Autobiography

My friend, you ask me
How I spend my days,
Why have I stopped writing after my marriage?
Like mercury in the tube of obedience
I am dependent on the seasons.

From the time of birth
Mother bring us up on the lesson of devotion.
Stagnation sticks to me like clothes,
The temperature of sorrows has gone up
Still I have not broken out of the tube.

My house is magical
So I can forget myself and turn into a machine,
With the snap of somebody’s finger
Finish all the work.

But if I look inside
I see the swamp of a home.
I was like the dust and dirt
Blown away in the stormy winds of traditions
And now I lie at the feet of time.

Ever since I opened my eyes I was taught:
Society is a jungle and the home a shelter,
Man is the landlord
And woman the tenant,
Who pays the rent
In terms of obedience, devotion.
And now I lie at the feet of time.

I too tied myself in relationships
And have been paying the installments,
I have collected all my emotions
And locked then inside a box marked “devotion”.

My thoughts and my pile of books
Are being slowly eaten away by termites.
I am the certificate of my husband’s honor and ego
Which he wants to keep locked up
Inside a box.