
2. Bhoomika Saraswati – Writing on caste, ecological precarity, and women’s labour, grounding health within social and environmental structures.
3. Veena Das – Affliction, demonstrating how everyday life holds evidence of harm, health, and social conditioning.
4. Saidiya Hartman – Wayward Lives, offering methodologies of narrative repair, re-imagination, and non-extractive storytelling.
5. Uma Chakravarti – Gendering Caste, tracing how caste and patriarchy intertwine to shape women’s mobility, dignity, and emotional possibility.