An evocative verse, by Anoucheka, about a girl in a gender-centric poem, exclusively for Different Truths.

As soon as she is born,
She is met with disdain
From faces painted with noses lifted up in disgust
As,
She is a girl,
Hence,
A burden,
A creature, being, both heavy and invisible
At the same time!

When her little hands get held
She is imagined, at the earliest,
As somebody’s wife,
Toiling all day long in his kitchen,
Bearing, with the perfection of Goddesses,
His children
And, being able to show everybody else some care,
While having for herself, none!

She grows up and gets judged
By the lot of the society
As to whether she chooses to stay single
Or to settle at the earliest
As if, she was, herself,
A little tele nova series
Laden with cliff hangers and with plot twists
That the society can help not but be glued on her every act!

She is not even deemed
As being worthy of being given any property
From her father’s side
As she does not deserve so,
Since,
She is a girl, after all,
Carrying with her,
The possibility of being a stranger
To those that sired her!

She will feel heavy at all times,
By being constantly reproached for her birth
When she certainly had no say upon this!

Why,
The emancipated world, itself, will keep
Tapping itself on its stomach
And will say to the whole cosmos
That it believes in respecting the girl child
But it realises not,
That it looks at her with frowning eyes
And nods its head
Whenever someone whispers it around
That the girl child is like a gift,
Meant to be thrust in the hands of its rightful owner
At the earliest!

Photo from the Internet