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There was the Draupadi of the Mahabharata, whose voice wasn't heard, but she took revenge. There are thousands of them now, every day, in every home. Only a few speak up; how do they avenge themselves?
There was the Draupadi of the Mahabharata, whose voice wasn’t heard, but she took revenge. There are thousands of them now, every day, in every home. Only a few speak up; how do they avenge themselves?
Targeted by a hundred powerful arrows of lust,
She sang a lonely aria
Rending the times that were
And was avenged
By the gory sight of
A hundred torn pieces of entrails
Pulled out violently from inside the perpetrators
And strewn
Carelessly
On the bloody battlefield –
Work of classic craftsmanship attributable
To the capable warrior husbands.
But the modern day Draupadi is just a woman,
Consigned to the pages of
A musty, mouldy history-
Mottled with indifference
Flecked by incorrigibility.
Her heart wrenching aria
Distorted by doubting listeners,
Attenuated by time,
No longer stir
The callous mind and the stone cold heart
Retribution flees in shame.
Vengeance hides in the alcove of oblivion.
Images source: YouTube, By Bollywood Hungama, CC BY 3.0, Link
Preeth Ganapathy is an officer of the Indian Revenue Service. Her works have been published in a number of online literary magazines and journals. 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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