Category: patriarchy

Imposter Syndrome

In a world

Where judgement

Precedes knowledge

Prejudice before

Understanding

In an era

Where world tries

To make you

Someone else

Weaves a tale

That suits their

Narratives

A world where 

You are a misfit 

You feel naturally

Like an imposter 

In a world 

Everything seems

Staged and performative

A doll’s house perhaps

Anything original

Is constantly doubted

Needing proof

A world which

Keeps validating lies

Creating false narratives

And a cloud of confusion

What else can you feel

But an imposter?

There are masks

Behind masks, underneath masks

Agendas hiding agendas

Like Martyoshka dolls

All identical and empty

A riot of shamelessness

Arrogance of patriarchy

What else can you be?

But an Imposter

Shape shifting, flowing

Trying to fit in

But feeling half empty

And also overwhelmed

You didn’t ask for this ride

You didn’t ask for these lies

Or these false narratives

Not sure who is

Hallucinating here

Me or you ?

Or who is the imposter?

Me? Or You?

Or the humanity itself!!

Joan of Arc

Though there is ample evidence

That we were the harvesters, gatherers

While men went hunting and gaming

Maybe we were cave artists too

Though there is an ample evidence

That we did the ground calculations

For ambitious space missions

Carried out fatal experiments

To figure out x rays, radioactivity and

Even the DNA structure

Though there is evidence

That most anonymous writers

Too were women

They were also those wives, sisters, sister in laws and whores

Which gave the world stupendous art

Yet women have been historically ignored

Cast aside, taken for granted

Treated as a doormat 

While men ran their victory laps

As they stood on the podium 

The tray bearers were the women too

There is ample overpowering evidence

That we birthed the entire humanity

Every evil soul who masquerades as saviour

Started life in a mother’s womb

The very female sex whom he ended up

Exploiting, killing and silencing

How did we end up here?

Are we truly the weaker kind?

Or just too kind? Or too conditioned?

Passing on the intergenerational trauma

And patriarchy in equal measures

No wonder we end up being hated a lot

For trading freedom for freedom

That’s the only real deal for us

Be unfree, free, unfree, free

To be or not to be

We truly can’t distinguish between choices

There isn’t any escape route

From this foul role-play

We regale it in and we ace it too!!

After all we just have to call it day

And decide not to give birth

And watch homes and government scramble

With incentives and perks

We can pull off a demographic shift

Yet these imbecile fools

Disrespect and disrobe us

Rape and kill as per their will

There seems to be no end in sight

We are still in the recognition stage

Recognising the inequality

Still debating that patriarchy 

Is the ultimate design

No wonder Joan of Arc

Was called a witch and burnt at stake

Only to be venerated later

As a patron saint and saviour

This game is too old

Can we move to the next level?

We refuse to be recognised in retrospect

We dare you to practice equality

Take those baby steps

Remember we women are good at it

To teach those baby steps

Watch you falter

Give us a chance to make you

A better human or maybe at least a human!!

Photo courtesy: My son, Anuran. This was clicked at Orleans where Joan of Arc led the war to save France.

Unheard Screams

She was out on the streets

Screaming about horrors

That went on inside a mansion

No one believed her

Women are always

Hysteric they thought

Before her there was another

A super model

Who tried to tell the truth

She was packed off

To the psychiatric ward

A filmmaker tried too

He died before

The world saw his edited film

Which felt like his perverse imagination

All this while

For decades men and women

Of power and influence

Kept mum even when they knew

They all partied, built a horrific reality

That the world thought was

Just a perverse imagination

They maimed, harmed and killed

In the name of fun and longevity

It took a whole generation

Of abused and trafficked kids to grow up

To call it all out, fight endless legal battles

Die mysteriously in the process

To bring it all to the light

With all evidence for everyone to see

Yet the world is numb

The perverse spy network

That controlled the world

Still thrives in money and power

Telling people to move on

Screaming only stocks and race

Money and influence matters

A handful few perverts

Reminding us that torture chambers

Continue to exist, cruelty never dies

In war between good and evil

Evil always has the ugliest loud laugh

While goodness stands shackled

Maimed, trafficked and brutally abused

No one believes the goodness anymore

What good does it serve to be good?

What kind of a rot is this? 

Where screams of vulnerable

Women and children

Often go unheard

While men continue to flaunt

Their naked positions and power

Through utter cruel perversity

Shame on this selective

Deaf, dumb and blind world

Was it all like this forever?

Was free world, an illusion

That was sold to us?

Just like puppets we dance

While the screams go unheard

We scroll past all the horrors

To pause at delicate flowers

Or wellness reels

How many steps did you walk today?

Being a Woman

Being a Woman

There is a lump
Stuck in my throat
It can’t be removed
Surgically
It just stays there
Just like the abyss
In my heart or perhaps brain
I keep sinking into
A free fall
With no rock bottom
With no voice
To scream for rescue
Not sure whether
There is a rescue team
As neither my internal abyss
Nor lump in my throat
Is visible or audible
That’s what it is
For most women
I am told
You learn to stay afloat
Put a brave front
And you scream internally
Without letting out a whimper
You accept praises and criticisms
Whatever comes your way
You assume you have a purpose
Or a role
Until you decide to step away
From the roleplays
To realise
You are invisible too
The world never sees you as a person
But rather as a wife or mother or sister
You step away
And you are reduced to a nobody
How liberating is that!!
They care only till you care
You like a fool kept caring
Letting them humiliate
The Law of reciprocity
Is always learnt a hard way
But apply it
Just like everyone does
In every other sphere
You will see
What you hold together
Collapses as a pack of cards
And then you realise
The cards were rigged
With misogyny
To remain as an object or
As a person with lump
In the throat
And Abyss in the heart
To sink without a sound

Step and snap out now
Out of the roleplay
To find your own voice
And your sense of balance
You will be visible
To those who want to see you
Rest do not matter
At least you will be visible
To your damned self

In that damn mirror!

Image courtesy: Anuran Kar Gupta, Physics researcher based in Paris

Heaven and Hell

Your idea of heaven
Is my idea of hell!
How will we ever reconcile?

You talk of supremacy
I walk with the oppressed
How do we find a middle ground?

You use brute loud force
I sing my songs of protest
Do you ever hear me?

You think might is right
I believe meek too has a right
How do I protect my child?

You are drunk on power
I root for my freedom
How do we avoid the fight?

Dice is definitely loaded
You will win this fight
But still you will lose

You will remember me
At the door of heaven
Your sins
Will be my testimony
Your lies
My truth

The fire you lit to hide your crimes
Will burn down the heaven
Your supremacy is a sham
You have power that is not yours

One day humanity will rise
One day humanity has to rise!





The Blue Door

There is a blue door at end of the road. People say it’s the door to the happiness.  One can hear laughter and songs, but no one is ever seen crossing the threshold. Neighborhood believes that all the peace and happiness has got locked behind the blue door. No one knows who has locked all the joy away but the sadness and anger that is left behind is quite palpable.

As one walks down the road, one can hear screams of the locked lunatic sibling coming from an attic of one house. They say he lost his mind over a girl who was forced to marry someone from her clan. From another house one can hear heart rending lament of a mother whose only child has gone missing. A misogynist cop rants and screams in the other one, ordering his wife and children who tremble with fear. A young girl screams hysterically in the next one whenever she hears a footstep, “They are coming for me. Save me.”

The town has a church, a temple, synagogue and a mosque where prayers are held daily. Everyone prays for peace and prosperity that they think is locked elsewhere behind the Blue door. They all hold each other’s faith in doubt. They all live in constant fear and pride of their gods. They fight and attack each other relentlessly. It feels as though they are compelling their gods to compete in a race to gain the highest glory and power of the land (just like they wanted the children to compete once upon a time). Sadly, they have managed to drive both gods and children away.

After prayers everyone returns to the little hell they have managed to create. The Blue door remains shut forever. In their fight, hatred and bigotry, the town has forgotten that the gods have left key to the door with them – the key that opens only when there is love and kinship.

Silly Significance

With her chin-up
And chips down
With spring in her feet
She trots on the globe
Our blue dot
But she is not alone

There are billions of us
Totally lost
In the humongous mess
Of hundreds of imagined worlds
And faiths
And the great sense of propriety
All trying to be right
By proving others wrong

Kudos to us for
Throwing out the baby
– our sustenance
Along with the bath water

All self similar beings
Trying so hard
To advance their race
By killing each other
The sheer madness

We still love to imagine
And believe
It’s the sun that sets
Or rises for us
Instead of –
– that’s it’s we go
Around an axis
Downside up
And upside down
Along the elliptical

Planet doesn’t care
Whether it’s dinosaurs
Or only us
Neither does the Universe

Feeling all self-important
With bloated
or deflated egos
With the chin up
Or chips down
We continue to seek
our significance
In the grand cosmic
Insignificance

But does it have all to be
So dangerously silly?
by pitting imagined worlds
Imagined selves
And imagined gods
Against each other
And against Nature!