Only if she had a brother.

        She picked a doll and brushed her hair,
        She was her family's only heir.
        She caressed the doll's face and said,
       "Lets play sister the pretence of dead."
        
        There came her grandma on hearing her,
        She was taken aback with uninvited fear.
        "Oh stupid girl", chided she with anger,
        Don't you want a brother to save you from danger?

The society widely popularising the problem of 'female foeticide' forgot what happens to the girls who are born in the still existing patriarchal society where a 'son' is the 'sun' of the family while a daughter burns in the scorching heat as the consequences. A girl child might be welcomed in the family with open arms but teared eyes, not with joy but with the regret of her not being a boy. it doesn't end there. The parents are not to be blamed, for it is because of them that she has been given a life despite people's trouble accepting a girl with equal zeal and happiness. But can anyone tame the unsecured mouths of the relatives and the people who form the basis of the vile society?


      She jumped and played and frolicked around,
      Giggling and shouting and making sound.
      Came along a woman and saw her with pitiful eyes,
      "Oh only if you had a brother", her tongue rolled a dice.

It's not the fact that she is a girl that hurts her or makes her weak. It is the words spoken to a little girl every now and then that she starts believing in the supreme power of a boy. It's the people who every time pass by her showing their concern about her family being without a boy to carry out their legacy. It pains her too. Not because she does not have a brother. But because she is not considered capable enough to be the child of her parents that she is born as. She is ripped of the right to do what she can as a daughter too because she is assumed to be 'not as able as a son'.

     She had heard those words enough till now,
     For her to know the society thinks how.
     Then came along man who appreciated her degree,
     But did not forget to mention the pity for free.
     "If only you had a brother to join business",
     He believed he could help her father in a mess.
     This time she was ready to answer back,
     "Is there anything in which I lack?
       Oh tell me fair sir, do I not earn?
      Or am I not capable enough to learn?"

The constant ranting might make the girls go weak in the beginning and cry over their ill fortune of being born a girl without a brother providing the male factor and legacy successor to the family. But eventually they realise that the responsibility to prove themselves and create a reputed stature in the society is more for them. Similar to the concept of striking iron when it is hot, the girls are heated with the comments and then the strikes shape them into a strong figure which cannot be placed on a shaking ground. They end up having a taste for the kill of a boy in the fields they are and can never stay behind or accept defeat from the opposite sex labelling them as a weakling of the society.

The society apart from stopping the deaths of girl child should also learn  to accept them with equal enthusiasm and give them a life or appreciation for what they are and not a baggage tagged along every time. For what would a legacy do when you're dead if you have no shelter to stay when you're alive?
 


       

Words, all they are!

Sometimes you just feel like writing. 'What', doesn't matter. All that matters is words flowing unrestricted and being penned uncensored by the various stages it passes through between your soul and the paper. Now, I said soul and not mind, because mind is capable of logic and facts while words, well, they are mere flickers of thoughts that are devoid of rationalism. For if they were born in the brain, they would have been processed and then spat out all organised and refined. And refined words are ripped of any sentiment at the very base.

Isn't it all about words? Constructive, destructive but mere words. Words ornament poetry and words are sung as ballads. Words are said in honour and words are spluttered in insult. Words are found in situations extreme and words are used to smoothen things up. One struggles to find the correct words at times for the words have the power to destroy anything and everything from a minute acquaintance to a major relationship and even rage a war amongst as huge an entity as nations. But then at the moment, it's my urge to splurge words and console myself that the world is all not grey.

Nothing in my life has ever hurt me more than words. Words said by the people I love, and words that should have been said but never were. They always meant the most for me. A wish or comfort or consolation or mere joke. Words could reach me with such depth, anything else just wandered around the materialistic veils. They speak to me, we talk. They sing for me, we dance. They caress me, I get lost into oblivion. It's beyond my ability to explain what wonders words can do to and for me! They can make me shiver, make me cry, make me laugh and make me pry. They can love me and make me hate myself. They can build me up and break me down. The people are just what their words depict them to be. Without words, the world would be just dumb and deaf.

Sometimes, all you need is hear the words. The perfect words for the situation. The words that can tame your wild emotions. The words which won't be void. Which would hold the end of their bargains and not turn out to be empty promises. The words that would hold your hand and guide you to the path you seek, and make you realise that you are loved.

I wouldn't ask people to chose their words correctly or anything for that matter. All I can say with my words is, let the words be said from your soul unprocessed and mean what they really do.

Rambling!

I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff. Stuff that happened over the last two years. But no matter how much I think, I never come with a suitable way to pen down my frivolous thoughts. Okay, now let's have  sneak peak what the last two years have been for me and how I evolved.

Well, to be very truthful I had experiences, made friends, went places but the only change I went through was that I started to love being alone. Being alone but still not being left alone. That's something I'll always hate, being ditched in any way. I realised the biggest folly of my life! Technically, it wasn't the 'mistake of my life', just something everybody goes through in High School. I was a silly stupid girl who loved being around and being there for people who didn't really reciprocate. But what I didn't realise then was that how the small things that happened or did not take course would effect me at the end of the most memorable school year of my life. 

I realised the most important thing about life. The stark fact that things seem at their best before they come crashing down to small pieces and every piece hurts you. So in my case it was the year when I was closest to people I cared about the most and was being cared about too which was just bliss for me. I now think why that was. And the best part was I was finally making friends out of the circumference of people I had surrounded myself with. But that didn't work out that well I suppose. I guess I was not really allowed to adjust my priority list of people while others did it all the time with me being there when the top post was vacant for a  while due to reasons I could never figure out. Cliff notes version, I am the back up plan while I am not even allowed to rant about it! As the year set, people just woke up and realised I don't need them in my life and I'm better off alone. So, I'm left on my own. At least, I was told it was that ways. One can let it go if just one knows the reason to. But when things don't have an end to tie, it just becomes very difficult to end it in your mind!

There are moments in everybody's life that leave an impression and you can't avoid those moments. They are inevitable. One can just go with the flow and do what those moment intend you to. And that's what went with me. Over the last two years I have met and talked to people I never thought I would and I am glad I did. I became less dependent. Being a girl who wouldn't have lunch alone, I actually went to Pizza place and had a whole meal all by myself and not just once but over and over again. Went alone to a mall and spend hours at a book store there! Oh boy, I did learn to love solitude. I became addicted to my evening walks to Costa Coffee. 

Over the year of mourning I realised how the little things back in school were all signs that I should back off from my never ending efforts to keep the strand bonded. The times when my calls were not returned or texts went not replied to. The times when I wasn't as part of a gig or the jokes born at times when I wasn't around. The secrets everyone knew except me and the rumours I was never aware of. Being the last person to know things only when they ended. 

Not many people know how little acts of care and concern can be a warm light in the cold darkness. The calls asking about life in a new city, how do the roomies treat, what the college is like and just the basics. But they make one feel being cared about. And this feeling is absolutely ecstatic. I was there to make people feel so, but why didn't I get such calls from the same people? Did they not care or was I just being a snob? These questions can never be answered by anyone except the ones who chose to isolate me. But since they are isolated I can't really go about asking them.

Birthday means a lot to a person. Specially if that person is me. Okay, I wasn't the first one to wish but I  wasn't the last one too! I wish I could make the world realise how these small little things can decide what a person is for me! Not the major deals but just small acts of affection is all one needs.

Such endless things are still buried in me which I tend to dig with my introspections every now and then ending up crying like it wasn't long ago. I still wonder where did I go wrong and how wrong was I in wanting things to sort out for a whole year? Someone still says that maybe things will be back to what they were, you just need to give it a little time and I say it can't be. I am tired and wouldn't wanna go through all that all over again just to get thrashed at the end of it all. But secretly don't I wish to have lived the life of that stupid girl who was blindfolded but still illusional about being happy. Deceived but not disappointed, stupid but not solitude loving and much more. But it is something irreparable that happened. The damage is done and there is nothing that can be done about the damage. 

I live with it comforting myself with the thought that if it hadn't happened, I wouldn't have had so many friends I have now. I might have lost some on the way but some way nicer crossed my path. So that makes me thankful to that person who made events run their course and teach me the hard way.

Was it the right choice?

It was more than a year since she wrote those lines and spend time introspecting her work and choices she was making in her life. Everything seemed so blissful and perfect at that moment though she was burying her hankering to pursue her dreams under easily perforated layers of doing something she never realised was not her cup of tea. The first five months of her endeavour turned out to be a cataclysm. She wanted to run off. She even tried to do so. But the fear of being labelled as a loser and quitter and the look of chagrin on her parent's face haunted her and she came back to give it one more shot.

Every morning she woke up with the hope that her day would go as bright as the sunshine. Though the tiny voice inside her head told her she was gonna be broken again. And yes! The day would turn out to be like a clouded sky waiting her to shower tears of dismal. At the end of the week, she snapped, breaking down and wailing it all out. She wanted it all to end. Rather, she wanted to go back to where it all started and change her course to run! But miracles don't really happen. DO they? Even if they do, it didn't seem one was gonna happen in her life. Somehow thinking about what actually made her happy sounded the most sinful and selfish thing she could do in her life and to the people she loved and cared about.

The post breakdown day, she spent taking her mind off her present situation and be lost in the realm of sitcom. She started feeling a little better. By the end of the day, she realised that it wouldn't be that bad if she just tried one more time to try! Here she was; back at square one.

But was she really satisfied with persisting on doing something she wasn't happy about? Doesn't dignity lie in one's own satisfaction and personal happiness than trying to content masses who wouldn't even know whether you ate something; leave aside being aware of the day's menu?

The choice she made!

"Is it the starting,
Or is it the end?
How did these outlandish things
So easily did blend?"
She looked at these lines which just popped in her mind and were penned down. "Hmmm… Not bad huh? I still need to find better lines following these or else it'll also end up like my previous not so good efforts at sensible poetry."

After a year of experiencing the piercing pressure of studies, the challenge of making the right decision for her future and losing her best friend unaware or the very vindication, she still hasn't lost the nerve to love, trust and most importantly DREAM! She still loves to dream about going to Hogwarts and learning magic or falling for some myth. She is equally interested in metaphysics and the words mysticism as much she envisions about fairies.

"Has this become our habit,
Or just blindly followed trend?"

"No no no!! This is just so not good. These lines just not fall into place. Oh my gosh! How will I ever write something good enough to stand amongst those super duper literary pieces?"
She sat back closing her eyes in a state of introspection. Thinking about the meaning behind the words that her mind weaves into lines that just rhyme. She wonders why do her poems just have a rhyme scheme on the name of literary devices, why not something like irony or satire and why specifically nothing abstract. This did bother her but at the same time she was happy that her work was easily understood by the majority and praised too for the simplicity.

'Poets earn just the bread and not the butter!' This had to be true as she had not seen or heard about any poet who had met with success easily or had lead a lavish enough lifestyle to banter about. But this did not bother her as she had some stable plans in her mind. She had made the decision to study something that could get her bread with butter with an extra of desserts in her breakfast. And carry on with her poems as a something to be done in free time. She didn't consider it to be any disrespect to poetry as she thought that the waste of poetry by being just a personal collection is something insulting for it. For giving it the right place,i.e., a published collection, she had to make money in turn for which her priority had to be the STREAM she chose to study.

But but but she wasn't going the common way there too. 'Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference.', these lines by Robert Frost has had an impeccable impact on her. So she was never giving in for something the masses chose.