Skip to main content

"Stayfree" in "whispers"

There are days when I don't want to be a woman,
No, don't you get confused,
I take pride in who I am.
I take pride in all those abstractions which make me a human
Yet, as I said, there are days...
Days when you spend life like an untouchable.
Separate plates, separate beds, restricted entries, restrictions on what you eat and breathe!
They say I have Brahmin blood,
They say it right perhaps but I smell diplomacy
For I don't see what sets me apart! I don't smell purity
I rarely offer prayers, I sing no hymns
I don't seek God in idols.
When did my realisation found home?, you may ask.
I was 11 when I became a woman.
"Sit like a girl, act like a girl, think like a girl ", that became my birthday jingle .
I had bled one night and I thought I had got hurt
I expected them to take me to a doctor
I was thrown into a dark room instead
" Don't look at males ", pronounced my granny
" Why? ", my voice echoed
Because you no more are a girl, you are a woman!
When did I become one? , a voice in my head wanted to know.
For my limbs hadn't grown overnight, nor had I incurred any special sign!
I didn't know that my body parts carried shame.
Mounds of flesh needed to be hidden under layers
Boys no more fitted as team mates
Adventures suddenly found no room.
I felt I was cursed, cursed to be a woman!
As I outgrew my sleeves, I couldn't outgrow my shame
I always had a lurking fear that
Peering gazes would rip me as I crossed streets
I had to be careful, careful enough to avoid mistakes
I couldn't be at temples, couldn't be at rituals
I was an untouchable and so were the rest who bled
"Stayfree" came home in "whispers"
Freedom, life's greatest irony.
Yet, I saw hoardings which celebrated womanhood.
There were slogans which glorified motherhood.
And yet, there you would find a girl in every street
Holding her breath in terror as she crosses streets,
If this is what takes it to be a woman,
I don't want to be one.
I don't want to be glorified
I don't want anything that sets me apart as a woman
If I want anything for me or girls around me
Is to bleed in peace
To live in peace
For this isn't what restricts us as woman
We didn't choose it, rather it chose us.

And...

My "Stayfree" no longer comes in "whispers"!

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