“Masculinist” Female

By Sahana Kanagaraj

‘What if I droop down again?

What if I go quiet again?

What if I suppress my feelings that come flooding? Again? What if I be that ideal girl again?

That girl who’s quiet and covered and protected and bound? What if I keep my opinions shut in and never express them? Those opinions on matters regarding my life my future and my happiness?’

She walks on the pavement thinking

Thinking about how quiet she had become,

How she used to enjoy the small things

How sad now the big things had become.

She wonders whether her choices were wrong,

Whether she should have been quiet,

Not the empowered “unsanskari” girl she is now

Not the one who stands up for what is right.

Should she have let them rule her life?

Should she have let them make the choice?

Or, what she did was what was right,

And it was excellent to have her own voice?

What she repented now was a necessary evil,

An evil to overcome the other deadly and dangerous

Unholy myth that was being preached in her household

But now she was free , free as she could be, and lustrous.

All her unheard opinions were now heard,

Now heard, even if it had meant her banishment,

Even if that meant she was to steer safe from evil clutches on the street But these “evils” weren’t worse than those in her house’s ‘management’.

By Sahana Kanagaraj