Nine months I had been resting in my mother’s womb only in anticipation of that one day when I finally would be able to come out of my small little world, when I will be able to identify myself as a part of a bigger and a more beautiful world. But when I shook hands with ‘the’ day and found myself in my mother’s arms, nothing else but her apprehensive and squelchy eyes caught me. Such a state of those eyes could not be reasoned as the reflection of unbounded happiness elicited by the surge of happiness and satisfaction through a motherly soul after giving birth to her child. It was as if her happiness to have me was masked behind some apprehension which left her confused and paralyzed as to what reaction she should give on holding me. But then she glanced at me, I smiled and she, she gave me a warm hug, as if my smile had melted her apprehensions. And I, I felt so secured and cocooned that whatever I tried to decipher in the past few minutes, it was all forgotten and seemed to be crass.
Then a while later a man entered and with his approaching steps, I could hear mother’s heart beat growing tensed and louder. She held me closer and tighter to her. But the man proved her to be languishing female and took me from her arms. He was cold and the kind of vibrations I absorbed from him was not very healthy. He passed me a disapproving and fierce look which scared me and I cried for I wanted to go back to my mother’s arms. He insolently and harshly ‘threw’ me to her arms. Well he was surely not happy on seeing me. He went, and I experienced a wave of relief flooding over me! Well it was only when mother clothed me and herself to go home, that I realized that HE is my father!
Not a single day has passed since then when he has caressed me, soothed me and even talked to me. And even though my family seems to be big enough, the people celebrating my arrival can barely be counted in ‘plural’ terms. I could never understand why. Until one day when I saw my 2 year old brother. He was the toast of my house, the axis around which the earth revolved; at least for my family. He was unacquainted to the superior and singular attention he got but surely like any child, he basked in it. Any child would. I barely saw father refusing him for anything, he was a free bird whose flight was undaunted by anything. Today years have passed by and still everyone is oblivious to my existence. I wake up watching my brother being pampered and asked every day as to what shall be savored by his taste buds today. And I sleep listening to his anecdotes from school- a place that I visit every day in dreams.
And today I finally know the reason behind mother’s apprehensive eyes and the tears rolled down through them reflecting her helplessness… something she felt because she did not know how to tell me that “daughter, your life is not going to be as easy as it would have been if you had taken birth in the other gender. And so you are going to be unwanted and scoffed at for the rest of your life. Your kith and kin will fend for ways to seek riddance from you but I will not be able to render you with any help for I am just another helpless woman in the family whose actions are not sanctioned by her own whims.” This was what she could not convey to me and did not know how to prepare her child from birth for all this.
Then I just did not know any of this but today, today my gender, stands before me as a barrier; a locked door that I shall never be able to open. Because every time I think of pacing one step forward in my life, my gender pulls me three steps back reminding me that the small cages of house is the only place I belong to. Every time I dream, dream of belonging to a free world, all those dreams are crushed and crumpled under the appalling reality; the reality according to which my paramount responsibility is to attend to the household chores. My genders allows me to seek the pleasure of ‘my brother’s’ books only in the night in the secrecy of the backyard stable.
I have read that in big cities girls have no imposed restrictions and responsibilities on them and that they are equally entitled to what every boy seeks. Envisioning such a place gives me peace and consolation. Today being identified as a daughter of father who feels equally happy to have a daughter and a mother who does not find herself to be helpless to stand for her daughter is the only dream I have; the dream which is the very reason of my existence. I want to experience combined parental love and concern and all this not by taking birth as a boy. I want to always take birth on this earth as a girl and experience a girl being loved the same way.
