Are you there God? It’s me, Poornima.
I started writing my diary entry with this, long after I read the book – of the odd title above, by a wonderful American writer called Judy Blume. I was also a teenager back then, much like Maragaret in the book. My world was different from her. My world views, pretty much the same.
Like Margaret, I was also on the cusp of adolescence, ready to deep dive and discover the world. I was awkward, an overthinker, and a hopeless dreamer (still am). I had my first crush just somewhere around that time, and I remember thinking – “I like this guy, as Margaret likes Moose (her crush in the book)” – as if the little literary character tucked away in wraps of time and space would understand how I felt. Like her, I wanted to be wanted. To be validated and appreciated, even by peers who did not match my wavelength – who were cool, popular, loud and by default, mean. And yet, to remain unseen.
Like her, I was discovering the changes in my body and in my mind and was not able to decide if I liked it or not. I remember doing the little bust growing exercise also, the private recesses of my bathroom, that Maragaret and her friends from the secret club practiced.
It would be cringe to talk about all this now – but when I saw this film on Netflix made on the book that has so vividly and irreversibly been lodged in my memory – I could see so many things in a whole new light.
I could see, for one, why I was so taken in by it.
Margaret’s chief complication arose from the fact that she had no religion, and hence no predetermined rituals that come with reaching out to that “God”. Her parents belong to different communities (Mother was a Catholic and Father was a Jewish), and in order to not impose any one religion on their child, they made a pact to let her choose it when she becomes an adult. Liberal, no? But frustrating for a child who grew up with no religious holidays, and no savior to openly celebrate and pray to.
But just as following a religion cannot ensure belief in God, not following one does not mean you cannot have faith. So Margaret believed in a God anyway – faceless, genderless, nameless God, yet nevertheless it was there. She also talked to God about her periods, and how badly she wanted it to become a woman and gain acceptability in her group.
Belonging to a family where women were asked to stay away from all rituals on her period, of course this was intriguing for me. For one, I realized you don’t need any damn ritual to talk to him (or her when I prayed to my favorite Godress from Kolhapur). Noone, not even your family needs to have any access to your personal conversations with God. You can pray, you can cry, you can complain, you can rant or just be grateful. The barriers fell, even before I knew it.
I also understood, through Margaret and her friends, the horrible things that we as teenagers – and sadly, even as adults – sometimes do to people around us who are different from the socially set standards. Mean things like not including them or spreading lies about them. While the book only touches upon that, I was glad to see that tiny part being addressed in the end in the movie, when Margaret asks one girl who was treated as an outcast by her class to a dance, challenging some of the unsaid rules of inclusivity.
I was also glad that the movie took the liberty of etching out her mother’s character a little more, so we get a glimpse into the woman who married for love and was ready to leave her uncompromising parents for it. The book was written from Margaret’s point of view, but the movie has a voice to her parents as well, especially her mother who watched with patience as her daughter grew (and also outgrew), giving her the space that she needed. All while pursuing her own interests.
The movie left out some tiny details though, like how the girls initially called themselves with fancy names when they made their club (I remember one of them was Mavis). I think Maragaret called her Grandmother by her own name – Sylvia – in the book, and it would have been nice if they would have kept it that way.
It is heartwarming when things from the past suddenly come back to you in such an unexpected way, like a forgotten note from someone special that you find in a book, or when a song that you used to dance on as a child, plays out from nowhere. Finding this film on Netflix was that moment for me. I will not bother to read the book again. For one – I remember almost everything, I literally had the dialogues in my head even before the characters mouthed it in the movie. The other reason is maybe it will spoil a memory of what I conjured till now by re-reading a teenage book with adult eyes. All I want to do is to continue to ask -”Are you there, God”?, and leave it at that.