Check out the ultimate guide to 16 return-to-work programs in India for women
This poem on women's lives examines the many ways in which women's spirits are subdued - right from girlhood.
This poem on women’s lives examines the many ways in which women’s spirits are subdued – right from girlhood.
Being a girl child kills joy.
She cannot run wild
Shrieking, jumping, let fly
Mother is always there to admonish
To add layers of guilt and varnish.
After all the girl child
Has to grow into a graceful lady –
The peak of the malady.
Being a girl kills joy.
She cannot dress and study
As she might
Because most of the apparels
And careers are for her not right.
Consciously her parents groom her
For taking her secondary place
Beside a husband,
Who displaces the parents
As authority to tend her
Or, is it to bend her?
Her frustrations she has to contain,
Outwardly poise she has to maintain,
After all she is emerging as a graceful lady –
The crest of the malady.
Being a woman kills joy.
If home constitutes hundred per cent
Seventy per cent towards her is leant.
While bearing, rearing children
Additional salary she must earn.
For twenty four hours she is on call
No relaxing!
Monotonous, unending, repetitive
Self-negating, her strength taxing
The housework continues.
Faint at heart (no upsetting the applecart),
The mother wound unheeded,
The gendered division of labour
This graceful lady does not challenge
Because it may shake the only bastion of her security
The family.
No ally she has,
Rather she becomes an ally
When she grows her daughter.
‘Don’t answer back’ (Even if you’re right!)
‘Give him, give in’ (Don’t fight!)
‘Serve others first’ (Be the last to take!)
Be self-effacing – the same hackneyed remake.
My mother did it, staying at home
Wearing a sari, with her head covered.
I’m doing it, while fetching a pay packet
With my pallu unfurled.
My daughter will do it
Wearing jeans with her hair arranged in curls.
The garbs change, characters change
The stage and story remain the same.
The heroine is a graceful lady –
(The crescendo of the melody?)
The crux of the malady
A woman is a kill-joy.
Pic used under a CC license credit Edward Rhys
read more...
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
If her MIL had accepted her with some affection, wouldn't they have built a mutually happier relationship by now?
The incident took place ten years ago.
Smita could visit her mother only in summers when her daughter had school holidays. Her daughter also enjoyed meeting her Nani, and both of them had done their reservations for a week. A month before their visit, her husband told her, “My mom is coming for 4-5 months!”
Smita shuddered. She knew the repercussions. She would have to hear sarcastic comments from her mother-in-law for visiting her mother. She may make these comments directly only a bit, but her servants would be flooded with the words, “How horrible she is! She leaves me and goes!”
Are we so swayed by star power and the 'entertainment' quotient of cinema that satisfies our carnal instincts that we choose to ignore our own subconscious mind which always knows what is right and what is wrong?
Trigger Warning: This has graphic descriptions of violence and may be triggering to survivors and victims of violence.
Do you remember your first exposure to an extremely violent act or the aftermath of a violent act?
I am pretty sure for most of us it would be through cinema. But I remember very vividly my first exposure to aftermath of an unbelievably grotesque violent act in real life. It was as a student at a Dental College and Hospital.
Please enter your email address