The sacra terra to desolate souls

Hey diary,

What say? Shall we discuss about just me as a human being? And not one who is a damsel in distress? I know I have been whining a lot. For once I wish to stop it all and be a no man's land.

The days passing by have showed me how people around me are. But what I have forgotten to mention is the fact that I have changed so much over time as well. When I first met with an accident named 'men', I was behaving like a whiny horse uninterested in allowing a rider to strap the saddle on my back. But as time passed I realized that all of this is just a stage play. Everyone comes into my life with an assigned role, plays the part and walks away as soon as the significance of the role is no more. I realized that my life was to help people in need and then leave them without expectations. Some wish for me to stay throughout and some do not give a damn. It is as if I collect all the sad and highly remorseful souls and make them happy enough to continue their lives with or without me and for some reason, I feel happy that God chose me for such a noble cause.

It is so difficult to enlighten the lost hopes in some people's lives. But then my small knick knacks and highly horrible jokes wriggle people's stomachs and force the laughter out of their bodies which they imprison with the gates of grief. I know when people use me and I definitely do not mind that because if they are happy and joyful then who am I to snatch it out of their hands?

They say people who make other people laugh are seldom happy themselves and it pricks my heart because I may be one of them. But never mind, I can never be a disciple of evil and I can't forget my principles and rules of keeping others happy. If not me then be it her. I would continue being the way I am, only for the greater good.

Keep laughing, because laughter indeed is the best medicine. 😊

The harem of security

Today I won't be speaking to my diary. I expect an audience whilst I am penning down whatever I have been facing as a girl trying to find her own place in the society.

News channels are streaming the atrocities a woman faces everyday because she is a woman. Why should she? Just because she has a hole where anyone can insert their red hot iron rods mercilessly without asking the person in question whether she wanted it or not? 

All of this begins when we as mothers and guardians explain our daughters not to wear short and revealing skirts, place them under a curfew, tell them not to go out alone, etc. When we as mothers tell our sons to be however they want and explain to our daughters in law 'Men will always be men, just bear with it.' And yet here we stand talking about equality and women empowerment. Where will the entire essence of women upliftment come from if we treat our daughters similarly our ancestral women have been treated?

I have faced things that many girls face at some point of their life. I have never wished to talk about this not because it may char my dignity but because it still sends a chill down my spine. Does anyone, now? I have been lured into a web of lies and taken away out of my comfort zone and when I ran out of the place to escape because I was lucky as I realised 'something was not right' and I had my God with me to save me from something that was about to happen, I realised that the world was anything but a happy and safe place to live in. I still remember the paling of my father's face once he heard everything my mom was saying. I remember how he checked the already terrified 8 year old me for marks and scratches and possible DNA. It was my good luck that I had come out of the fire unscathed, but it had definitely left third degree wounds in my innocent heart. I still remember coming home and holding my mom and crying as if I had had a narrow escape from death which I knew not about. After all, no one had precisely done anything. Never in my entire life had I seen my loving father so furious, all he wanted was to maul the man's face like a hungry rogue wolf. But seeing me safe was more than enough to calm him down and hug me as if I were to vaporise any moment. Everyone right now reading this would have definitely started reprimanding the mother of an 8 year old child, a daughter per se the society's prejudice but no one knows about the newborn that my mother was carrying around. How can she be blamed? It was natural  for her to think I had grown up because now there was a tiny little addition to the family who needed her more than me. 

After such horrendous incident which thankfully hadn't turned gruesome, my father restricted me from exploring the world all by myself. But could I blame him? Could I blame him for being extra cautious? 

The things happening around forced my parents to jail me at home even more. I don't question the curfew, the wearing of full hand-sleeved kurtas, the surveillance of my phone etc anymore. My papa always says 'Beta, stay away from boys, Bloody uncouth street urchins.' Whilst him being a strong, egoistic, patriarchal and a staunch brahmin and the most important - a man, was foul mouthing the entire gender, the gender to which he belonged so openly in front of me. 

The incident that had happened had gone unreported because it was a mere attempt according to my mom and that I may face a lot of unrequired mental trauma or PTSD as some of them may call it along with a lot of judgemental looks questioning my chastity at the moment. But can my parents be blamed for trying to protect me from the harsh society first than the criminal? 

When we don't reach home before curfew, our parents begin to get worried and start calling up our friends and relatives just in case they may know our whereabouts. 

Now I want to ask just one thing - why should my parents or rather any parent who has a girl child be worried about their daughter's safety? Why should a girl stay budded and not bloom like the flower she is? Why should she need a chaperone - a male chaperone to be precise to accompany her at all times? Why can't she become something that she deserves to become? 

Every moment a girl is barred from going out with friends because men don't know to keep their valuables inside their trousers. Every moment a girl has to walk cautiously because men just can't keep their valuables inside their trousers. Every moment a girl has to cover herself up with the fear of being attacked just because men just can't keep their valuables inside their trousers. 

All of my fingers are pointing towards one direction. If this direction was cleaned up, none of this would happen. Right? 

Hence a sincere request to all the mothers and fathers out there - let your daughters blossom and leash those ferocious sons of yours. Then will all of you see, the eutopia that you all desire. 

Little Red Riding Hood

Hi diary,

How have you been, love? I have been following a really busy schedule and a peaceful life, hence I haven't felt the need to open you and fill you up. I flew home a couple of weeks ago and things have kept me quite preoccupied especially the kitchen and mom.

You must be thinking now as to why I suddenly decided to pick up my pen and fill yet another page thus endangering another bamboo tree. The only reason being, a friend of mine who texted me recently asking me how I have been lately. I should have been immensely happy because you know how I love it when someone from my school days takes the time to write down three to four phrases of affection for me. Sadly his intentions of poking me via my WhatsApp were anything but good. It felt nice to think that my so-called friends actually cared about me. Unfortunately it was anything but a gesture of love and affection.

After all lust rules them all out.

My friend has found his soul mate in an apparently 'sweet and loving' girl who couldn't satisfy his beastly needs. So me being the back up plan gets a ping. 

Unfortunately diary I don't understand how phone sex was going to help him relieve himself either. I mean you have a body laying beside you permitting you to wolf it down however you have wanted. Yet you are hungry asking for more. How was a mere thought of another body permitting you another feast for supper going to calm down your beastly hormones?

Apparently she has a low sex drive. So? You would go around man-whoring? What the actual fuck! 

That wasn't even the worst part. I felt so cheap. Did I look like a home-wrecker? Apparently the phone coitus was not equivalent to cheating. Was that so? At that point, I did not give a damn as to what he was doing with his relationship with that female. What mattered to me was the way he had prostituted me in a second, forgetting our years of friendship and those nightly calls when he used to cry and wallow in his self pity after his previous break up and I used to stay up and listen to everything and whisper sweet nothings hoping he would sleep and not harm himself any further than he already had. The things I had done for him never really mattered to him at that moment. What mattered to him was the fact that he was hungry and in need of more fresh meat and that had to be me, a mere girl, a mere side chick, a mere toy to play with. 

Men are supposedly very fickle when it comes to women. They feel women leave them to stick their hips to someone better. It is definitely true with certain modifications of course. Some women do not wish to try and leave when they find someone better. But some women stay put and push them towards the right path and make the same man thousand times better than what he was before. What men have failed to understand is the fact that we live in an ever evolving world where we are supposed to adapt and be the best. After all Charles Darwin being a man himself had said - survival of the fittest. Why just not be better for someone who will bestow you with their love for their whole lives only to make you more successful? 

At first I gave up on finding love and now I have given up on the fact that chivalry is not dead. Men are hounds and so will they always remain - vicious hounds.

My heart strings are still holding on to those last bits of love which are on the verge of becoming extinct. And I truly feel shameful to the way I shower my love on people only to be stabbed repeatedly from behind. When love fails, it withers away and ultimately vaporizes. But when love - be it any form - is lost, you can hear the clanking of those glasses and breaking off the glasses into pieces of shards which prick your heart and bleed it without you actually realizing it until your heart just stops because you have bled out completely.

And let me tell you even then my heart has not turned into stone because they mean so much to me. They are alive in my heart because 'I' love them. 

I wish I could scold him and hit him with a golf stick just to see how far I could hit those balls. Whether they actually fell into the holes of hell or whether into some wolf's stomach. But no, I couldn't because somewhere my heart explained to me why he did what he did. Because he is a man 'with needs'.

The anger I hold in my heart is because of the disrespect we still get from men in the 21st century. Men love playing around you for a couple of days and then they apparently lose 'interest'. How I have never understood nor do I wish to comprehend. How could he do this to her and to me I do not wish to know. But I have understood one thing - 

Men will always be men. 

No matter how gentlemanly they are, they know how to thread their emotional web of lies and blackmail. 

Such wolves in sheep's clothing tend to slaughter the actual sheep. The females being the herder slaughter a good man's image in their hearts ultimately guillotining their heads of self respect in a pursuit of odding out the wolves. I have done that too and it breaks my heart to see such a ripper born in the place of an innocent red riding hood. 

But what could the red riding hood do if every wolf she passed by looked at her as if she were their supper for the night? 

How would she believe that there was her good ol' granny waiting for her in the woods of betrayal and mistrust? 

Unfortunate are all those honourable men who uphold a woman's dignity and needs above theirs because they are barely so many to fight against a mob of vicious and filthy patriarchal canines baring their teeth at every feministic sheep. 

God save the Queen (women). 

- Akankshya Panda