Poetry
A Good Girl
A Poem by PARVINDER MEHTA
Growing up, a “good” Indian girl,
inherits many strictures of
a toddling, barricaded child.
Waiting patiently
while the boys and men ate,
with a perseverant maturity of
a fish in the living room aquarium.
Starving with alimentary constraints,
and lesser wants of
a bird in a cage.
Repressing ambition and opportunities
wearing a veil of domesticity and
jinxed aspirations of a wall lizard.
Asphyxiating aspirations in bubbled existence,
with passive reticence of
an enclosed, running hamster.
Yet exiling frustrations
of a cornered rat, lost in a maze,
when she escapes
restrictive normalcy and
speaks against stone-blind customs,
she is branded a wrecked mind,
a rabid dog, better discarded.
March 8, 2013
Conversation about this article
1: Inni Kaur (Fairfield, Connecticut, USA), March 08, 2013, 4:57 PM.
Parvinder, this poem evokes the same emotions in me as the essay on the Laavaa(n) by Bhai Vir Singh. Stillness, underlined with sadness. Beautiful!