Skip to main content

Dreams beneath a hizab

" Wear a hizab", came the stern order of her grandmom whom she lovingly called nanijaan. On such days she often wondered, if her grandmom deserved all the love she had for her. But, did she have the time to think and reflect on it, she was getting late for school. For one last time she looked at her mother's eyes pleadingly. Ammi, perhaps had already lived the same story, she saw a faint glare of disdain in her mother's eyes for the hizab as she went to fetch it for her. That piece of clothing was supposed to save Naz's honour, but what she failed to understand was, why wasn't her brother supposed to wear one when he would be walking the same way with her to school.

Two decades hence, she now realises that not only the hizab, she was destined to wear a price. A price of being born as a girl. A price which came sealed as her fate.

A flashback:

As she dresses to attend her classes, she falls in love with the freedom she had discovered after moving out of home. She no longer had to get worried for any of her evenings or nights. She could roam about at her will and not be judged. The first thing she had done after moving into the university hostel was colour her hair bright red, the red in her hair complemented the fire in her eyes. When I went to meet her, she smirked hinting at the new change she had opted for whereas I always knew that she always wanted such stuff for herself.

As we were strolling around the campus which was supposed to be her home for the next few years, she kept on moving at a jittery sway. The untamable spirit in her had finally found home. I graduated before her because she had joined the institution late. It was during one of my visits since I left our university that i came across her,  God! she was blushing when I saw her. The reason being the chap beside her  who looked at me with confused glances. It took me no time to understand that she finally had found love, the girl in her had finally found what she had aways wanted for herself.

Everything was fine but what she probably had missed was she was born to pay a price, she was to be the shield of her family's honour. She felt helpless, her degrees on paper couldn't possibly award her the right to live a life she wanted. She had always thought about it but had been hopeful that somewhere , somehow she would be understood; but she was mistaken. She pleaded, but her voice was shunned, the red in her hair slowly faded, the fire in her eyes got dim. The chap of her life became history and along with him a part of her died.

If only she thought, she  never had dreamt, if only she could limit herself within that hizab, if only she were given her flight!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading between the lines

"Read between the lines",  I heard our professor say. We were in midst of a Victorian text. I looked at her point blank. She had spoken about something which I had no clue about. "Ma'am,  would you please elaborate? ",  I tried framing this sentence in my mind but my introverted  self overpowered my inquisitive soul like everytime. I hopelessly waited for an explanation. Ma'am started explaining about how beyond the surface meaning of any written text, there lay a wide plethora of meaning which wasn't explicitly stated. She talked about finding a void between the written words and our imagination, that void which shapes our interpretation. That explanation opened doors to my perception of reading a text. It wasn't that I had never considered about the possibilities of meanings that lay coated in words until then, but, what perhaps I lacked was to look for that void where I questioned the layers of meaning, where I put myself in those layers of wo...
Post a Comment
Read more

What do you want to be?

While I was in my 10th standard, almost everyone I met wanted to know what I wanted to be. This question always perplexed me. From the lens of a fifteen year kid who was not yet sure of the changes which awaited in the near future, this question gave me nightmares. I would constantly sit by the mirror and ask myself, what actually would be my answer. My friends always had fancy answers at their disposal. They would confidently chirp whenever any one asked about it. What amused me most was, my friend who had no inkling to study Biology wanted to be a doctor and another friend who detested the idea of even cooking noodles, wanted to be a chef! But whenever they spoke about their wishes, they would always sound confident. And there I was, fumbling for words which refused to escape my lips. It was not until I entered Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya to do my plus two, I found my voice. The teachers there have a different way of viewing life. For the first time, I no longer felt the classroom...
2 comments
Read more

"My love is enough for both of us"

"My love is enough for both of us", she often felt those words ring in her heart. She finally had understood that life wouldn't always follow her designs. That people are meant to leave but their memories won't. She often had wondered how someone could love her to such an extent when that person had always known that she wouldn't reciprocate those feelings. How could a person stand by her when she always acted as a fleeting shadow. She never had given hope for she knew the pain of dejection but he kept hoping like a hopeless vagabond. How she wished that he would some day hate her enough to let go. She devised ways to free him from this web, she acted cold, turned indifferent, did everything he detested and she finally saw some changes. It was a relief, he finally seemed to take hold of his life. She could see him grow responsible. He finally it seemed was learning to love himself. Phone calls died, meetings subsided, they become known strangers. All this while ...
2 comments
Read more