It’s okay if I cry, I’m a girl
for I can, it is my thing.
It’s not okay for me to go to school,
I can’t, and there isn’t enough money for my dowry, what use is school to me? Says
dear, father.
Its okay if I don’t get my milk,
for my brother needs it more, he will take the family ahead, says mommy.
Its okay for me to not have a
share of my childhood place, for, it was never mine,
Its okay for the males to take
decisions on my behalf every time, for I never had a right over myself, says
the society
It’s all okay, I will never be
taught anything, I have been expected to know, to contain myself and be available
for everyone, for I have to be selfless, do I have any other option than to
keep other interests above mine?
It’s not okay for me to scream,
for what kind of man will marry me; hence I must know how to cook,
So when my brother gets ready for
school, I keep his Tiffin ready,
It’s all okay; I do not need to
study, because all I am expected to do is what I’m told to do.
This is my responsibility, no
one wishes to take mine, nor does anyone
wish to know my needs or desires, but it’s okay, they are saving for my dowry,
and there cannot ever be anything more a big thing one can do for me, I’m
thankful.
I don’t know why I’m not allowed
to school, but I think I know everything, for I can cook and keep the house,
that’s enough right?
There are times when I feel the world
is pestering me, that my emptiness has deepened the hollow sphere where my
voices echo,
These voices no one wishes to
hear, for they are unheard of.
Even I wish to go around and
play, wear the ironed uniform, smell those new pages of a book, sharp a pencil
from both the ends. There’s a lot I want to say, I wish, but I know I cannot.
I know I cannot but I don’t
really know why, nobody tells me,
Although granny says that I’m a
girl and I must be this way, I cry but it is okay, because do boys cry?
I sigh the little world I am
caged in, where the body is mine but not the soul, I cry.
It’s like a wrecked boat sank,
but in my fancies I still kept sailing,
Should I accept or expect, I ask?
Where faith lies hidden I believe,
what I desire for is yet an
unturned page, where my whims and fancies run alike, the
fatal truth that I am bound to, unleash my disguised self.
Deliberate I am, for what I long,
Patience is what I can wait with,
But ambiguity sweeps away even
the rarest of hope.
All I would want is may be a pat
on my back, daddy, a space to see myself, to see the world with my eyes.
The greatest courage I have is
merely only to write ‘’I’’ here with no identity.
-I
The stark reality speaks for
itself, the discourse the upbringing of children that take place, decides on
the future we shape. The history has been enough to say how wrong it is to
undermine the strength that the known delicacies possess. It is merely making
the future that we are limiting the potential of the world.
-Frenny Patel
