Women Like Us

My eyelids unclose each morning, in a hamlet,

Sequestered from the bustling cities-

So covert, you’d climb 3 buses and walk 2kms to waltz in my door.

Women like us grew up

Between hushed talks of menstrual cycles and boisterous talks of marriages,

Deciphering arcadian yields of wives to inebriated, tempestuous husbands

And castaway opinions of women in vanquishing male households.

I grew up discerning weaseling out of ephebic girls from schools

To daub their foreheads in vermillion and transmogrify into baby producing machines.

Tapering alleys reek of lust on dark nights,

Flesh ravenous hombres leaving impeccable damsels smeared with blood,

Divested and susceptible behind thick bushes.

I grew up with trepidation’s claws digging deeper into my naive heart-

Contemplating my petrified sister’s breasts being fondled not by her lover,

But familiar hands smelling of home-

A behemoth you’re chagrined to call your uncle.

I told Maa about this, chopping veggies in the smouldering kitchen,

Her watery eyes portrayed her helplessness,

Women like us have their cracked lips sutured with threads of authority she said,

Echoes of freedom slither down our throats only to insinuate into graveyards of the heart.

So, you see, I grew up each day espying those iniquitous hands

Traverse the same curves every night,

Each languid cry of succour

Conceiving red bruises on her supple cheeks.

The other night at dinner, I queried maa about old rags to use for my periods

Women like us couldn’t afford sanitary napkins you see,

I was baffled to see Baba and grandfather storm out of the room,

And Maa standing traumatized with the rice bowl

Admonishing me for my sin-

Enunciating about the carmine streams of blood oozing out from me was flagrant she said.

They told me my neighbour’s son sinned, marrying a shudra girl

And how they now make her peel without repose, conglomerate layers of toil,

Hurling arrows of affliction in perfect angles to

clobber her rhapsody.

Last January they solemnized marrying off their daughter-14 springs old.

Her thick braid cumbersome with wilted blossoms of dwindling dreams.

Didn’t she protest I asked & maa said