I once knew a girl who was beautiful until she wasn’t. She was the kind of friend who’d fix your makeup in a seedy karaoke club bathroom and climb into a disco-light rickshaw with you, drunk and giggling into the night. She lent you her clothes, helped you move, and scoured the bustling streets of Colaba to find the perfect jhumkas for you. This girl knew how to love people hard, and she wasn’t afraid to show it.
But this girl also held me as I cried myself to near death after the man she introduced to me violated my consent. And then, she continued to be friends with him as I shattered into pieces. When I confronted her, demanding she choose sides, she called me childish and accused me of being controlling. The day we ended our friendship, I walked under the full moon in my pajamas, fueled by the rage of a thousand women, blasting my female rage playlist through my earphones. She didn’t understand why I wanted to leave, and neither did I. And then one day I did—it had everything to do with sisterhood.
If sisterhood had a color, it would be a soft beige called cosmic latte, the average color of the universe. This cosmic latte, like sisterhood, holds both dark experiences and deep traumas. But alongside the charcoal blackness of hurt, it also holds the light our hearts emit for one another.
We often see romanticized versions of sisterhood in books and movies, like the glamorous friendship between Blair and Serena in Gossip Girl. While their Central Park photo shoots in expensive dresses are a nice image, there’s more to female friendships than just that. At the heart of girl friendships lies a safe space for vulnerability. Here, core wounds heal. Shared values rise to the surface. Generational curses are acknowledged. We are seen. Our rage and grief are honored and fought for.
This is why women hit the streets and ‘reclaimed the night’ for RG Kar. This is why every new rape story feels fresh on the skin. This is why the viral clip of Nora Fatehi saying, ‘Feminists have f*cked up our society’ sparked backlash from women, prompting those unfamiliar with the term ‘pick-me’ to frantically Google its meaning. We’re never not radiating the collective fury of our female ancestors. We’ve never stopped carrying their lived experiences (and ours) in our bodies.
When Audre Lorde writes, ‘Your silence will not protect you,’ she isn’t just asking survivors to speak up. She’s also asking her sisters to speak up for her—is that a tall order or simply the bare minimum?
Sisterhood is not apolitical. Even in privileged circles, these dynamics play out, as seen in shows like Call Me Bae. We may not relate to Bella’s lavish upbringing, but there is something worth identifying with in her sacred ‘behencode’. In short, to access sisterhood, an invisible contract must be signed—the contract of solidarity. Immaturity in my friend’s books, loyalty in mine.
While writing my novel, ‘Our Bones in Your Throat,’ I found myself flipping through polaroids of my closest girlfriends, studying the less romanticized parts of our bonds. I saw the girls who stood by me, taking sides when it mattered. I saw the girls who immediately unfollowed the perpetrator. I saw D, who ran into him at a party and asked her partner to spit in his drink (I’m not sure how much of that story is true, but the tiny poetic justice I saw in it was everything).
Now when I look at the sky, I watch the misleading pitch black of its flesh in awe. Cosmic latte, the average color of the universe, was identified by astronomers Karl Glazebrook and Ivan Baldry, after observing light from over 200,000 galaxies. These galaxies, with their stars, dust, and gases, emit a shade so very close to white. What does this mean? Despite all the transparent dark matter, black holes, and vast interstellar space, the universe is still royally, triumphantly white.
Likewise, no amount of misogyny, problematic men, anti-feminists, or women who don’t align with the sisterhood can out-color the strength of sisters in solidarity. We are more in number than we realize. Or at the very least, our energy is so big, we tilt the ratio in our favor. It’s true. The world will never run out of girl’s girls.
Megha Rao is the author of ‘Our Bones in Your Throat’ published by Simon & Schuster. Follow her on Instagram.
Also read:
* A timeline of how female friendships in Indian cinema went from ‘frenemy’ to ‘sisterhood’
* My queer friendships have seen me through euphoric wins and crushing tragedies
* It was so much more than a ‘friend breakup’
