"Why worry about the twelfth standard boards or competitive exams?

You are only a woman",

Another woman

My teacher

Asked me

" Become a teacher." she said

As if it were that simple,

Undervaluing her role and my ambitions in one sentence.

Only a woman

"Leave the professions to the men",

Another woman

My hairdresser told me.

"Where will the men go for jobs

If women become doctors and engineers?

Why don't you take up some simple vocation like my salon staff instead?"

Only a woman

So it must be alright for strangers to discuss my bleeding private parts?

Every month this news has to make its way to the headlines of our apartment's grapevine.

For them to see which menstrual traditions I shun and which I keep alive.

Only a woman, but also,

"I am sure you're a typical desi girl, who doesn't drink or smoke",

Another woman

An acquaintance smirked,

As if this made me a lesser person somehow.

Only a woman

But also a fool for choosing to be a homemaker,

I was told

because that's not a choice but a compulsion.

A modern woman works.

After all I

"stole some other person's college seat ".

Only a woman

So I must conform entirely to a role

Desi or rebel.

I must not pick and choose my battles

When I can be spoon-fed.

It has to be this way

And I can only move between so many stereotypes.

As a woman,

As new rules replace the old

Once again and yet again.

Like yesterday this young girl,

So much younger than I,

Speaking in English to her friends on how to retrieve a ball

From a window more efficiently.

When I offered a friendly suggestion in English

Chose to respond, ”Aunty Bacche hain” in Hindi.

Now I cannot even choose my language!

Because of the way I dress and live,

It is chosen for me.

But tell me,

Why must I conform?

Let me be!

These well-wishers do not love me!

They want me to vanish piece by piece

And become a medium

To reinforce their standards of female morality.

I want to shout out

To all those other women

I am not only a woman

Though you cannot see.

My choices and my actions and my faults are also part of my identity!

I'm not you, I'll never be you,

I'm me.