A tale of two mothers ft. working or home-maker?!

Like every regular day, twitter got embroiled in a soup once again – this time over the opinion about the superiority of home makers over working mothers by a certain supposedly well read doctor – and it got me wondering about my own experience with mothers. Plural.

To be born into a household that was on the cusp of radicalized millennial changes in the small town of Rourkela back in 90s, thanks to two extremely well educated parents who had not only been state toppers but also made sure to study in blue blood institutions in engineering and medicine respectively, my upbringing could be at best progressive (Caution: In certain things). Where everyone in my school was asked, “What is the occupation of your father?”, I was among the rare few who could excitedly chip in – My mum is an Obstetrician and Gynaecologist! (With extreme difficulty in pronouncing obstetrics, so going from obstet..trix..tics.. to O&G eventually). People stared in awe, and I would chuckle on the outside but be completely clueless about the implications of the same since I had a lot of grievances because of the same since my mother was doing post graduation and had to live away from us for her residency program in my growing up years.

All the girls in my primary school used to come bearing beautiful plaits, powdered faces and crisp uniforms ironed to the thread. Yet, no one would comb my hair leave alone putting it into a plait. My skirts would be horribly oversized due to the dud estimation of my dad who either believed his daughter was smaller than she was rapidly growing into being or larger if the previous size didn’t fit perfectly. I wouldn’t know what face powder was, but carry my smudged chubby cheeks around with nonchalance. My tiffin had chips everyday while I used to crave other boxes for the condiments in it. Despite being a hooligan in my neighbourhood, I was scared to shit in the school with the girls towering over me with double the height and would get bullied everyday. They found me weird, but I couldn’t help tell them I found them weirder. What do you mean your mom stays at home and is available for you every time? You get to hug your mom? She helps you with your homework? She makes hot food for you? I pined.

But where I did not have my own mother, I had god’s favourite angel in the form of my aunt – My beloved Maa. She took charge of me from the day I was in my diapers and crawling around the house. Her hands weaved magic in food even though she knew zilch about arithmetic and English. She couldn’t help me with my homework but she taught me all the shlokas and made me meditate everyday for 20 minutes to tame the tempest in me. She couldn’t see a single flaw in me and I could literally imagine a halo on head everywhere she walked. She would never force me to eat vegetables, and I could chomp on it to glory as my grandfather and father protested in the back. I might not have my mother to hug but I could snuggle up to my Maa quietly when she was asleep and fall asleep to her rhythmic rise and fall of her breath. She was a god fearing woman and with her I learnt all the scriptures and the ways to do pooja perfectly. I got my religion from her which eventually transformed to spirituality in adulthood, yet my belief in her prayers remained more than my belief in god.

When my mom finished her post-graduation and senior residency to come back, there was a chasm that couldn’t be filled. To put it plainly, I did not know her. I did not know or bond with my own mother. She became the person who I would see for the first few hours of the day, only to disappear and then return in the night – by when we would be done with our food and preparing to sleep or well asleep. My world revolved around the constants I recognized to not make effort for the variables again. My mother gave up as well. We welcomed my younger sibling, who again went through the same chasm of having an extremely busy mother with a roaring practice – and she inevitably became my kid. I had to wipe her poop, change her diapers, teach her how to walk, ride and eat (though I stole her last bite of chocolate and food).

Time passed, I went through the raging teens and reached the crucial board years – 10th boards. My father had scolded me again because I had performed poorly in my mock and didn’t do as well as the neighbour’s kid. I locked myself in the room wondering what was the best possible route to run away to the Himalayas – when my extremely tired mother after work came in with a bunch of new notebooks in her hand, extremely fancy highlighters, pen and three review books she had purchased for Board preparations. She smiled and kept all of it on my table. I had a rush of endorphins as my weakest spot had been hit – new Stationery! She sat down on the bed next to my table and charted out a study plan. Since my mum returned home at 10:30pm from hospital we would finish dinner by 11 and then sit down to study from 11pm to 2am with one hour each for Physics, Chemistry and Biology. Morning hours were for all the other subjects I liked and could manage on my own with a target set for 100 arithmetic problems for Mathematics every day. Thus began my preparatory month for Boards. Mum would come drained from work but come with a flask of her handmade coffee for me, sit down with the newspaper or a book or a magazine on the bed in my room sometimes reading, half sleeping while I studied away to glory. At sharp 1 she would leave to sleep while I would either sleep or continue solving problems blasting the radio on earphones till wee mornings. When everyone would wake up and see me burning the midnight oil they would be shocked while I would chuckle at their concern. Slowly I was getting familiar with my mother, I could notice the lines on her face from stress, the softness with which she would explain topics to me without getting cranky like my dad, she never hit me once but would always have a kind word for every obstacle I got stuck in. Slowly, I grew familiar with my own mother. On the day of board exams my Maa fed me curd with sugar while my Mamma gave a big bar of dairy milk (A tradition that would long continue from 10th to 12th to multiple entrances, MBBS professional examinations and MS). The day I got my results and secured 94% I started crying and my mom who was sitting beside me started laughing- “Why are you crying?”

“Because I did so poorly. I should have been first no?”

She laughed and patted me, “I think you did very well. Be happy for your success”, and then with every happy call she made telling friends and relatives my percentage I got more assured of her belief in me.

Time passed. We went through my boards, the decisiveness of entrances where I didn’t know what to become and was just winging it weighing my options of joining NIT or medicine but was clueless about the branches in engineering leave alone becoming an engineer. My path had been carefully laid out to become a doctor since childhood with there being none on the paternal side, but once I crossed the gate of medical college an entire wave of realization came dawning over me. I flunked in my first test and called my mom crying – “Mamma, I am so dumb. How can I become a doctor?”

My mom laughed that day as well borrowing a leaf from her experience – every topper in school feels dumb in medical college. You are not alone. It’s just onward and upward from here.

Being compared to my mom in every lecture and barraged with questions from my professors made me realize the legacy I was trying to live up to. Yet when I went home everyday (being a day scholar) I saw the humility with which my mom led her life and fell more in awe of her. From dealing with my failures to seeing me secure double honors, to seeing my issues in friendships to giving me the green light to relationships – my mom gave the flight to my wings till she couldn’t restrict me within her protected environment anymore. I rebelled and did my MS in Karnataka and continued with fellowship in Bangalore. Where a carpet of flowers awaited me to takeover my mother’s practice with the reputation and hard work over the years, I tolerate corporate politics, the struggle of breaking into a closeted field as a first generation doctor in head and neck Oncosurgery in a different world. Every week I work for 96 hours or more, I am on call most of the time and I skip meals left, right and center – and every time I realize the sacrifices and lifestyle my mother led when I used to judge her for not spending time with me. In my personal and professional challenges having such a well educated mother has given me a broader perspective on every doubt I have and let me explore things in a rational way. She is among the few I do not have to explain my lifestyle to, because she knows. While people get offended thinking I do not give them time because I have progressed in life, my mother understands the pitfalls of the career trajectory’s upward curve.

I have my mother’s resilience and strong will, while I carry my Maa’s softness and nurturing nature. One gave me brains and the other gave me a safe home to come back to in my growing years. One made the world’s best chicken biryani while the other wouldn’t come 50 feet close to anything non-vegetarian but make the best comfort food in vegetarian cuisine. When I got my heart broken, both came and tended me to life each time. When I have told them countless times to not worry about me, they have secretly worried and prayed for me. When countless potential mothers-in-law in arranged matrimony have found flaws in me, making unreasonable demands, my mothers have stood rock solid behind me telling I am no less because someone found me less for their son and family. They still look at me as their beloved little quiet one who will get lost in the corner of the house reading a book, transporting to a faraway land. They still hit their head with frustration and laughter because I would give my slippers to some beggar and come back home barefoot or money to some person on the streets because I found her needy. They still know of my pain even if I don’t tell putting on a brave, smiling face and will overcompensate with home cooked food or bakes. With a soft heart comes great suffering. They desired love and life for me, and knew the price I had to pay for the independence I enjoy. Watching them smile at the flights I take, makes me believe in the generations of women I have healed in my family by being the way I have been.

So when you debate whether it is better to have a working mother or one at home, I had to tell the tale of my two mothers, and to be very frank – I wouldn’t choose one from both. They are just mothers at the end of the day.

To the unlimited selfless love of mothers,

Working or otherwise,

To my mamma and Maa,

Love,

P.

#womeninsurgery and other things ft. Happy Women’s day!

“It’s a beautiful day to save lives”, a line from the show Grey’s anatomy which took a million girls by storm and thrust them into a surgical career to follow into the footsteps of Meredith Grey – someone I would learn off much later, connect to and sometimes be appalled at because of the hot mess she is. I had no clue, not a wee bit that looking at women in surgery and being a woman in surgery required such nerves of steel.

It’s a beautiful day today to pen down a post on what my almost inconsequential baby steps into the field of surgery has meant to me. From watching my mother run back and forth from home to hospital at any time of the day gulping an entire roti in bites of four – to me repeating the same pattern and barely managing to see my beautiful 2bhk that I maintain with sky high rent while working 90hr weeks and an NBM more than my patients.

The world has changed most definitely – there are more women in surgery – you have no idea how heartwarming it is to see when someone who said they are confused whether they should take Pediatrics or Pathology (because that’s what expected of ideal female doctors to get into and build family in a nurturing role that allows them to balance home with) instead of taking surgery, finally taking the surgical branch. There are more women in Super speciality surgical branches  even though a female pursuing an Mch degree is considered as ‘too ambitious’, ‘unsuitable for family life’, ‘won’t manage home’ and deemed unfit in the marriage market because the ones who make the demands are like fiefs sitting in a bazaar bartering women by the degrees and wanting the moolah alongside the demands of “Will you step back when it’s time to plan a family?” I had met a gastrosurgeon once who told how he led a busy life with 16-18 hours surgery and was unable to contribute to home yet he expects the surgeon wife in a similarly demanding field to be okay with him coming and going as he pleased and taking a step back when needed. He proudly declared how his friends had earlier told that a surgeon wife would be unsuitable.  It was almost funny, yet ironic. I have always watched how my father despite not being from the medical field has taken an almost indulgent share in my mother’s flourishing obstetric career braving her late night labour calls and OTs by dropping her back and forth from hospital sometimes sleeping in the parking lot. Never making demands of what a ‘conventional wife’ must do. Thinking of new ways to see her grow in her career and I have realized for every brave woman in surgery there also a braver partner who supports her through it. The ones who remind them that they got their back through it all. May we all be blessed with them.

Being a woman in surgery is knowing all this and also battling the learning curve alongside. While your biological clocks keep ticking you are their struggling in the OT under the lights. Your bodies through period flow and cramps standing through 12 hour OTs performing to its best –  because in surgery neither there are excuses nor sorry. You only get one chance and you have to grab it. For women these chances are also quite rare to come by.

I did my residency in one of the prestigious colleges in Karnataka – yet there was a whispered adage in the department – your life goes smooth in this department if you are a guy. The guys clinked glasses with the professors in private and in the classes gave mind numbingly stupid answers only to get away with it and be performing a procedure alone in OT the next day. The beauty of it was your self doubt would keep  increasing exponentially while they muddled in their ignorant bliss to glory. With surgical learning curve being so steep, you were left at the very negative odds of it. There are times you wonder if you should have taken a more female friendly branch – Dermatology or perhaps OBG. Yet somehow my uncle’s face during his last days of battle with cancer kept haunting my brain and I wondered what is this field which despite having a family of doctors we could never decipher or beat. Thus began my journey into it.

Four years down the  lane do I regret being in a branch that literally sucks my soul and makes me doubt myself everyday as I begin from the scratch – learning, unlearning and learning again? Yes, most definitely yes. There are times I feel I could have taken a medical branch and just been at it. Sometimes even the most ridiculously sweet patients, stories and gooey mush my heart is  in with the countless number of compliments, blessings that my patients give me falls short when a male surgeon misbehaves with me or tells me how girls are not fit for this – when the male locker room talk in operative procedures makes me feel like running away from the crassness of it all. When you do not get the same respect as a male surgeon by the nursing staff who treat them with more gravitas. Where your talent and skills are kept to the side and you can be just reduced to someone hit on or ogled at. When sheer exhaustion takes over with the balance of personal and professional. When yet another family friend – a doctor couple – tells my parents that they made a mistake letting me get into Head and neck surgery because guys do not see me as wife material. When yet another duty, yet another long shift and yet another exhausting day at work doesn’t leave me with the headspace to talk to my loved ones and suspect if everyone is actually true? That as a girl I might have forayed into something that’s professionally exciting yet personally draining. Maybe it’s time to take a step back?

But again I hold the scalpel and get the shivers like I did the first time – the happy ones – and as I slice open a neck I realize I am doing something that none of my forefathers, family or friends have dreamt of doing. I get to see the things that no one in my vicinity has done and tell a silent prayer to that little girl who dreamt big dreams and is getting to live it. I do my OPDs and rounds and ward rounds and know that I bring an empathy that most men can’t and that’s what sets me apart every time a patient smiles and remembers my face even after days.  I get handed a oddly sketched drawing by a patient’s child who wanted to give me a chocolate or get a text from patient I discharged home happily a week back,  “thank you happy women’s day for all that you do so exceptionally” or get hugged randomly by a patient or an ajji through a difficult diagnosis and know that some way I have impacted and made someone’s life better. When I am in my night shifts or in between OTs and have someone to ask me if I ate or slept through my shifts and bear my mood swings through it all and I wonder – being a woman in surgery is not a big deal once you have the right support system for it? Having parents who nitpicked yet let me grow academically/ professionally to the fullest which many, many, many girls step back with the lack of fills my heart with plain gratitude. No one will ever understand the sacrifices it takes to be family or a friend to a female surgeon – yet people do, and I am grateful for it. I am grateful for all the mess I am and every person who takes the pain and pleasure in unraveling it. Being in an unconventional path might have taken its toll, but in the end I have been left only with the realest ones.

As women we have held ourselves back for far too long by confining ourselves to the purview of what can be done or cannot to a point we don’t even know what we want anymore. We do not take credit, we do not make our presence known, neither our sacrifices or the work or love we put into the tiniest of things in our day to day lives. Here is to speaking up more, letting our presence known and most importantly letting ourselves be okay with acknowledging it.

So, here’s to all the brave women and braver #womeninsurgery – may we know them, may we be them and may we raise them. To having the magic of scalpel in our hands.

Happy Women’s Day ! 🙂

Love,

P.

PS:

The sketched chocolate my patient’s child gave me. ❤️

PPS:

In my happy space.

Woman

I am convinced woman is not a human
I am convinced.
She must be made of clay and paper
Forever mouldable
Forever weighed
Forever written in
(With no words of her own)
No speech
No tantrum
No opinion
(Her adulation compared with her silence)

I am convinced a woman is not a human.
I am convinced.
She is pitted against each of her own
Like mad bulls.
Sometimes beauty
Sometimes fidelity
A man’s disgress being always pointed
To a woman’s folly.

I am convinced a woman is not a human.
I am convinced.
She is made to fit into sizes and labels
Counted by dowry not degrees
Skin tone and measuring scales
Recipes and confined spaces.
All to be born with a pleasant demeanor.

I am convinced.
I am convinced a woman is not a human
She is a toy for the world to do as they please.
Think less
Talk less
Do more
Silence your mind for all you know
For the doll given to you as a kid
Is the woman you ought to become.

A letter to my 3 day old sister

Dear baby,
I wonder what your world will be!
You’ll outlive me by a whole 26 years
I wonder what all you’ll see!

I have seen a tiny, tiny virus
Outsmart mighty, mighty empires
And our little wicked schemes
Taking down a rat’s race that thought itself bigger than nature’s scheme.

I have seen forests consumed by hell-fires
But nothing more consuming than desire
Of harrowed men trapped,
In a never ending stream of wanting.

I have seen faith,
I have seen love,
I have seen all you can,
And what to do when you cannot.

I have the felt the fresh breeze off mountain ranges
I have dipped my soul in holy Ganges
When I have washed off my sins,
I have added his name afresh.

The one that still makes me feel a million things,
Yet let me tell you
Most boys will break your hearts
Even if  butterflies and unicorns – are what you feel in the beginning.

But you’ll always stand,
Taller than ever,
Your heart will love harder than ever,
And at the end of it all, you’ll fall in true love – the one with yourself.

I have seen friends
I have seen friendship
Sometimes both seem different
I have wondered why it is.

I have had family though,
Mine and ours,
Standing by when noone did.
Cause blood respects blood but water takes the shape of every vessel it’s kept in.

Respect everyone,
Expect from none,
And maybe when you live another year after year,
You’ll thank your sister who lived 26 less, albeit happily.

DEAR VIKRAM FROM #THAPPAD – WHAT YOU AND I BOTH NEEDED TO LEARN FROM AMU

Vikram, tumhari galti nahi thi. I needed to start with this. You know, few days back in my locality a neighbor filed a domestic violence against her husband; when her husband hit her she filed an FIR, she stood in the dead of night in the rain not going inside the house – it surprised me in the most surprising way. I thought it was brave of her, not that it was logical – why didn’t I think a man hitting his wife is something that can be resolved, Vikram? Maybe because I have seen a drunken uncle beat his wife and watched her never walk away and people hail it as the ultimate sacrifice for keeping the family reputation intact. Maybe because I have seen the women in my family being taught their place too. Maybe because my mother defends that and tells me I should obey when my husband will ask me to do too. Maybe because my mother tells me stories of how when a man cheats on his wife it’s always because the wife never kept him happy; not that he cheated. Maybe because my father would tell a woman who speaks creates family problems. Maybe because the guy I dated in college told me he didn’t consider me wife material as I have a lot of opinions. Maybe I did tone down for him – removing myself from social sphere, wearing only ethnic, lowering my voice and self to find his place under him. Why did I want to be under him, Vikram? Do we come from the same conditioning? Do we think everything can be compromised as long as we seem perfect to the world with having a relationship than working out a relationship?

How can it be your fault when even my mother, my Maa, my aunts, my conditioning of years and years has taught me to compromise. How can it be your fault when I see what you did and I found Amu’s response unreasonable too. How can it be your fault when I saw those one or two kisses or a hug you gave here and there to the efforts Amu made and thought it was enough too. How can it be your fault when in my family men decided what women wear, how they talk, how they behave, their pitch for years and my mothers never chose to protest; sometimes not even me. How can it be your fault when a family’s reputation is always greater than a woman’s needs. How can it be your fault for doing everything a middle class man has been taught to do?

Vikram tumhari galti toh bilkul bhi nahi thi. You went to office, you worked, you tried to best in your work – it was great, I cheered for you. I am a career minded woman – I know how difficult it is. The pressure of having to perform, the office politics, the deadlines, the meetings, the appraisals… you know. It’s perfectly reasonable to burst out – I do myself – on my Maa, my mother, my best friend, my sister – but I wonder why never on the guy in my life. I thought I was a feminist, I am the equal in the relationship – but I never make it hard on the literal “man” in the relationship. Maybe, a part of me has accepted the conditioning and compromised. Maybe a part of me feels, it has to bend to a man and massage his ego always. How can it be your fault when the woman never knew how she deserved to be treated? When Amu admits that “hum dono mein sab baraabar ka tha.. woh office sambhalega aur mein ghar”, it sounded so simple – hogayi hai emancipation – but home is not only about household work; it has relationships and emotions too; she never distributed that load with you – how is it your fault?

When you went to Amu’s house after she leaves your home after you hit her and offered her a hug, a simple apology and an ornament as a gift to ask her to come back – I was floored. If I was in her place I would’ve come back – why are my expectations so low, Vikram? My father always taught me how I should be ruthless in my career, i followed it; he taught me to be ruthless in the world and reign over it, I try to do it; but that night when he and I were discussing he said how Sita should have towed the Lakshman Rekha and she faced all she did as she didn’t listen to the advice of her elder. I asked him who is the elder – he said Ram – I asked innocently, “By age?” – he replied, “No, by being her husband.” “How being someone’s husband makes you their elder?”, I told this to my father and he said I will have a lot of problems in my marriage in future. Even my aunt tells me this every time I tell her a guy treated me poorly – she tells it’s something I have done. She never sees how the guy mistreated me in the first place for me to burst out on him. In the end you said you hit her because you thought you had a right on her; is this what my father and aunt meant too, Vikram? Is making a guy my husband or my partner allowing him to draw the lines for me? Is it letting him treat me whatever way he wants and me having to be the one that compromises and massages his ego each time? Don’t I need to be taken care of emotionally too?

Vikram tumhari galti thi aur meri bhi. You know I love fairy tales. I was even obsessed with Twilight. Now that I am 26, my best friend tries to convince me of even liking Christian Grey. But you see the pattern right? Emotionally unavailable men, with supernatural skills or unnatural wealth as their only saving grace. Unhealthy romances with the guy being so unsure of his feelings he decided to fuck up the girl’s brain too; the love is in the chase – not the man. The love is in the outer covering, not the insides – when millennial girls are raised on these, will they demand healthy guys who know how to treat a woman right ever? They won’t. I have seen the media of our parental generation – if it taught them unhealthy marriages; my generation media and movies has taught unhealthy romance. Arjun Reddy and Kabir Singh is famous – psycho guys who control the woman of their life and are toxic to every other girl calling it love. I think just like Amu and you took a break from each other finally to understand how you both can grow as healthy individuals to begin again with or without each other in the future – our generation needs to revaluate what’s love and needs to grow too.

I hope you and Amu find each other again at a later point of your life when you have figured out your shortcomings. Yes, I don’t denounce you as bad – how can you bad when you were conditioned to behave that way. We can’t decide where we came from – but we can definitely decide where we to go. I hope you find your place, even if it’s not next to Amu as her husband again – I hope you both are great parents to your child.

Love,

A girl who will try to be Amu from now on.

***

PS : I am glad to be living in times when a movie like #Thappad is being made. It has taught me how to demand not only a financially secure future with a man but an emotionally secure future too. It has laid out roles for everyone in this. If you are a girl’s father you get to look at Amu’s dad who was rock solid support for Amu from start till end – and even didn’t hesitate chiding his son from misbehaving with his girlfriend trying to save him from being another Vikram. If you are a mother-in- law it teaches you to be like Amu’s mother-in-law in the end letting her go and be happy. If you are a neighbor it’s being like Dia Mirza in this movie refusing to give false witness to save Vikram’s ass and tell that she had a wonderful husband who respected her and treated her the right way – he shouldn’t try to obliterate the respect she has for men-kind. If you are stuck in a bad love marriage like Nethra looking for escape outside marriage, trying to find your lost lover in another guy, maybe you need an escape from the marriage itself; not try to honor lost love by sticking to an unhappy marriage and fuck up the guy’s life outside your marriage too. I thought the housemaid’s ignorance and acceptance of her poverty and living will always let her accept that her husband bashed her up to show that he is a man every night. If she could rise above that to stand up against her man – can’t we? We can. If you are the man who I build my future with reading this, I hope you know now what we both need to bring to the table. I won’t compromise and I won’t let you too. Let’s be equals, for real.

“Just a slap?”

“Just a slap par nahi maar sakta.”

Let them fly!

People close to me know that I own a parrot. Not many know it’s origins though. We never bought it. It came by itself – flying and got trapped in the loft on our terrace – there was an occupant present, a guy who lived there then – who took the bird, bought a cage and kept it in that. In the evening when he presented the parrot to us, we were on the verge of freeing it, but my little sister who had taken a fancy to it; and quite a small child at that time, couldn’t be shushed – so stay with us, it did. My sister grew up and over the years her fascination with the slowly aging bird diminished. I am quite fond of the bird as well, even though it has bitten me several times in trying to befriend it; but keeping a bird trapped in a cage hurt my conscience – so, after considerable thought, I decided to set the bird free. I have this evening ritual, where I go up to the terrace, sit on the ledge, watch the sunset and contemplate. What I did was take my parrot alongwith me, as well. I would rest the cage on a surface and open it’s door and walkaway, continuing with my business, hoping that it would fly out. To my disappointment, it didn’t. This went on for days. I tried calling it out; luring with mine and his favorite Marie gold biscuits, but it won’t budge. One fine day, it even came up to the gate, and slammed it shut on my extremely astonished face. I gave up! It had got used to it’s bondage. It deeply saddened me.

When I think of Indian women, the ones occupying the nitty gritty of the country – I see a woman who has got used to the bondage. The pattern of behavior and character mould set by years and years of patriarchy. These are not the women twisting the definitions of feminism to suit their demands for a twisted lifestyle. These are the ones deprived of equality. These are ones who do not question why the entire load of household falls on them. Why they are made to feel an outsider in the home they were married to, made their own but didn’t own them in return. These are the ones who are not allowed to enter kitchens and touch items during menstruation. These are the ones who are silently molested, raped, burnt, violated every single day in some or the other part of the country with no hopes of justice. These are the ones not allowed to love; flogged, tortured, killed or made to succumb to demands of family honour. These are the ones who bow their heads while someone decides how their life should be lived. These are the ones who are handed out a sentence of marriage; while their careers are considered unimportant. These are the ones struggling for basic human rights to live while their urban sisters ignore and raise a hue and cry over extramarital affairs, polygamy, ‘free the nipple’, and other shit. These are the ones who are trapped in a cage, and will soon forget how to fly.

Let’s free them, before it’s too late; before they forget how to fly. Let’s free them and watch them soar – equal with men, or even higher – they can decide the altitude of their flight; but first, let them fly!

Good girls don’t behave like this

My father told me, and told me, “Good girls don’t behave like this.”

They keep their morals high, and their hemlines low.

They don’t talk back, they don’t put up a show.

They don’t have an opinion, unless it’s carefully dipped in molten honey; trimmed and speckled, until it’s an acknowledgement.

They don’t have a life – “Do it after your marriage”, “Want it after your marriage”, and likewise.

They don’t go out without filling a requisition form for how many hours, places, people, yards of cloth on them.

They live within their limits – “Sita had her lakshman rekha, you have the boundary of our house”.

They aren’t friends with boys, they don’t talk to men – because her character is the neighbourhood gossip and the family’s honour is in the parts of her body.

They don’t fall in love, they fall in arrangement; where they are shipped off early as a sacrificial lamb with other offerings to be devoured by customs and customers of life.

They don’t demand, they accept; they don’t complain, they forget – how they had to put up with decades of inequality and how they have to put up with more.

How this is the only way they can be saved from being abused, molested, raped, burnt and filmed; by not wanting more than what their fore-‘fathers’ had decided was enough for them.

For my father told me, and told me, “Good girls don’t behave like this.” but he didn’t tell his son, “Good boys don’t behave like this”.

 

Dear woman.

Dear woman, 

Do you get tired?

Do you get tired of being peddled as a body,

Just a body?

*

A lump of bone and mass,

A face with cake of snow.

Your mouth zipped shut,

A lock on all that you know.

Smile, smile, smile and blush at the ground,

“Hey, you are an object of our desire. Be feminine. We’ll do the talking, bro”.

*

Your eyes lined,

Your hair made straight;

Your lips plumped up,

Your skin – porcelain ware.

Your body corseted to angles, fit to be savoured by men and men alike.

Never a person in their eyes –

Just a butt,

Just a cleavage,

Just a pile of flesh giving them their high.

*

You strut the 7 inches walk,

with 5 layers of white, 3 tubes of red lip queen and 17 tries of winged eye.

You’re measured from side to side,

“38-36-forty? 3/10, send in the next chick, yo!”

Numbers, numbers, numbers – all that you are.

Reduced, rated and picked apart.

*

You are at war with yourself,

and with others too.

That girl he looked at when he was with you,

“That slutty bitch she tricked my perfect man’s eyes with her large boobs.”

Ha.

You try and try to be more,

while he continues to be less for you.

And in this struggle to be more, you become less too.

*

I wouldn’t mind,

but you have condemned yourself,

and others too –

to believed that it’s the only way a woman deserves love,

That she can’t be fire – just someone’s flame, lusty wants

that she can’t weave poetries, have a faraway glance,

but be moulded to the fancies of a man.

That she isn’t more than relationships,

that she needs to be tied down to someone to feel validated,

that she is beautiful only when a man tells her so

That she needs to have YOU as her parameter of comparison,

a photoshopped reality

and that dear woman, is the tragedy of you.

*

P.G.