Hello readers. The one who writes to you today is a social media addict and cannot really help but express every little thing she observes, realizes or feels. So, she writes; she writes to ventilate her thoughts to you lovely, enthusiastic readers.
Today, she has a complaint. She regrets her primary identity, of being a woman. Born an Indian girl she grew up with the idea of the existence of a world across seven mighty oceans where, unlike the one she was grounded upon, her kind could breathe in the air of freedom. All she dreamt of was to be able to go there someday. This was when she was still unacquainted with the any other world other than that built of her own fancy.
She grew up and as she did the punishments for existing grew cruel. She couldn’t find an escape to the world she thought she could seek resort in. But then she came across a book,The Namesake. That one line, she mumbled in her mind again and again, chanted it through and through until it immersed deep within her, as if it was solely intended for her.
“ “My Grandfather says that’s what books are for,” Ashok said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. “To travel without moving an inch.” ”
She had gotten her way out to her dreamland. She decided to pursue that virtually, sensually, if not physically. She decided to pursue English literature. She loved being a part of that world, sometimes as the Dark lady, sometimes as Porphyria or may be Elizabeth Bennet. She was enjoying the free expression of love, the balls, the kisses until she got deeper into it. Mindless she never had been. She was deemed to notice the realities soon and she did. Concealed beneath the mere mannerisms, that look like liberty to most Indian minds, prevails the same ugly prejudice and stinking bias. She realized that her ideal world didn’t exist at all. It was all similar, just in a different way. The same expectations of being subordinate to men, the same barriers using a different rule book, a different religion, a different culture. But the truth of an unfortunate birth, she digested, is a grim universality.
She finds it hard to live with the broken pieces of the mirror which had shown her a reflection of her dreams; they prick, they pierce, they imperforate her soul. Who on the first place had set the rule for this discrimination, she wonders. And why did the world ever decide to follow the malicious policy? Why did women on the first place choose to live like this? Some people pacified that its God’s plan; God, the father of us all. She couldn’t help but smirk at the irony. How good a father he might be who preaches such unfair favoritism!