Those flurry
lights of Delhi metro as usual reflected the search for a seat. I didn’t manage
a seat, but a woman dressed up in sari, with mustard shawl wrapped around her
shoulders entered with her son. She would have been into her mid 30’s and her
son would have been 8-10 years of age.
She was
silent and her eyes didn’t blink. She was continuously looking at the side of
the tunnel, which was dark. Her eyes and even her vision were constant. The
silent women, I felt was mourning upon her experiences of life time.
Experiences, which might have been as dark as the tunnel…
The
beginning of would have been her escape from womb; when she would have first
cursed for gender. The smile on her parents face would have vanished on looking
at her genital. Later the progress of her experiences would have been by
restrictions on her growth. The cries would have been bifurcated by considering
hunger as the least. All these thoughts pondered my minds and spoke the worst
through her silent cries. There was rage in her eyes. Stations were passing,
and I just hoped to read more out of her eyes.
She was
holding her son close to her, as if she was wondering of herself being caged
within the premises of her parental reputation. Reputation: that had forbidden
her from wandering freely in the society, considering her liberty to be a sin
for her parents to stand with heads-up. The process of home-cage must have
begun with limiting her education over her male siblings, and considering a veil
important after her puberty. The shawl wrapped around her shoulders was
displaying her fragileness, and the delicate and bowed down shoulders portrayed
her sensitivity of born as a female. All after and during her puberty she would
have gained conscious of being a delicate, sensitive and not so wanted
personality, with few human and forced biological actions upon her body. Criticism
for her menstrual cycles during which, she would not have allowed to be touch
and being touched.
I was just trying to somehow go deep into her eyes
to get a look in the shallow rivers of being born a female in the scrutinized
‘Manu’ scripted society. With the suddenness one day she would have been informed
of her marriage with a ‘Male’. A human with a different genitals, and superior
to her was now to decide, and rule her next to her parents. She would have been
forced to follow the rule of ‘father prestige upon daughter’s shoulders’. She
now would have to follow every action of keeping her father’s prestige upright,
by obeying her husband and his family. Now she was the ‘property’ of her
husband.
Following
her marriage she would have entered the process of ‘reproduction’ and not ‘love
making’, she would have been sent to trauma of not giving birth to an image of
her’s. Fortunately she gave birth to her husband’s image. After the process of birth,
everyone would have engaged in loving the adorable. None considered the
birth-cramps she suffered and none even thanked her, but she must have thanked
to that creator of not giving her another image of herself. The infant then
would have considered alike his father. His nose, ears and lips would have
forcibly matched to his father’s. The only left duty of her would be to feed
the baby.
PLIGHT;
The junction
approached and she stood up. It was her station to de-board. And I was just
left wondering of how calmly she is now adapted to society, which consider her
as apart from itself? How now she even got engaged in loving a son as a mother,
and living with the blessing of not having a daughter. Slowly within the time
travels her pains would have vanished, and later she would have just realized
her position: she was a birth giver to a Male Child. She had attained the
prestige for herself; but somewhere down there in her eyes is still the
reflection of her pains, her desires which were ending, her dreams which were
restricted, her wants which were limited and her individuality which has been
moderated.
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