Am reading Azar Nafisi's 'Reading Lolita in Tehran'. It's a sensitively written book, and I'm loving reading it - it just draws you in and in a bit, you start feeling like one of the girls in the group. Being a woman, in India, many things struck a resonating chord. There was a particular phrase that just tore into my heart - 'the confiscation of one's individual life by another'. With that one phrase, Nafisi summed up the life of almost every woman, especially those in this part of the world. And so what happens? The sense of self is just not ready to give up on itself, and so seeks for ways and means to find some way of expression, some way of reconciliation...
And what happens is that she finally fashions her tiny universe, which is probably as big as the tiny space around her, or her own special corner, or, as Nafisi puts it - 'the space you create for yourself through imagination and reflection.'
Nafisi uses another phrase very evocatively - color of my dreams -
And so you use the color of your dreams to paint that little space of your own, for it is that space which gives you 'the courage to live,' and take on the world with peace and serenity...