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Is a child bride just another nine year old girl? Or is she a woman interrupted, and reduced to a statistic? This poem makes you think.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/snugglepup/4658292501
The fresh breeze dances
lightly on the tips of the dangling dewdrop as
I run in the lawn of colourful imagination. The juicy sun
shines on my small feet.
My big, innocent eyes taste the world
With the all wonder of a nine year old girl.
Exploring, singing, living, breathing-
Free.
Like all children deserve to be.
A sudden darkness.
I stumble on the narrow-minded sexist stones; the most
poisonous of them all. My lush lawn of imagination
gets overthrown by the hard ground of reality, as,
A demonic spiral of a wedding garland tightens its hold on my trembling neck
choking my freedom.
Murdering my childhood.
Licking away all innocence.
Now, as I look up to see my twenty year old groom
I am just
A lifeless, empty shell.
Another 9 year old bride
Among 67 million others like me.
Pic credit: snugglepup (Used under a CC license)
Hi! I'm an often overly-excited, frequently fun-loving, and sometimes deeply-sunk-in-thoughts student of life. Earth and all the stuff in it -especially humans- has always awed me and I love read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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