Enigma

I long to hear the answers
To questions I am afraid to ask
I long to know what expression plays
Behind that carefully painted mask

I long to hear an actual lie
Just to prove me right
I long to know just who you are
Under the darkness of night

I long to see that smile slip, just once
For a single second's truth
I long to know the shattered old soul
That weeps behind your youth

I long to watch you twitch and stammer
Rather than look me in the eye, straight
I long for that polished demeanour to slip
And to know, for once, that you took the bait

I long for you to show me the cracks
Beneath the glazed perfection
I long to know that I got to you too
That you were not my exception

I long to know what time will reveal
Was it set up to fall?
I long to know the answer at last
Was it real, at all?

What Time Teaches You

That regret burns, much more than guilt ever could.

That feeling worthwhile is difficult and fleeting.

 That "should haves" will keep you awake at night.

That love has no reason, but hate always does.

That loneliness shatters.

That time heals, but scars are often permanent.

That hope and expectation are very different things.

That we were built for infinite emotion.

That we often forgive to avoid forgetting.

That mirrors never lie.

That life is indeed, unfair.

That there are times when logic fails

That we don't always love those who love us.

That choices have consequences. Which will find their way to you. 

That fears will be faced. 

That we are often mistaken about who we really are.

That faith must be blind.

That people change. 

Why do you fear the rage in my eyes?

Why do you quell when you look at me now?

I remember when the only image

You would have seen in my eyes

Was you

Pure, unblemished, perfect.

A reflection of you cast in my soul and framed in my eyes

Now all I feel is blank

I see you standing there

I still see you

But I don’t feel you

I don’t contain you

And painfully

I don’t understand you

Every time you call my name

My heart beats a little faster

In fear.  Not elation

Every time we pass each other

Mumbled politeness

When once you knew secrets

I was afraid to tell myself

I thought we were meant to be

That our rhythms were cast in tandem

That the world could never trip me up

Because you would never let go

I was wrong

I wish every day I wasn’t

I feel like a phoenix

Dying in the hope of being reborn

But all you do,

Is sweep up the ashes

And trash them.

No being reborn for me

I wish you’d just let me burn

In eternal agonizing brilliance

That torture must be less

Than looking at you now

And seeing someone 

I no longer recognize

When You Give a Daughter Away

 (This piece was written for the Media Corner of the Kerala State Women's Development Corporation. Do take a look at their website, and if you wish to contribute a piece of writing in any form, on any subject relating to women, please feel free to send it in to cd2@kswdc.org)

Remember when as a child, you'd go to the store with your parents, and stop at the meat counter? Your dad or mom would move from one to the next, occasionally ask the price or origin of one piece, move on, settle for one, and then proceed to instruct the salesman behind the counter on which pieces to select, asking about cut, origin, commenting on quality, and finally, pay the man and leave. An arranged marriage in India is pretty similar.

If you are born Indian, and god forbid, Indian female, you are a piece of meat. You have an expiration date. It is vital that you are put on display well before that. People will move from one to the next, for you are not alone in this exhibition. Interested parties will ask a few questions, not to you, but to the parents, the salespeople. They will make their comments, talk about features they don't like, which the salespeople judiciously assure the customer will be removed from you before delivery. With meat, it's the fat. With girls, it's their loud laugh. Or them wearing jeans. They haggle some more, finally settle on a price, and you are sold.

If all this sounds fantastical to you, count your blessings. If you agree all too much, know you are not alone. 

Just like the meat, all this happens right in front of you. Constantly. You are discussed, criticized, measured, dismissed, all in your hearing. You are sold without your consultation. You are given no choice but to go home with the people who bought you.

Bleak? Sure. Real? You bet. It doesn't matter if you were a lovely, frisky calf who dreamt of grass meadows. And it matters even less if you were a brilliant, accomplished person with dreams in your eyes and a fire in your soul to achieve them. You will be slaughtered and sold. When the time is right. To the person with the best offer.

What you are, what you can be, what you can achieve, what you have achieved, your personality, character and everything else pales in comparison to whose wife you are. That tag is the only one which can validate your existence. Your whole life revolves around that one moment. When someone else, and often, someone who you have known for a matter of mere months, claims you as his. Nothing remains of you, not even your name. You leave subdued, bought, owned.

Of course there are happy marriages. And ones that work far better than anything you could have found for yourself. Who knows you better than the people who brought you into this world, right? Granted.

 Then why the negativity? Because India has one of the most skewed sex ratios in the world. In some states, it is a mere 820 females for every 1000 males. Because girl children are slaughtered. Inside the womb, or minutes outside it. Because in places no one talks about, women are forced to marry more than one man, often brothers. There aren't enough girls to go around, you've killed the rest. Because there are people begging others, or mortgaging the only piece of land they own in the world, or spending every last paisa they have saved during their lives. To give a daughter away.

Because the following comments are heard in the houses of educated, open minded, worldly - wise, well earning individuals :

1. People are already asking us how she's working in Delhi. Does she live with relatives? Do you have someone there keeping an eye on her? And now she's saying she wants to go study in the States. Can you imagine what people will say after that? We said no, obviously, it's not going to happen. Who will marry her?


2. People say she's smarter than most of the boys in her class. And they're fellow doctors, aren't they? Can you imagine what she'll be like if she does her M.D. as well? Who will marry her?


3. She makes more than most of the boys we've looked at, even if they're more educated than her. And she doesn't want to compromise by looking for another job. Who will marry her?


4. She says she want to study medicine. And she's even got admission. But we can't just spend all that money on her education, we have to marry her off also. Is she's a doctor with no dowry, who will marry her?


5. She got chicken pox last month. I'm not letting her leave the house for another 3 months. If it scars her face, where will I find a husband for her? Who will marry her?


 5. (A husband to his wife) Why didn't you immediately say that you could have her when that lady (with a son) asked you if you have plans of getting our daughter married? If you don't catch onto clues, who will marry her?


And so on. And so forth. Until they find someone who can put that blessed piece of thread around your neck, you are a burden, a constant worry that bites into their very souls. And the whispers... 
"she's 23 and you're not looking yet?" "27 and not married? There has to be something wrong with her." And of course, it is everybody and their third cousin's problem, "are you looking? I know a few boys. Why aren't you looking? How long do you think you can wait? Do you know how old she is? Do you want to pay more? Do you know how much they ask for a girl of that age? And the inevitable "who will marry her?"


Marriage isn't a bad institution. But in India, what it has been reduced to, is pathetic. And the evils it has spawned is devastating. Female infanticide and foeticide aren't pretentious intellectual terms, they are everyday realities. Parents who kill their girl children simply because they say there is no way they can possibly raise enough money for a dowry. Parents who bury their girl children alive. Parents who weep when a girl child is born. All because of what marriage has become. A show for relatives and neighbours. "Look at the catch we landed for our girl. Do you know what we had to give to get him?" And did "your girl" agree? Who cares? We need a wedding to show the world. We need to give our daughter away.


Girls are raised constantly reminded that they are loans, to be returned with interest when the time comes. And while the situation of someone who can't marry off his daughter because he doesn't make enough to buy a Maruti may seem comical, it is anything but. The whole lives of most Indian parents with a girl child revolves around making enough to convince somebody to marry them. Oh and of course, dowry is illegal and punishable by imprisonment." And the constant string of comments all beginning with "when you're married..." reduces your existence to a being who will be worth something only, and only, if you have a husband to name.


Stop. Girls aren't androids incapable of feeling or intelligence. They dare and dream and hope and think and rage and pray and imagine and wait and work and aim just like your precious boys do. Stop raising them as commodities to be sold, and adding value to those commodities by making them gain degree and certificates of your choosing as embellishments. Raise them as self - respecting, considerate, honest, hard - working individuals, and send them out into the world to make their own way. Let them marry if, when and whom they choose, if they are settled in their own lives as mature individuals. 


Don't bring a daughter into this world only to make them feel every single day of their lives that the only thing that can make them worth something in your eyes, and the only way you think their existence can be validated is if there's a ring on her finger and a man of your choosing in her life. 


And stop treating them like milk which will revolt everyone they come into contact with if not used by a certain age.If you can't, kill us in the wombs. We'll never know that we weren't wanted. 

Traitor...

Traitor!
My name, unspeakable
my act, immortal
Besmirched, sullied, spat on
I hang at a noose I wrought myself
silver pieces spilling for want of blood


Thirty pieces of cold shining silver
to send to slaughter with a kiss
the man who saved my soul.

You were wrong, oh blameless one
I was but mortal. Weak. Corruptible.
Judas the traitor.
No catcher of men am I.
I deny it not.


But I beg to ask
Was there not one traitor more?
All I ask, and ask to know
Is there not a greater crime?

To say "I shall not betray thee though everyone else shall"
and then to say "I know thee not?"


Not once but oh three times over?
To lie. To deny the man you claimed to love
and follow till his very end


You may not have led him to the cross
and perhaps you are one sin less
I betrayed him and took my reward
But oh Peter the rock
the one the savior loved more than any
Tell me, which wound is deeper?


To still a beating heart?
Or to deny it, stab and twist
and leave it bleeding?


To betray?

Or to walk away?