Her Lost Possibilities

The door that I see through my window remains closed all the time. It doesn’t offer much to see but a lot to hear. So many noises come through that door and reach me. They carry the screams of the woman who lives across the street ; they carry the reprimands of the man who treats the woman as capable of nothing. The woman has never set a foot outside the house without her husband and remains caged in that huge house. Once in a blue moon , the woman is let outside the cage she lives in , but to me it seems merely the transfer of the poor woman from the cage of her house to that of the long veil she wears. She doesn’t seem happy even when she gets a breath of fresh air outside her house because may be she realizes that this freedom is only going to last for the blink of her eye and she will be led back to the hell they call as her household.

Seeing her makes me wonder about what she could have become if they didn’t clip her wings. My mind goes over and over the millions of possibilities she could have made out of her life. She could have become a doctor , a singer , a dancer , a pianist or who knows may be the president of our country. But she was never given a chance to let her potential unfold and to let a wonder rise out of her.

The woman has her little daughter by her side all the time and the way she holds her clearly reflects the child means the world to her. I even wonder what would be the fate of that little angel? Would she too end up enduring the sufferings that this society imposes on women and live in another cage that would be chosen for her by her mother’s captors?

My heart cries for the plight of women in so many parts of this world as they are deprived of a choice to make decisions for their life. Women have endured enough and its high time that womanhood breaks the chains of orthodoxy and let out their greatness to fill the world around them.