I am an Indian woman

I am an Indian woman

I am the daughter of Kali, sister to Saraswathi and the embodiment of Lakshmi.

I am Mary Magdalene, I am the Virgin mother, I am Khadeeja, I am the mother of Buddha!

I was delivered through pain and that was just the start.

I am the woman who is beaten by her husband while friends look on. โ€œI am too busy with my life to get involved,โ€ they say.

I am the daughter too dark to be of merit to her own family, so I am denied a voice and denied choice.

I am the woman who is told how to dress. โ€œWear bright colours,โ€ says my friend, the mental health therapist, with skin like driven snow. โ€œCover up your shame,โ€ says the village.

I am a woman so I have many advisers to teach me how to think. โ€œDonโ€™t leave the country,โ€ says my teacher, โ€œyouโ€™re running away from work to be done here.โ€ โ€œIt looks bad when women smoke,โ€ says the doctor. โ€œHave children, it will cure your acne,โ€ says the old lady down the street. โ€œDiscolour your face to look pretty,โ€ says Unilever.

I am the female accused of harlotry at the age of 14. No one says anything to the uncle โ€“ apparently as a girl and a child, the guilt is mine alone. They threaten to break my legs if I go near him again and so I am sent to a prison in my own home.

I am the woman trapped in an unhappy marriage that I cannot leave, for what will people say? I am the one that dared to leave her man and then found another. And when that too fails I force a smile and endure it for I can be a hero no more than once in this lifetime.

I am the woman that likes her own kind. And I swallow my fear and my secret as I see my matrimonial ad in a newspaper selling me to the highest male bidder.

I am the vulnerable guilty party. I am the thief in the house, says a male relative who listens to Tchaikovsky and has misplaced some silver I have never seen.

I am the girl who runs away at 18 to be with a man she has fallen in love with. And I am her girlfriend who is brought to trial for her treason for there is no one else to blame now.

I am the rebel who runs away from home to escape abuse. Everyone is shocked, but no one asks why.

I am the bereft wife whose husband picks his mother over me and leaves me to suffer the crushing and brutal aftermath of his unreasonable departure. I am the woman whose mother-in law threatened to pour kerosene over her.

I am the Indian woman who chose not to have children. Barren, lesbian, unfortunate, soulless, and worthless am I.

I am the successful career woman. Other woman who have chosen the norm treat me like a pariah, while taking all the generosity and benefits I have to offer. I am the subject of gossip, aversion and betrayal. Over and over.

I am the writer, the dancer, the poetess, the engineer, the fighter pilot. The hostess, the employer, the employee, the unpaid maid in the home.

I am the 12-year-old child-woman that goes to work in the houses of the wealthy. They have baby daughters, but to them I am just a machine to cook and wash and clean.

I am the woman in the slum, the one you see, but donโ€™t see, every day. I am โ€˜these peopleโ€™ to those whose accident of birth prevented them from living my life.

I am the girl that ran away from home to get married, and when things went wrong I had nowhere to turn to. Even renting a house, as a single woman, is fraught with terror, it seems.

I am a divorcee, and it is my only claim to fame, says the rich lady from Bombay. She forgets the jobs I have done, the books I have written and the friendship I have shown her. She thinks her tawdry affair is not a reflection of her married state.

I am the girl born in the slum. I am sick from dirty water all the time and I can only go to a toilet when the sun is still in the sky. I am her fearful mother who cannot let her out of sight for who knows what may happen to her.

I am the other woman, and I am forever in shame, for I sinned against all that is considered virtuous. The man escapes unscathed, and his wife blames me and not him.

I am the widow and I may not walk in sunlight for fear my unlucky shadow may fall on another soul bringing him or her misfortune.

I am the actress of stunning beauty and talent and my path to success is via the casting couch.

I am the struggling writer and I want to tell the story of Indiaโ€™s unsung women. โ€œYour stories donโ€™t have happy endings,โ€ says the publisher. In the bitter ether of the online world, I send back a fervent message, โ€œThere are many in India who donโ€™t get happy endings. Letโ€™s give them one by telling their story.โ€ Silence is my only answer.

I am the small-town rebel. I am the big-city conqueror. I am the woman that tries to find her way through the crushing onslaught of misogyny, patriarchy and injustice that block my every step wherever I go.

I am the woman on the bus and the train that your brother groped. I am the young girl your father leered at while speaking from the pulpit at church. I am the one your husband called out vile names to on his way back from offering flowers to the Goddess at the temple.

I am Nirbhaya. I am Sridevi, I am Malaika who spoke out loud against hypocrisy. I am the Rani of Jhansi. I am the women that Raja Ravi Varma painted. I am Arundhati Roy and I am the bai in your home.

I am the ten million girls that have disappeared in the last ten years.

I am the widow that dares to live. I am a financial burden to the family. Not deserving of nutrition or a decent education, for those are the purview of my brothers.

I am the ugly, dark-skinned female bearing the daily cross of my genetics and gender.

I am the one men fear and despise for I refuse to conform to their narrow standards.

I am female. I am Indian. My thoughts, my life, my soul, my body are not mine, but belong to my parents, my husband and a society that worships mothers and reviles daughters.

I am Shakti, I am Parvati, I am Mother Theresa, I am Indira and Priyanka. I am Jayalalithaa and I am the sweeper on the road. I am the forgotten wife of the Father of the Nation.

I am Asifa. I am the girl that went out in the fields to tend to her horses and never came back. I was the one that cried for my mother as I was drugged and pinned down by a policeman and his friends. By a man old enough to be my grandfather. I am her grieving mother and I am her neighbour. I am the lawyer that defends her, and I am every woman that is helpless in the face of this horror.

I am the one who cries out silently from behind a laptop for what else can I do.

My religion is submission. I have no voice, my power has been stripped from me by an inhuman social code and I have no recourse to justice.

I am an Indian woman. And I am raped every day.

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