A Ballad Unheard (Part I)

I was in heaven’s playground,

Playing on a merry-go-round,

When God came to me,

And asked cheerfully,       

If I wanted to go on an adventure trip,

To a foreign land, way out of my grip…

I shouted with glee and agreed,

‘Cause I never knew that I would be treated like weed…

I was excited to see the marvels of Earth, the most beautiful of all lands,

With mesmerizing azure seas and breath-taking golden sands.

Its’ verdant fields allured me for sure,

‘Cause I wanted to wait no more,

Illusioned by my own dreams and fantasies,

I never bothered to enquire from God about this wonderland full of tragedies…

I stayed locked for 9 months in my mother’s womb,

Never did I know that I was waiting for my day of doom

As soon as I was born,

I could hear women around me, mourn,

‘What’s wrong with them’, I thought,

And my mother screamed, “God, what a sin onto Earth I’ve brought.”

I wanted to know what a sin is, maybe it’s something good,

But later on I got to know that I had just misunderstood…

A woman stood by me close

I heard someone say, “Just one dose.”

She opened my mouth and made me taste something bitter

Never had I known, that for these people I’d just be litter

Soon before long, I vomited and cried,

With no one to look after me; I was quite surprised,

And then ultimately, the curtain of life fell,

But I’m grateful to God that I wasn’t sent to hell…

I came back to heaven, annoyed and frustrated,

My excitement about Earth had very well dissipated,

Who knew one woman would be another woman’s foe?

This very thought makes me tremble from head to toe…

In my heart, I carry the burden of a fiery woe…

But now that I’m back, I can do nothing, I very well know...

NOTE :

The above poem describes a soul being born as a girl in India. The killing of the female child after birth is known as female infanticide; which was a very common practice in the country. Even today, it is practiced in remote areas of the states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, etc. When a baby girl takes birth, the village women, force a pinch of opium down the child’s throat. The baby cries for a while; finally vomits and dies. There are even more disturbing cases in which women refuse to feed their baby girls and make them starve to death. In Punjab, it was a common practice to either dope the child with opium and kill her, or strangle her to death. Further, the dead bodies of girls were buried in an odd manner.