Azaadi

Srijani Basu, India

My mother's bangles jingle as she wipes the dried curry stains off the table, the whistling of the pressure cooker drowning her voices of agony. She silently absorbs the sourness spread across the walls of our house and makes sure every corner glistens.

/Generations after generations, it has remained inscribed, women make a house look like a palace.

I see her in the wedding photographs, a little smudged now, her eyes slowly losing the ancient fire she had preserved throughout her life. She had slowly let herself slip into oversized mugs of sugar-free black tea, the rice gruel spilling out of the pot, the burnt chapattis not worthy of being eaten by anyone. She sacked her freedom in a 1cm cubic box of 7 promises, no longer indulging herself in any social conversations. Her silence remains unnoticed but it's nothing less than silent revolt poetry which needs a little spark to get enlightened again. 

/Being silent is the greatest war if only one has the strength to fight it.

She always took the pallu of her saree around her, covering her arms, whenever someone visited us. Their small minds were pleased seeing the woman of the house being aware of her sanskaar and following them but little did they know the scars that lay underneath that covered most of her arms and hands. She said to me that we must keep the happenings of the house within the house itself. Years later I understood those were not just kitchen burns but scars that ripped off her soul. 

/Women like my mother, give up the search for freedom because they know for ages that aazadi costs lives.

I feel like spending myself for my mother, for women to bring the skies to them because they are meant to fly. So I pick up words as my sword and write poetry about freedom and revenge, of breaking shackles and standing straight and when I read them out to my mother, I see the ancient fire in her eyes catching its spark. I realised that though the brightest smiles hide the ugliest scars there is always a raging war taking refugees in our bones. 

/For it has been the history, the mightiest architectures carry hollow graves and the deadliest silences are always followed by outrageous storms.

Srijani Basu is a 20-year-old Mathematics undergrad student from Kolkata. She is a writer as well (almost) or rather an artist because she believes everything that is made with love is an art.