Worshipping Goddess Durga

 

We worship the female form in the form of clay

But when she takes the form of flesh

And is sometimes born to us, then what do we say

She is no longer ‘shakti’ the epitome of power but ‘bojh’ the burden you have to bare

You say oh! not in my home!

Maybe thats indeed true!

But what about the female form who enters your home but is not born of you

Do you still treat her the same

Do you love and respect her like a goddess

Or do you start with the premise of mistrust

Potraying her to be a conniving seductress

And anything she does or says

Is judged with this biased glass

That brings out her worst in her in many ways

We live in this glass house

Where shortcomings are celebrated 

as a proof of this hypothesis being true that she is evil 

in our labyrinth of our blames, we have her incarcerated

Oh we dont call goddess durga a murderer but a slayer of evil

But will this deification be also given to a woman who kills her harassing husband

Or will the blame be put on her that she is evil

making her moribund

With allegations like she did  not have the patience to turn him around 

Or better still, she has called in for harassment herself  by her behavior

These are true stories we have often heard and found

And i am not calling out the men out here

Women are equally to blame

For enabling these atrocities and fear

And they are often those who have gulped down insults and tolerated pain

So much so that they are hardwired to believe  that this is a way a woman is to behave

As subservient to man who are meant to reign

And hence they take the role of the enforcer of the rules to denigrate their own clan

To please their men or for the sense of gratification that they were not the only one went through that pain

And now making another going through the same seems to be a good plan

You might claim that I am feminist because I write this

But really I am humanist

Pleading you to give another human being a chance

To be happy, to be free, to have her own mind 

Because only then can love flow, when everybody can dance their own dance

And gradually these dances will synchronize 

Like those of fireflies that produce the maximum light

Only then will we embody the ‘shakti’ we epitomize