Prithvijeet Sinha
The father's will, once he's dead and a home in debt,
has always wielded the hollow context of patriarchy.
Unsuspecting but wise beyond their years, girls,
if and especially nubile, receive their curtain calls,
the mandap will be the bastion for them, so decide the men.
A bad seed sprouts from this source and the father's dead
and the mother has renounced her will to intervene,
so, the brothers, even the youngest ones,
suddenly grow up to be authorities of her fate.
It's not enough that her jewels, her dignity is never really her own.
And even if she was her father's favourite
and a Goddess in her brothers' eyes,
she will be bequeathed to another lineage
and take its name, address and signage,
struggling to manage her doctoral thesis
with expectations of domesticity;
also, the looming tower of motherhood,
cooed to her through whispering walls,
is like a forewarning.
It's a travesty of poetic justice or common sense,
her pillars of this earth flake with sodden foundations
and yet they consume themselves with worry, when they say,
at the time of her birth, "Don't name her Draupadi or Sita.
Durga is still preferable. But whence lies her power?
Name her Meera instead but what if she fills herself with
sorrow and a transcendental devotion?
And of course, never name her Rudrika,
for what can one make of an angry young woman?"
Call her Pooja, Archana, or better still,
just Bitiya, or Rani. Bitiya Rani. Dulaari.
Take these names, pour hot oil over them,
burn their spirits and still they come in heavy rotation,
to affix themselves with man-made horoscopes
and deadlines of irony are shaped alike.
What's in a name when enslavement
to dutiful patriarchy becomes a rueful fact of life?
The pillars of our earth sprout from bad seeds,
with flaky foundations and we,
unmoored from our own justifications,
ultimately call her Mother.
Check if it really holds her flag high!
Mandap refers to the elevated ground for conducting marital rituals in India.
SITA, DRAUPADI, DURGA are Indian mythological figures signifying pivotal values of a hypocritical and complex society.
Pooja means worship, Archana means devotion, Bitiya means daughter, Rani means queen, Dulaari means beloved, all these are names and terms of endearment for females.
Prithvijeet Sinha is from Lucknow, India. He launched his writing career by self-publishing on Wattpad since 2015 and on WordPress blog. His publications of poetry and prose can be found in GNOSIS JOURNAL, READER'S DIGEST, CAFE DISSENSUS, CONFLUENCE, THE MEDLEY, THUMBPRINT MAGAZINE, WILDA MORRIS' POETRY BLOG, SCREEN QUEENS, BORDERLESS JOURNAL, LOTHLORIEN POETRY JOURNAL, and LIVEWIRE His poems have also been published in the children's anthology Nursery Rhymes and Children's Poems From Around The World You May Not Have Heard, edited by Anita Nahal and Meenakshi Mohan. His WordPress blog is AN AWADH BOY'S PANORAMA and his Wattpad profile name is Prithvijeet/madmenwearingfedora
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