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A girl becomes a woman by learning to navigate public spaces to ensure that she is safe from the hands that are always there, or else be caged "for her own good".
A girl becomes a woman by learning to navigate public spaces to ensure that she is safe from the hands that are always there, or else be caged “for her own good”.
The first time you step out on your own is a lesson. You teach yourself the art of contortion. Twist and turn, Swivel and dodge Until fingers can’t touch, can’t reach, can’t stake a claim to what is not theirs. Because if they do, they’ll lock YOU up in boxes, saying your body already knows how to bend And that a cage is always safer than a coffin.
They’ll say you dreamed too much of streets that only had echoes of the footsteps behind you, That had smoke and mirrors, But no faces, Just conversations and stillness. They’ll say I don’t see it so it must not be true. I don’t hear screaming so there are only songs. They’ll say I am happy and safe outside and you will be too, just not here.
The hundredth time you step out, draping a shawl becomes a force of habit. An old rotting armour against fear, that is always new, always there, always reminding you of a distant whistle. The jingling of keys and pens and pepper spray in your bag take on the rhythm of a hymn sung in the wrong hour.
When it’s dark, there are phone calls acting as lodestars begging you to come home, asking you to wash off the grime when we all know that dust is not the only reason it was so hard to breathe,
Every time you step out, there is a battle cry heard somewhere between your breath and heartbeat, teaching that You walk in spaces you own But that don’t belong to you.
Image source: shutterstock
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Dear Women’s Web Community Member,
You may have wondered at our being on the quieter side during the last couple of months. Thank you for your patience, and we wanted to come back to you with a detailed note on what’s been happening at our end of things.
When we first began Women’s Web, as a blog from one woman’s desk along with a few like-minded souls, little could we have imagined the heights that it would soar to. Over the years, Women’s Web has published over 20000 stories (almost all by women), empowered countless women with the ideas, community and resources to chase their dreams, employed hundreds of women in core and project-based roles, and in the process, emerged as the OG women’s community in India. It has also inspired many others to build communities of a similar nature, all enabling women (and other-underrepresented groups) in their own ways.
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