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Fear, shame, prejudice - all comes the way of a girl from the moment she is born, changing form only to suit the stage of life she's at. But despite it all, she survives, thrives. How?
Fear, shame, prejudice – all comes the way of a girl from the moment she is born, changing form only to suit the stage of life she’s at. But despite it all, she survives, thrives. How?
The first fear at being conceived A girl they would not want The goddess worshippers who seek Only sons as progeny
The second fear at being born Will I survive the neglect and scorn? The birth they don’t celebrate But secretly mourn
The next fear every step of a girl life Being treated as less, unequal and frail The constant weighing of my being On a prejudiced scale
The trickle of blood down my legs Is isolation, humiliation and fear at best? No longer sacred, I am now impure They say so, I am not sure
Is my body then just a contested space? Their honour and shame In a vagina they so hate? The body they touch The soul they fail to embrace
The next threshold, a pedestal actually Of producing their children Sons ideally and abysmally The pedestal is a prison A cage factually
Fear ridden is the fate of a girl The fear of being Of self, of world Of being a body That can be used and mauled Of bringing “shame” And “honour” to uphold?
And then I wonder If I am frail How is it that over all the fears I prevail?
I do not fit into frames any more I redefine identity Carving wings from adversity I soar
So now I am fearless As fearless one can ever be Because I speak of feminism And equality But I do not adhere to what Beauvoir said My gender won’t be my destiny!
Editor’s note: This story had been shortlisted for the June 2018 Muse of the Month, but not among the top 5 winners.
Image source: By Ilya Mauter [CC BY 3.0 ], from Wikimedia Commons
Pooja Priyamvada is an author, columnist, translator, online content & Social Media consultant, and poet. An awarded bi-lingual blogger she is a trained psychological/mental health first aider, mindfulness & grief facilitator, emotional wellness trainer, reflective read more...
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As parents, we put a piece of our hearts out into this world and into the custody of the teachers at school and tuition and can only hope and pray that they treat them well.
Trigger Warning: This speaks of physical and emotional violence by teachers, caste based abuse, and contains some graphic details, and may be triggering for survivors.
When I was in Grade 10, I flunked my first preliminary examination in Mathematics. My mother was in a panic. An aunt recommended the Maths classes conducted by the Maths sir she knew personally. It was a much sought-after class, one of those classes that you signed up for when you were in the ninth grade itself back then, all those decades ago. My aunt kindly requested him to take me on in the middle of the term, despite my marks in the subject, and he did so as a favour.
Math had always been a nightmare. In retrospect, I wonder why I was always so terrified of math. I’ve concluded it is because I am a head in the cloud person and the rigor of the step by step process in math made me lose track of what needed to be done before I was halfway through. In today’s world, I would have most probably been diagnosed as attention deficit. Back then we had no such definitions, no such categorisations. Back then we were just bright sparks or dim.
Pathaan touted as SRK’s comeback has been in the news for mixed reasons. Right from the hype around SRK’s comeback and special mentions his body contours; yet I can't watch it!
The movie touted as SRK’s comeback has been in the news for mixed reasons. Right from the hype around the movie being SRK’s comeback and special mentions his body contours and even more than the female lead!
For me, it’s not about Deepika’s bikini colour or was-it-needed skin show. It’s about meaningful content that I find is missing big time. Not just this movie, but a spate of cringe-worthy narratives passed off as ‘movies’ in the recent past. I feel insulted, and not because I am a devoutly religious person or a hardcore feminist, but because I feel the content insults my intelligence.
But before everything else, I am a 90s kid who in the case of movies (and maybe more) is stuck in time as it wrapped around me then and the gamut has too hard an exterior for me to crack it open!
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