Many many decades ago as a young girl in a small town, I remember reading a cover story on film maker, artist and writer Imtiaz Dharker with growing admiration. She was someone who had battled great odds to acquire personal and creative freedom. I wanted to grow up to be like her. A few years later, I found myself interviewing her as a rookie reporter and heard her voice in my head all the way back home. Amazed at how life sometimes delivers just  what you never thought it would.

Almost 15 years later, I met her again. After both of us in a way had changed from the people we were when we first met. I could see  that she had grown beyond a new set of limiting circumstances and become a richer, wiser, scarred but healed version of herself.

Her dark eyes had seen a lot but they still sparkled and meeting her made me aware just how we almost always  meet the teachers we need to meet at certain key moments of our life.

What I learnt from her was that women must choose freedom to be who they are over fear, comfort, rule books and safety. She was a living proof of the fact that brave journeys if chosen mindfully can lead to pine scented orchards within. Her journey began in Lahore with her birth, found direction in Glasgow, Scotland and has come full circle in India. Today she feels at home everywhere in the world and speaks in the language of many cultures. And always, she speaks for and of the  fragility of life that hangs like a basket of eggs above a stockpile of inflammable prejudices. She sketches her poems with both ink drawings and crystalline thoughts which for all their clarity have the  warmth of a  well-loved eiderdown.

The book I remember her for is The Terrorist At My Table (Penguin Poetry) which spoke about the perishability of culture  and all its delicate nuances under the hammer of  absolutism and terrorism, both State sponsored and individual. It is about what happens when the dots become more important than the big picture. It is about the instant when heaven fragrant with orange groves becomes a bloody hell because someone stamps his footprint on the earth and claims it as his while another picks up a fistful of earth and says it belongs to him. Through her work, she engages  passionately in the human condition regardless of the baggage of politics, social, religious  and moral conditioning we all carry with us.

She told me, “In the face of a world going mad, a small connection with another human being is enough to cut through stereo-types and hate. We are all subtle beings made up of so much more than can be summed up in just words. We are stronger when we  open our doors to other people, cultures, ideas and when we feel confident enough as a nation and a culture to give freedom to different view points.’’

To meet Imtiaz is to know her because her gaze allows you in her life and sees right through yours. 15 years ago when I first met her, she was in Bangalore with her book Postcards from God and was just taking a second look at a lot of things she had till then taken for granted. Including her marriage which broke up some time back and not “because we belonged to different religions,’’ she said firmly but because there was nothing to stay for when the mutual joy vanished. She is married again today and there is something complete about her. Not because love found her again but because she  found herself all over again and reclaimed her life from a dead-end.  “Strong women are in a minority because they are judged for the very things that a man is praised for. That is why perhaps women reconsider, reevaluate, re-examine everything. That is why I stayed in my marriage 10 years longer than I should have, ’’ she shared.
Today, with personal issues at rest, she is speaking more firmly than ever again against bigotry, violence and anything that undermines one human-being’s connection with another. She said, “Today, peripheral issues have become more important than the human heart. Strangely, the world is being taken over by not big but small, petty terrors.  There are a million ways of reaching out to each other in a human way but we continue to function through what has been imposed on us. Yes, we must follow certain laws of humanity. It is wrong to kill and hurt others under any pretext but no one can dictate how we should dress or behave or create. As a woman and a writer, I will listen to what you have to say but I refuse to be judged and will live exactly how I want to. I know that woman across India have tremendous pressures and have no support system. I know of women who live in prosperous golden cages and have nowhere to go and my hope is  the girl in the red ribbons who emerges everyday from her hut in search of something better than chaos. And is poised and ready for change .’’

Reema Moudgil is the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7YucnhfXw–&ref=4fe1efd1-de20-4a30-8eb8-ef81a99cb01f