Skip to main content

Powerful woman

I didn't know it earlier, but I am a powerful woman.
With these hands, I hug away tears
Or make my little one cry.
With my smile he knows I approve, that he's doing great.
My frown says he's done something wrong.
My anger worries him
So much so he becomes skittish, tries to make me laugh. 

When I shout at my husband, and he fights back
When we trade harsh words, rather than blows,
It still sears our souls and empties our hearts of happiness
Then I know our little one is disturbed
He looks at us, wide-eyed and anxious. 
And invariably, he sleeps badly.

I know now, that such power is a dangerous thing.
If I'm upset or sad, or depressed or angry
The negativity pours out of me
To envelop everyone else.
If I'm happy, and smiling
My family is too.

Yes, I am a powerful woman.
And it scares the hell out of me.


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wasteland

Something happened over the past two days. Our next door neighbours, or rather one particular family (like all metrizens in this cramped city, we live within literally, touching distance of the others in our neighbourhood), have decided to demolish their home. Fine, so what, you ask. They see how valuable land now is. Who can blame them? But along with their home, they have also decided to kill off the two trees -- a mango tree and a coconut tree -- in their compound. I used to look at those trees from my kitchen window. The mango tree, in particular, was a welcome sight. Bunches of ripe green fruit used to hang heavily from it. Looking at it, I'd think of my home in Kerala -- of the time when I was a little girl in a white petticoat helping my father pluck mangoes as they slowly changed from parrot green to a golden reddish-yellow-orange shade. That was our annual summer ritual, you see. My father plucked mangoes using a long stick with a hook or a 'kokka' (in my collo...
Post a Comment
Read more

turtles in our own shells

Sometimes silence can be beautiful and humbling. On World Disabled Day, I went to Cubbon Park's Bal Bhavan for a government-organised function. It was the usual kind of event -- you know, where babus give dry speeches about existing schemes, unused funds and so on and where corporate types stress the need for 'partnerships' (involving big monies and big projects for their own corporate entities!). It was pretty dry, pretty predictable. Then something happened.Some of the deaf and mute adolescents standing on the fringes started carrying on an animated conversation among themselves. As I watched fascinated and a little shamefaced to be such an flagrant observer, the young men laughed, joked, kidded each other -- all in complete, absolute and perfect silence. Hands waving, fingers flaying, eyes rolling, they talked. Of what, I don't know. But I saw their joy. Their utter camaraderie, and harmony. And seeing them, I, in my 'normal' world of speaking tongues and ...
1 comment
Read more

Life lessons from little people

Sometimes children say and do the darndest things. And help you learn something new about life and living.... When little man was just over a year old, he ate a cockroach egg. Or at least, he tried to. But my husband noticed and hurriedly got it out. Baby probably had a taste, though. Ugh. Why did he think he could eat something like that? I realised children don’t subscribe to our notions of ‘good’, ‘bad’ and utterly yuck--till we actually (like I did), have a mini meltdown and yell that they absolutely cannot just pick up shiny, brown objects, just because said objects look interesting! But then children are so open in their approach to life. So trusting, for one thing. For a long time, when he was a baby, he would happily exclaim "Ajja" or ‘Ajji’ (Kannada for ‘grandfather/grandmother') whenever he spotted a white-haired gentleman or lady. He would hold his arms out with a winsome smile. The recipients would coo and respond in kind. Till, my husba...
Post a Comment
Read more