the salary arrived. so did the sinkhole.

It is Friday, May 15th, 2026.

Five days since I wrote that all roads lead to rot, and unfortunately, the road has not developed better civic planning since then. It is still the same road, same potholes, same suspicious corner, same emotional drainage system clogged with old leaves, shame, salt, and things I should have said in 2017, 2019, 2021, yesterday, this afternoon, ten minutes ago. I would like to report progress, but progress has not submitted its attendance. Maybe it took casual leave, or maybe it resigned or maybe it saw my life and said, respectfully, madam, this department is beyond my jurisdiction. 

Monday began with a training. Technically, my manager was supposed to take it while I assisted her. Technically, I had prepared everything for her. Technically, I had even pushed her on Saturday to prepare, like a fool with hope and basic professional ethics. She did not. Then Sunday night, while I was busy being poor in the quiet and dark, she sent two texts asking me to join early on Monday to help her out. Help her out. Haha. A phrase so small, so polite, so corporate-y, it should come with its own knife. Monday arrived. Like, always. She started the session, and then, with the grace of someone dropping a dead animal at my feet, very conveniently dumped the whole thing on me. Not last minute. Worse. After the minute had already passed. After the train had left. After the public performance had begun and I was standing there with no rehearsal, no consent, and no escape hatch. And then it continued. Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Three days of taking a training I had not agreed to lead. Three days of smiling into the camera, arranging knowledge into digestible portions, pretending surprise labour is the same thing as opportunity. Three days of doing everything. There is a special violence in being competent. People discover you can carry weight, and suddenly the weight becomes yours by tradition. Meanwhile, over the past weekend, my salary had not come. Sunday passed like a badly written insult. The banks, displaying their usual talent for comedy without compassion, debited whatever peanuts I had left as a penalty for low balance. Low balance. The account was hungry, so they fined it for being hungry. What a cruel joke. No, not joke. Joke implies timing. This was just cruel capitalism wearing a clown nose and holding a receipt. Then finally, Monday night, after a long day of unconsensual labour, I saw the money had been credited from my organisation. For one stupid second, I felt relief. A small animal lifting its head. Haha. Immediately, the utility bills marched in like creditors at a funeral. Paid. Paid. Paid. The salary arrived and was swallowed before I could even pretend to be a person with options. Now I do not know what to do with the remaining peanuts. Save them? Spend them? Worship them? Put them under a glass case and label them: Evidence of Almost Freedom? Money does this ugly thing where it becomes both survival and accusation. If I save, I am responsible. If I spend, I am reckless. If I buy one harmless thing, the future clears its throat. If I deny myself everything, the present sits in the corner and rots.¹ So here I am, financially adult and emotionally feral, wondering whether peanuts should become savings, food, joy, phone case, emergency fund, retirement fund, temporarily-escape-from-family fund, abandon-my-family fun or proof that I am still allowed to want. And because the universe enjoys garnish, Thursday started with a multi-team meeting. The three-day training was finally over. My face had done its professional smiling. My voice had carried three days of material it was never supposed to carry. My brain was sitting in the corner like a wet towel. Then our director thanked my manager for working so hard and taking the training. Ha. Cute. Cruel cherry on top. There she was, being publicly blessed for labour that had passed through my throat, my screen, my panic, my preparation, my improvisation, my body, my mind, my hands. I watched credit climb the hierarchy like a well-trained monkey. Nobody thanked me. Of course nobody thanked me. What was I thinking? That would have disturbed the seating arrangement of the universe. The senior must shine. The junior must become (un)human infrastructure. The work must appear from somewhere, like office electricity or women’s patience. This is the social work's corporate version of domestic labour: invisible until it fails, inherited when inconvenient, credited to someone else when successful. I wish I could say I was surprised. I was not. That is what made it worse.

Anyway. Because the mind is a strange animal and refuses to suffer in a straight line, Wednesday night I returned to The Law According to Lidia Poët. The trainings were over. The emails had documented their little theatre of stolen credit. My body was tired in that corporate-social-work way where even the bones seem to have attended calls. Finally, I had a little time to myself. So naturally, I used it to become unreasonable about a fictional prosecutor. Jacopo? No. The prosecutor. Pier. Pierluigi Fourneau. Or, as Lidia called him as her "Young Warner". Or her schnauzel. The prosecutor had me hooked. There is something very annoying about being hooked. It makes a fool of all your intellectual furniture. Suddenly I am not a woman with critical faculties. I am a Victorian fainting couch with internet access. I went researching him. Then I watched two of his other films² that night, like a person conducting scholarly work and absolutely not like a woman chasing the aftertaste of one very specific chemistry. The films had charm. They had their own mood, their own appeal, their own little atmosphere. For a while, they worked. Then the spell thinned. Whatever spark I was trying to follow was not really there. Because it was not only him, was it? That is the irritating truth. It was not only the face, the voice, the posture, the period clothing, the courtroom seriousness, the restrained longing doing its quiet damage. It was the charge between them. The particular weather created when Lidia and the prosecutor stand near each other and do not say the actual thing. That has stayed. It has stayed so stubbornly that I keep rewatching their scenes. Again and again. Night and day. Day and night. Like a devotional practice, except the temple is Netflix and the deity is unbearable romantic tension. By now, I know the scenes too well. The dialogues. The pauses. The facial expressions. The music entering at exactly the wrong-right moment. The way one look shifts the entire emotional furniture of a scene. The way a sentence becomes less important than the breath before it. The way restraint can sometimes feel more intimate than touch. The kisses. The looks and smiles. Every rewatch gives me something else. A detail I missed. A change in expression. A hesitation. A small cruelty. A softness pretending to be wit. A look that arrives half a second too late. A silence that does not know how to leave the room. And, yes, the giddy pleasure. The ridiculous private sparkle of it. I know it is fiction. I know it is choreography. I know there are writers, actors, lighting, music, editing, all the machinery of feeling doing its work behind the curtain. I know I am being handled. I can see the strings. Still, I keep offering my wrists. There is something almost embarrassing about how deeply a fictional almost-love can enter the bloodstream. Maybe because it is safe. Maybe because it asks nothing from me. Maybe because nobody in my actual life is looking at me like that... with recognition, challenge, danger, tenderness, and the terrible inconvenience of wanting. Maybe I latch onto shows because they give me scenes my life refuses to stage. In Lidia Poët, even longing has architecture. It has corridors, offices, courtrooms, gloves, lamps, carriage rides, glances. It gets music. It gets dialogue. It gets a face across the room. My longing gets browser tabs. My longing gets a broken phone case. My longing gets me, sitting here after midnight, memorising someone else’s charged silences because my own life has made desire both dangerous and impractical. And yet, I do not want to mock it too much. This tiny obsession has kept me company. It has given my tired brain somewhere beautiful to go. It has reminded me that I am still capable of being moved, charmed, struck, made foolish, made awake. That some part of me still responds to spark. Still recognises chemistry. Still wants the look, the scene, the music, the impossible almost. Maybe that is why it has not faded yet. The other films were charming, yes. But charm is not the same as haunting. Charm passes through the room. Haunting learns your name.

But the trouble with haunting is that it does not stay politely inside the show. It follows me out. At first, it feels harmless. Sweet, even. A little private theatre behind the ribs. A spark. A charged scene to revisit when the actual day has been all training, bills, stolen credit, and corporate digestion. The brain says: here, look, beauty. Look, tension. Look, someone wanting someone with their whole face while pretending not to. And then, quietly, the floor changes. The giddiness starts to rot at the edges. I know this pattern. I know it too well. The attachment begins as pleasure, then turns into comparison, then into lack, then into a pit with excellent acoustics. Suddenly I am not watching a romance. I am standing outside my own life, watching what it does not contain. No one looks at me like that. No one waits for me in a corridor of consequence. No one turns toward me with restrained disaster in their eyes. No one writes my longing into music. By MDD, I mean both things, because of course my brain could not stop at one acronym. Major Depressive Disorder, yes, the official beast with paperwork. But also Maladaptive Daydreaming, its glittering cousin, the one that does not drag me down so much as decorate the pit and invite me to live there. The daydreaming does not feel like imagination then. It feels like teleportation-relocation. One minute I am in my room, and the next I am living inside a scene that has better lighting, better dialogue, better stakes, better tenderness. I build corridors from glances. I extend conversations that never happened. I replay a look until it becomes a country. And for a while, the body loosens its grip. The real world thins. My actual life goes quiet in the background like a tab I forgot to close. That is where the DPDR slips in. Depersonalization-derealization disorder. Not as a separate disaster, but as the bill for leaving too often. The more inhabited the daydream becomes, the less inhabited I feel in my own body. My hands become props. My room becomes set design. My face becomes a character I vaguely recognise but do not fully own. The fictional world gains texture, and my real world loses temperature. And then the MDD, that old bureaucrat of the soul, opens its files. It begins gently, almost reasonably. See? This is what life can look like. This is what desire can do to a face. This is what aliveness looks like when properly lit. And now look at you. Look at your room. Look at your unread messages. Look at your body. Look at the broken phone case. Look at the salary that arrived only to vanish into bills. Look at the Saturday already being trespassed upon by work. Look at the years. Look at the stuckness. Look at the absence. Depression has never needed originality. Repetition is its main skill. Then the DPDR enters like bad fog. The world gets a pane of glass over it. My own hands become slightly theoretical. My face in the mirror looks like someone I have been assigned to maintain. The room becomes too flat and too far away at the same time. I can hear myself thinking, but from another room. I can move, answer, type, drink water, exist, but existence feels like a badly dubbed film. And the show becomes more real than me. That is the humiliating part. A fictional almost-touch has more texture than my actual evening. A glance between two actors feels more inhabited than my own body. Their silence has gravity. Mine has dust. Their longing has editing, music, consequence. Mine has tabs open and a mild headache. So I keep rewatching, partly for pleasure, partly for proof. Proof that I can still feel. Proof that somewhere inside the fog, the signal has not died. But every proof becomes evidence against me. If I can feel this much for a scene, why can I not feel properly inside my own life? If my chest can tighten because two fictional people stood too close under warm lighting, why does my actual future feel wrapped in plastic? If desire still lives in me, why does it have nowhere to go except a screen? This is how the sinkhole opens. Not dramatically. Not with a scream. Just one more rewatch. One more scene. One more detail noticed. One more minute of being pulled toward a life with movement, stakes, beauty, and someone across the room who sees you as both problem and possibility. Then I pause the show. And my own room returns. My own life returns. The same arrangement. The same stuck furniture of the self. The same body I keep trying to inhabit like rented accommodation. The same old fear standing at the foot of the bed, asking if I enjoyed my little outing. This is why I both love and fear these attachments. They rescue me. Then they show me what I needed rescuing from. They make me feel alive. Then they make my life feel unlivable. They pull me out of numbness. Then leave me with the full bill of having been numb. And I know this sounds excessive. I know sane people watch a show, enjoy the chemistry, maybe make an edit, maybe send a thirsty message to a friend, then proceed with their lives like emotionally regulated mammals. I, meanwhile, open one fictional door and fall through the architecture of my entire deprivation. Very normal. Very casual. Five stars. Would dissociate again. I do not escape reality. No. Never. I just return to it less assembled.

Anyway. The phone case is still broken. Of course it is. It has become one of those stupidly faithful objects that stays because I do not have the courage to replace it with something honest. A cracked little witness that's ugly, loyal, safer than confession. I keep thinking about the sapphic flag phone case, still. Not constantly, not dramatically, not like a heroine pressing a forbidden letter to her chest under moonlight. More like an app running quietly in the background, draining battery. A small wish. A small colour. A small yes I keep refusing myself because in this house where I reside, even colour can become evidence. A phone case is never just a phone case. It is a trial waiting for a prosecutor.³ Who bought this? Why this colour? What does it mean? Where did you see this? Who told you? Why are you becoming like this? Since when? Because families are very modern until your object begins to speak a language they did not approve. Then suddenly everyone becomes archaeologist, police, priest, and unpaid detective. So the broken cover stays. The safe thing. The ugly thing. The thing that says nothing and therefore survives. Just like me. I am ugly and I say nothing. And, unfortunately, I survive. I wish I were less good at surviving. This is a terrible thing to say because survival is supposed to be noble. Women are fed this word like jaggery wrapped around medicine. Survive. Adjust. Manage. Endure. Be strong. Be mature. Be practical. Be grateful it is not worse. Be glad you are educated. Be glad you have work. Be glad nobody has chained your ankle to the bedpost. Be glad the cage has wonky Wi-Fi that doesn't work only for you so you have to buy your data separately. And I am glad, sometimes. I am not completely foolish, you know. I know the world is brutal, and I know there are worse rooms, worse fathers, worse mothers, worse brothers, worse sisters, worse uncles, worse aunts, worse silences, worse locks, worse oppressors. And, I know comparison is the national sport of emotional invalidation. Still, knowing other people are drowning in deeper water does not make your own lungs decorative. I am tired. Not beautifully tired. Not aesthetically tired. Not poet tired. Not the cinematic kind where a woman removes one earring and looks devastating under yellow light. I am tired in the spreadsheet way. Rows and rows of small unfinished things. Cells filled with pending. Useless colours marking them pending. Body pending. Courage pending. Departure pending. Desire pending. Honesty pending. Future pending. Life pending. There is something obscene about being mid-twenty-something and feeling already archival. Like I am not living, have never lived, but only preserving evidence for a case no court will ever hear. 
Exhibit A: the broken phone case.
Exhibit B: the body that alternates between hunger and punishment of embarrassment when I do eat.⁴
Exhibit C: the tabs I keep open as if research can become rescue.
Exhibit D: the private list of things I will do when I leave.
Exhibit E: the sentence, when I leave, carrying the entire weight of a religion.⁵
But what if I do not leave? There it is. The honest rot laid bare under the decorative moss. What if I do not leave? What if the box of things I will do when I leave becomes a pathetic, loser museum of the woman I kept postponing? What if all my rebellion remains beautifully theoretical, well-written, occasionally funny, and completely unusable in this stupid head of mine and a copy of it here, in this weird little corner of the world wide web? What if I keep becoming more articulate about the cage and never actually become less caged? I hate that question because it has no manners and it shamelessly enters without knocking and sits on my bed. Today was not even dramatic enough to justify all this. That is the insult. Nothing happened. No grand fight. No cinematic breakdown. No one said the cruel line that would make a clean villain of them. The day simply passed over me with its usual dull hands. Work, phone, food thoughts, body thoughts, tabs, messages, heat, humidity, perpetual fatigue, my mother's devotional songs, the faint humiliation of still being myself in this rotting flesh. Maybe that is why I am writing. Like always. Because nothing happened, and still I feel like I survived something tremendous. Maybe the event is not always external. Maybe sometimes the event is waking up inside the same life and not immediately turning into stone. I keep thinking of Lidia Poët again. Not just the law, the fight, the forbidden rooms. Of course, that is the central point, though. I keep thinking of her forward motion. Even when she suffers, the story lets her move. Or, more aptly, she moves her story forward. She enters rooms, she argues, she demands, she fights, she risks, she desires, she loves, she fails with choreography, and she still continues. Her world resists her, yes, on this screen, it gives her scenes. My life, by comparison, feels like a loading screen. A buffering woman. A spinning circle wearing moisturizer. 

And yet, beneath all this melodrama, some tiny stubborn thing remains alive. Annoyingly alive. Cockroach alive. Government-office-file alive. It keeps making lists. It keeps saving poems. It keeps laughing at terrible jokes all alone in the small, dark room. It keeps wanting pizza, sea air, impossible softness, a room with a lock, a body that is not treated like a public institution, a love that does not require a courtroom, and one ridiculous phone case in colours nobody is allowed to interrogate. This, I suppose, is hope...? Not the clean kind. Definitely, not. Not the motivational-poster kind, either. Not the “everything happens for a reason” kind, which should be banned and replaced with free snacks. My hope is smaller and more suspicious. It looks like keeping the browser tab open. It looks like drinking water after punishing the body. It looks like writing the sentence even when the sentence is ugly. It looks like admitting I want things. It looks like not mocking myself immediately after admitting I want things. Okay, fine, it looks like mocking myself only a little. At 20:55 PM, I am still here. Still stuck. Still carrying home inside me like contraband. Still afraid that my life is not a phase but the whole arrangement. Still saving possible selves in invisible carts. Still not buying the phone case. Still wanting it. Maybe that matters. I hope, it matters. Wanting. Even wanting badly. Even wanting secretly. Even wanting in a house where desire must learn to move like a shameful thief. Rot is still here, yes. But maybe rot is not the only thing loyal to me. Maybe want is loyal too. Maybe the little sapphic flag in my head, the one I have not bought, the one I have not allowed to become plastic and visible and stupidly real, is not only fear. Maybe it is also proof that some part of me still knows colour. Still recognises itself. Still presses its face against the shop window of the future and says, very quietly, not yet, but mine. Not yet. But mine.

As I write this, she, my manager, has texted again. After work hours, of course. Respecting time would be too vulgar, too modern, too dangerously close to recognising me as a person. Some work needs to be done ASAP. As she had already promised it. Naturally. ASAP: the social work's corporate mantra of poor planning, passed down from one panicked person [usually the manager] to another [the underdog] until it lands in the lap of whoever [mostly, the underdog, again] has the least authority to refuse. The funny part is, it is not even my job. Not really. But somehow the inconvenience has found my address. Now I will have to either ask the concerned person humiliatingly late at night, as if I am the villain in their Friday, or ask tomorrow, on an off Saturday, and become the tiny unpleasant notification in someone else’s weekend. This is how bad management spreads its shame. Someone does not plan. Someone does not prepare. Someone does not communicate. Then the failure travels downward, wearing urgency as perfume the gives you a migraine the moment it hits your nostrils, until the most junior person is left holding a burning plate and apologising for the smoke. I hate this part most: the forced borrowing of another person’s time. I hate that I must become the messenger of someone else’s chaos. I hate that I must sound polite while carrying a request I do not respect. I hate that my options are either to inconvenience someone else or absorb the inconvenience into my own body, which is apparently where all unclaimed work goes to die. There should be a word for this. Not burnout. Burnout sounds too final, too respectable, like a candle in a poem. This is more like being nibbled. Tiny bites of time. Tiny bites of rest. Tiny bites of Friday evening, Saturday morning, salary, self-respect, appetite, softness, desire. Nothing large enough to make a case. Everything small enough to be dismissed. Just do this once. Just check once. Just ask once. Just join early once. Just help out once. Just manage for today. Just stretch a little. A whole life can be stolen in “just.” And I know what will happen if I say no. Maybe nothing dramatic. Maybe no punishment anyone can screenshot. Just a change in tone. A slight coolness. A note in the invisible ledger. Not a team player. Not proactive. Difficult. Uncooperative. Needs attitude adjustment. The old words wearing office clothes. So I sit here, at 23:25 PM, writing about being stuck while the proof of stuckness arrives in real time. A message on my phone. A task outside my role. An urgency I did not create. A Saturday being quietly dragged toward sacrifice. And me, still deciding whether to obey, delay, soften, apologise, resist, or perform that sophisticated modern dance called “setting boundaries” while standing on a floor made entirely of consequences. Maybe I will reply tomorrow [that being, Monday]. Maybe I will say, “I’ll check this during working hours.” Maybe I will type it bravely and then stare at it like it is a bomb and then erase it. Maybe courage, for tonight, is not sending the message immediately. Maybe survival is letting one ASAP remain slightly less ASAP. Maybe rebellion begins as a notification left unread. Actually, I read it. Or maybe I am romanticising avoidance because I am tired. Both can be true. Most things that keep me alive are morally untidy.

~ Oizys.

¹ This too echoes: “The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save-the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour-your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life-the greater is the store of your estranged being.” ― Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
² The Mascarpone Collection.
³ Good reference.
⁴ An addendum for Exhibit B: A Hunger Artist by Franz Kafka.
⁵ An addendum for Exhibit E:
When I leave, I will buy the phone case.
When I leave, I will breathe normally.
When I leave, I will decorate myself without fear.
When I leave, I will not explain every harmless thing like it is a crime scene.
When I leave, I will become the version of myself who exists without whispering.

A dream, a Hindi poem, some roadblocks, negative bank balance & a heart full of melancholic rebellion

April 9th - 10th, 2025.

This afternoon, as the soft rays of sunlight filtered through my makeshift curtains (made from my mother’s old clothes) I couldn’t help but write down the strange and vivid dream I had last night. It felt so real like I had walked through an ancient city full of lively history. I had run away from home, travelling aimlessly. With just one bag and my laptop. The streets were yellow, and the air was thick with the scent of old wood and spices. I wandered through narrow alleys, searching for a shop to buy some food, feeling completely lost. I found a shop and I saw a man buying some sweet food, I asked if he could relay my message to the shopkeeper to give me some vanilla ice cream and the shopkeeper was a bit disappointed. And then, suddenly, I bumped into someone familiar.

It was A—my school friend, the one I hadn’t seen in years. She looked just like I remembered: laughing, carefree, strikingly plum and beautiful, a bright spark of joy amid that ancient, bustling city. I ran to her, telling her how I ended up there with no plan, no itinerary. She offered to help me, consoling me in a way I didn’t expect. It felt so different from how we were when we were kids. Back then, she was always the centre of our friendship, and I was the one who loved being her rock. There was also someone else in the dream, someone who felt like a very close friend but I can’t quite remember who they were. It’s like they slipped through my fingers, like sand running through my hands. Now, just a stick figure in my blurry dream. Still, I can feel the warmth of that dream, like a gentle whisper of night that stays with you even after you wake up.

Before I could process it all, I found myself in the newly renovated, cramped kitchen with my mother, making tea. We started talking about my recent work on child marriage and the challenges that come with it. As I shared my thoughts, she looked at me with that quiet understanding in her eyes, both wisdom and concern. Then she told me a story I hadn’t heard before, one that stuck with me. It was about a girl from a village I know, a teenager who had just been married off by her parents and was already pregnant. My mother described her voice as so young, barely having begun her life, yet already carrying this heavy burden. I could see the worry in my mother’s eyes, the weight of knowing how many young girls are still trapped in these cycles of early marriage.

That conversation stayed with me as I worked today. It gave me a weirdly renewed sense of urgency to keep going. But then, just as I was about to look up some cases for my research work, I found out that my access to the research databases I’ve been relying on was suddenly cut off. The user doesn't exist, it said. No warning, no explanation! It felt like such a big setback, a roadblock in the middle of everything I’ve been building like a bunch of coins wrapped in socks hitting you right across your face. It’s frustrating, and I don’t know exactly what to do next, but I’ll have to figure it out. I’ve sent some emails and am hoping for replies. Still, it’s disheartening. Amidst all of this, working in a social work sector and relying on funders' timeline of giving our organization, I have to decide when to pay my utility bills which is not exactly in my hands though.

So, I sat down to proofread and publish something with this entry I’d been meaning to finish: a poem that had been brewing in my mind for weeks. I finally wrote it all down last night, top to bottom. I’m not sure why, but writing it last night felt like a release, a way to process everything I’ve been feeling lately. Maybe it’s the dream, the conversation with my mother, or the frustration with the database issue. But when I read the words today, they felt like my emotional safety net today:

Main, Beti — Ek Virasat Ki Saza

(Ek Roohani Safar Ek Aurat Ki Awaaz Mein)

(Zakhm ko chamak nahi chahiye, sirf samajh chahiye)

Baap ke tamachon ne,

Rishtedaar ke tamashon ne,

Maa ki tamanna ne,

Meri tanhaayi ko maroda hai.

Raato ki khamoshi ne,

Andar ke toofanon ko chhoda hai,

Har hansne wali tasveer ke peeche

Ek roya hua chehra chhupa hua hai.

Doston ki chhupi hui hansi ne

Mere jazbaat ka mazaak uda diya,

Aur dil ke har tukde ne

Kisi yaad ka kafan odh liya.

Ab to khud se bhi dar lagta hai,

Aaina bhi aankhon mein jhaankta nahi,

Zindagi ne itna giraaya hai

Ke maut bhi mujhse sharmata nahi.

Baap ke gusse ka dar,

Maa ke aansuon ka dukh,

Chaar logon ki baaton ne

Ginwa diye hain aakhri din...

Sapne jo kabhi aankhon mein palte the,

Aaj woh sirf aankhon ke kone mein jalte hain.

Jin rishtey ko rab ka roop kaha tha,

Wahi ab seene mein shool sa chubhte hain.

Har narmi ek toheen ban gayi,

Har khushi ek saza lagti hai.

Zindagi ke is sheher mein,

Tanhai meri sabse wafadar saathi hai.

Na koi poochhne wala,

Na koi sunne wala hai yahan.

Bas ek khud se sawaal hai:

“Main ab bhi zinda hoon... kyun?”

Baap ka bhaari ghamand,

Maa ki halki si hansi,

Behen ki yaad,

Parchhaayi ko satati hai.

Khaali kamre ki deewar par

Uske gel pen se likhe naam ab bhi hain,

Aur uski chhoti-chhoti baatein

Raat ke sannate mein cheekh ban jaati hain.

Ek pal ko lagta hai sab kuch theek ho jaayega,

Magar doosre hi pal,

Zehar sa lagta hai har tasalli ka lafz:

“Sab theek ho jaayega…”

Dil to ab bhi dhadakta hai,

Magar kisi intezaar mein nahi,

Bas aadat hai...

Saans lene ki, jeene ki,

Kuch mehsoos kiye bina.

Intezaar hai us din ka,

Jab jalega baap ka ahankar,

Aur amar hogi maa ki azadi.

Us umeed ne rakha hai mujhe

Is kaali raat mein garam.

Jab behen ke sapno ko pankh milenge,

Aur nafrat ke dariya sookh jaayenge.

Jab sirf naam ka nahi,

Asliyat ka pyaar har chhat ke neeche rahega.

Main nahi chahti badla,

Bas khula aasmaan chahti hoon,

Jahan saans lene par

Kisi ke gusse ka bojh na ho.

Woh subah aayegi,

Jab maa muskaraayegi,

Aur main, ek baar phir,

Khud ko gale laga paungi...

Baap ka chillana,

Maa ka rona,

Waqt ka guzarna,

Rishtedaron ki tipanni,

Behan ke safarnaame,

Dosti ki yaadein,

Pyaar ka: na koi naam-o-nishaan.

Har kona, har chehra,

Ek chhoti si kahani ke tukde hain,

Jise main roz jodti hoon,

Aur raat tak phir se bikhar jaati hoon.

Na kabhi kisi ne poocha

Ke chhup rehna bhi cheekh sakta hai,

Na hi samjha

Ke muskurana, kabhi-kabhi, maut jaisa lagta hai.

Ab to khushi bhi ajeeb lagti hai,

Jaise kisi aur ki zindagi chura rahi hoon,

Aur dard...

Woh to meri apni milkiyat hai,

Jaise virasat mein mila ho koi zakhm ka makaan.

Bachpan ke sapne,

Jawani ki maaya,

Budaape ka dar,

Karm ka na koi phal,

Aur na hi badan ka khayal.

Zindagi ke har mod par

Bas ek sawaal rehta hai:

"Main yeh sab kyun jhel rahi hoon?"

Aur har baar jawab mein

Ek khaali khamoshi milti hai.

Peechhe mudh ke dekho to

Bas adhoore iraade,

Aage dekho to

Bas dhundhla sa andhera.

Jo tha, woh chala gaya,

Jo hai, woh jhooth lagta hai,

Aur jo aayega...

Usse milne ka hausla hi nahi bacha.

Par ab bhi...

Kahin dil ke kisi kone mein

Ek chingari si bachi hai

Shayad kisi savere ki,

Shayad ek khud ke gale lag jaane ki...

Is zindagi ke chakravyuh mein,

Jitni koshish kar loon bhaagne ki,

Wahi khalwat mein,

Usi bistar par,

Ek hi kamre mein band,

Mere sapne sadhte hain,

Aur uski buu se rooh

Roz thoda aur murjha jaati hai.

Deewaron ne sun liya hai

Jo duniya sun nahi paayi,

Aur takiye ne pi liya hai

Woh har aansu

Jo aankhon se bhi chhupa tha.

Hawa tak sawal karti hai ab:

"Ab bhi zinda ho?"

Aur main bas ek muskaan pehne

Keh deti hoon, "haan... kuch had tak."

Na roshni se dosti hai,

Na andheron se dushmani,

Bas aadat si ho gayi hai

Har raat ke khaali paanon mein

Apne hone ko talashne ki.

Chahe jitni bhi koshish kar lu main lekin,

Baap ka gussa: apne khoon se,

Maa ka doodh: apni niyat se,

Kabhi alag nahi hota.

Chahe jitni takkar laga lu main lekin,

Baap ka magn,

Maa ki chuppi,

Ke mishrit pehchaan ke daldal mein

Joojhne ka taqkar koi nahi hara sakta.

Main nafaqat insaan hoon,

Main ek silsila hoon,

Us virasat ka, jo kabhi chaha hi nahi gaya.

Har baras,

Mujhe jise dho kar naya banna tha,

Wahi baras mujhe aur gehra doobta gaya.

Aaj bhi apne aap se ladti hoon,

Kya sach mein main “main” hoon?

Ya sirf unke jhoothe khwab

Aur adhoore iraadon ka

Ek zinda saboot?

Kyonki na baap ki dambhi,

Na maa ke insaaf,

Beti ko kabhi bacha paaya hai

Is samaj ke chaar logon ki katcheri se.

Jahan na aawaaz ka mol hai,

Na khamoshi ki izzat,

Jahan beti ka sapna

Sirf parchaiyon mein likha jaata hai,

Aur uske iraade

Sharm ke naam pe jala diye jaate hain.

Usne khud se poocha hai aksar:

“Kya galti thi meri?

Kya paida hone ka faisla mera tha?”

Magar jawab har baar

Ek aur dard ban kar laut aata hai.

Kapdon ki lambai,

Chaal ki sidhaai,

Zubaan ki theek line,

Yeh sab likh diye gaye hain

Uske hone ke niyam ke taur pe,

Jabki uski har saans

Kisi azaadi ke geet ki talaash mein hai.

Woh roti hai toh kehte hain:

“Naazuk hai”,

Woh ladti hai toh bolte hain:

“Badtameez hai”,

Aur agar chup reh jaaye

Toh samaj ke kaanon mein

Zyada sukoon bajta hai.

Beti hone ka bojh

Kandhon pe nahi,

Rooh mein utar jaata hai.

Aur har baar jab koi

Uske hone pe sawal uthata hai,

Woh sirf zinda nahi rehti,

Woh pal-pal mar jaati hai.

Aur jab yehi beti ban jaati hai

Ek aurat,

Wahi baap ban jaata hai

Ek mard,

Aur maa kho jaati hai

Julmi samaj ke itihaas mein.

Beti ki galti

Uske sanmaan ke saath baandh di jaati hai,

Woh sanmaan

Jo uss mard ka katputli hota hai,

Wahi mard

Jo kabhi beti ko gale lagane par

Hichkichata nahi tha,

Magar duniya ke dar se

Uski zindagi ko hi jhukane laga.

Aur jab beti apni zubaan kholti hai,

Toh use "tez" kaha jaata hai,

Jab woh khud ke liye khadi hoti hai,

Toh use "besharam" samjha jaata hai.

Uski har saans

Ek faisla ban jaati hai

Jis par poori duniya

Judge ki kursi par baith jaati hai.

Aur tab samajhta hai koi bhi nahi,

Ke jis aurat ko woh chhoti soch mein tol rahe hain,

Woh pehle ek beti thi

Jo sirf pyaar chaahti thi,

Na ki sirf bardasht karne ki taleem.

Aur tab,

Us aurat ka sab kuch,

Uski bolti zubaan,

Uski chalti soch,

Uski jeeti-jagti rooh

Ek saza ban jaati hai.

{Yeh meri kahani nahi,

Yeh har us beti ki kahani hai

Jisne apni pehchaan virasat mein pai thi,

Aur apna wajood...

Khud banana pada.

Main, beti banke paida hui thi,

Aurat bankar likhi gayi hoon.

Magar kahaani ab bhi adhoori hai...

Kyunki kal ek aur beti paida hogi.}

[It is in Hindi language, someday I will translate to English, someday I promise.]

It’s strange how writing can be such a release. I’ve been carrying so many feelings lately, so many that sometimes it feels like there’s no room left to breathe. But when I wrote that poem last night, it was like I let out everything I’ve been holding inside. The words came almost on their own like they were waiting to be said. I still don’t entirely understand it, but maybe I don’t need to. Maybe some things are meant to be felt and then shared, without always needing to be explained. Yesterday afternoon, while doing some research on child marriage, I sat down to read (again!) about the very inspiring Bhanwari Devi. Her story continues to haunt me and push me forward in my work. The strength she showed in her fight, despite the world turning its back on her, reminds me of the work I’m doing and the women I’m working for. Some of her words which I could also feel in the recent words of Gisèle Pelicot: 

‘it’s not for us to have shame – it’s for them’

The poem, "Main, Beti — Ek Virasat Ki Saza," is my way of giving voice to a story I know all too well. And I know, if you are a girl or a woman reading, you know it too well too. I know you can feel it in your bones, in your blood, as do I. It’s about a girl, a woman, whose fate has already been written for her long before she gets a chance to choose. It’s about the generational curse of silence, suffering, and enduring an inheritance that no one would wish for. Yet, at the same time, it's a journey of resilience, of reclaiming one’s voice and challenging that very fate.

As I reread the my poem, I was also haunted by the thoughts of the young girl my mother spoke of. I think of her as I write this, and I know that even though my voice is just one of many, it has to keep speaking. It has to keep pushing for change, no matter how many obstacles or roadblocks appear. Even if no one or even one person is reading this, I have to keep writing. So, tomorrow when someone is somewhere in this spiderweb seeking some reassurance, some affirmation, some understanding, my words will be providing them.

And so, I’ll keep writing, keep fighting, keep speaking. Even when I feel lost, like I did in that ancient city in my dream, I know that the work I’m doing matters. Even though bills are pending, even though money is yet to come through, even though my shopping list is rotting in the waiting cart, even though I am unable to move out, go away from this familial swamp, even though I have zero support system, almost no safety net right now. Because, despite all of that, in some strange way, I feel like I’m not alone in it. Maybe A was in my dream for a reason. Maybe she represents the support, the comfort, and the unexpected help that comes when you least expect it. And, if I can be that to someone, anyone, then my work has achieved Nirvana! And the other figure, the one I can’t quite remember, maybe that’s a part of me that hasn’t fully come to the surface yet. Who is still figuring it all out? Either way, I’ll keep walking forward, guided by the voices of the girls and women I’m working for, and the dream that still lingers in my heart.

It’s a strange thing, how life sometimes feels like a combination of the personal, the political, and the emotional all intertwining. In my dream, I wandered lost until I found someone who reminded me of who I used to be. In my waking life, I see the same theme: finding pieces of myself in the faces of others, like the girl my mother spoke of, like the women I work with, like A, and even the figure I can’t fully place from my dream. It’s as if all of it is one long, winding journey where I’m constantly discovering and rediscovering what I care about, who I am, and how far I’m willing to go to make sure their voices are heard. Today was a reminder that even when things feel chaotic or uncertain or chronically bad, there’s a thread that runs through it all, one that I must keep following. Even when I can’t see the whole path, I trust that, like in my dream, I’ll find my way forward.

- Oizys.