27/10/2022
As much as the girl remembers, when she opened her eyes, she was in a strange land where at the horizon the blue of the sky melted in the greens, and tales of her birth echoed in air. Some said she was born out of a man’s ribs almost like one of the seven trapped sins crawling out of his heart while some others told it was clay from which she was built, so stern yet so fragile.
As much as the girl remembers, the land surrounding her had pools of water like enormous droplets of heaven’s tears, each holding a different portrait of her that was strangely familiar. In one she was light, so bright like a drop of fire on the waters, adorned in the richest of jewels. In her hands, she held flowers and weapons to bless or fight with the same intensity. She held an apple in another, blood red as her lips, and in next, a jar of malice that she would soon set free. Strangely in another pool where the wind was wild but the waters were like stone, dead-still as it is before storm, she found herself near an English fireplace, the blues slowly eating up the blaze. She was the queen with a tamed bun guarding a bright red chest. Maybe it’s the fire that the chest guards, the girl thought till she found it spilling from another pool, burning the image that portrayed her as a woman of color tied down with clutches around her naked self. Scared as she stepped back the pool behind her changed colours from blue to that of the setting sun and in it, she was seeking a room of her own, a corner in that vast land she could call hers. That quest time and again reflects everywhere she goes and every pool she looks into. Sometimes she’s a revolutionary for that and sometimes a writer, the fire once trapped in the red chest often spilling out of her mouth or her pen.
As much as the girl remembers the land was vast with a million different pools none of whose reflection could see the other. There was fire. There was water as blue as a dark dream, all existing together, conflicting, and sometimes in parallel creating an endless maze. Walk through Womanhood by ~ Tanushree Maity