She Walks Without Applause

By Sharda Gupta

She wakes before dawn—not to serve,

But to survive.

Not to brew tea for others,

But to boil her doubts into silence.

The world looks at her

And calls her “independent”

As if freedom is a flower

Handed politely at a ceremony.

No, hers is a freedom

Plucked from thorns,

Paid for in sleepless nights,

And a bank account that never rests.

They say, “You don’t need a man.”

She never said she didn’t.

She only said—she won’t kneel.

And for that—

They call her arrogant.

Too modern. Too cold.

Too something they cannot define

Without trembling.

At work—she leads.

At home—she’s told to obey.

Between boardrooms and kitchen sinks,

She is a pendulum

Swinging between the past and her possibilities.

She earns,

But must still explain

Why she doesn’t cook dinner by seven.

She buys her own house—

And they ask who will protect her there.

She raises her voice—

And they say, “Control your tongue.”

She weeps in silence—

And they say, “We told you, this is not a woman’s path.”

Her phone rings with proposals

Not of love,

But negotiations—

“How much can you bend,

So our pride remains unshaken?”

But she doesn’t bend.

Not because she is stone.

But because she is soil—

Grounded, silent, patient—

And tired of being trampled.

She is not fighting men.

She is fighting conditioning.

She is not asking for pity.

She is asking—

Why must her joy

Always come with guilt stitched at the hem?

No one celebrates her.

No one writes songs for her kind.

But she walks anyway.

With cracked feet,

And a fire inside,

That no culture, no tradition, no man

Could extinguish.

And that, my friend,

Is not feminism.

It is existence—

Pure, naked, honest.

The kind that does not need

Approval to breathe.

Or applause to live.

By Sharda Gupta