Growing up to be a Woman (Savarna)

I remember the early years of my childhood.
it was so difficult to convince others that you are an individual
you are a citizen with rights
which includes the right to privacy.
your letters are "your" letters
they cannot be opened and read and commented on by everyone
your time is "your" time
it cannot be pried open and demanded for public display.
i remember the days and months and years it took
for my family to just leave me alone.

by then, i had read feminism.
i had understood
it was really difficult for a woman to be an individual
and
being a person with rights? - a citizen?
impossible!
by then, i had a name to call myself...

a woman in patriarchy.

then...
after years of discovering women's friendships and the cracks within them...
After years of silence and madly running away from all that i had learnt.
trying hard to unlearn them...
after discovering that my freedom could be other women's rejections
my space could mean threatening for other silent women...

I ran into the arms of my father's waiting home
Where kithen utensils were to be cleaned endlessly
Where the time you spend in folding a soiled sheet used by another person
Is time spent, unacknowledged.
Where, I learnt to enjoy cooking different recipes
Though it was hardly noticed before being consumed.
Where, I became more accountable than my earlier self
Where some time spent with a long-lost woman friend
Came to be entered in the ledger-book of liabilities
That you had to pay off by days of silence and nights of lonely tears.

I realize...
i am facing the same situation
That i used to face as a child...
All families are alike...
Yet...
I had escaped apparently once...

the painful years when i spent in utter loneliness
in a women's hostel in a far away city
were also exhilarating years of freedom and exploration.

now...freedom is a word of disrepute
my freedom means his hurt and humiliation.
my rights mean his utter degradation!

but,
wasnt it the same for my father? my brother? even my mother and grandmother?
they left me because
finally, i was a woman.
someone who will go away.
as long as i don't express freedom (which was loose sexuality, for everyone!)
under their noses
their tattered respectablities would be intact.
and, i left them!
i cut off from the everyday negotiations that were necessary by simply walking out.

I think I will have to walk out yet again...
this time i am not saving his respectablity...
in fact, i can do that only by being bound.

but...
I knew what I was saving before...
my self...
Now...
In my shameful confusions and cowardices of middle age,

I am not so sure.