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Marriage advertised: every household in India wants a bride who is convent educated, fair kind, and maybe comes with some gold!
A fair and beautiful bride is desired.
Capable of lighting the kitchen’s fire.
Convent educated with a disposition benign.
Who could breed sons in a line?
Decorating herself with her family’s ornamental pride.
No matter who’s wrong, she will be tried.
Precious and valuable like a sapphire.
With a purity to withstand the burning pyre.
A girl who will make the Fortune in favour, turn.
With skills and qualifications that will help her earn.
Her in-laws will not let tears glisten in her eye.
Bruises of childhood will now become scars on the thigh.
“Laxmi of the house”: wealth personified, she is.
Yet no wealth is as easy to part, as this.
Her purpose in life, since birth, is told:
To breed for a family she hardly knows.
“The princess will now become the queen.”
Her reign however is nowhere to be seen.
Her nuptial makes all happily grieve.
Darling Daughter with dowry is driven.
This poem is a part of the 2015 anthology entitled An Address to Indian Patriarchy by Nishtha Mishra.
Image source: Philippe Degrootee, free and edited on CanvaPro
Dr. Nishtha Mishra is an internationally published author. She is a Doctorate in English Literature from one of the reputed Central Universities. She has been an all round topper and has 5 gold medals to read more...
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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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