Usha Kishore

A Daughter’s Rebellion

A daughter, you said, does not speak,
she is only seen. Our uncle brought
us up this way, you said, we did not
ask any such questions!

To smother my questions of why does
a girl have to sit outside for three days
a month and why can’t a girl chant the
Gayatri, the mantra of a woman,
you shut me up in a roomful of books.

My rebellion rose like a dragon from the
poetry of Chauhan, Mirabai and Verma.
In your books, I read rebelling womanhood
that haunted me like vetalas – ghouls that
leapt from the pages and gobbled my soul.
invaded my mind, peered through my eyes
in rainbow droplets of light: beautiful but
dangerous. In serpentine slithers, they tied
up my thoughts.  My mind is not mine,
anymore. It is possessed by women’s rights....