When journalist Rana Ayyub and poet Meena Kandasamy decided to dress in red, showing resilience and defiance through clothing

The choice of red is not without ceremony for both women from marginalised communities, who have often faced repercussions for being “too visible”

In early December, I woke up to a message from Rana Ayyub about receiving the John Aubuchon Press Freedom Award, the highest honour conferred by the U.S. National Press Club. She is the first Indian journalist to win the award, and the first Muslim. 

The video she sent would be all over the news soon — Ayyub on freedom, on speaking truth to power, on how she was in hiding when she learnt she was receiving the award because Mohammed Zubair, a journalist co-accused with her in a couple of cases, had just been arrested. Ayyub took the podium with the body language of a stateswoman, her speech carried a poet’s passion. She was wearing a red suit.

The 38-year-old’s face has been morphed into pornographic videos, she has received death and rape threats. Well-meaning friends have asked her to disappear, to stay away from her devices so her IP address isn’t tracked. And here she was in red. A colour that catches the eye, and holds the gaze.

Over the phone from Chicago, Ayyub tells me that ever since she has become a  persona non grata for the Indian administration, she has been advised to make herself small, to go quiet. “That was me asserting myself. I’m not going away anywhere,” she says.

Ayyub’s red suit reminded me of the poet and activist Meena Kandasamy’s portrait from two months ago, soon after she was announced the recipient of this year’s PEN Germany Hermann Kesten Prize, awarded to those who take a stand against the persecution of writers and journalists. The news arrived with an arresting photograph of her in a red summer dress.

Kandasamy tends to be modest in person. But her portraits — even the early ones of the young poet in jeans — have always carried a certain hauteur: a grounded stance, chin towards the sky, eyes to the lens, thick lines of kohl, lips slightly curled at the edges, hair that refuses to follow school rules.

Kandasamy tells me she thought of wearing the red dress when a newspaper told her they were going to interview her for a cover story and needed new photographs. She had picked the dress at a charity thrift store a long time ago because it said to her, ‘You don’t have to feel apologetic, you don’t have to hide, you may flaunt.’ “I thought the red was striking and also something that offset my complexion. It’s bold, provocative, and it stands for a lot of things I stand for. I like the crazy energy of the colour,” she says.