Grown Up by Tiyasha Khanra

 

Countless times She has
Got harassed, sexually.
She felt below the belt, every time.
She failed within to deal with this.
She buried the pain,
Her confession remain unheard.

She Is seven, and went for
Computer class in a center.
Nobody’s present today but she.
She knows nothing about
Good touch and bad.
Nobody ever taught this to her.
She didn’t know teachers too
Are human beings and thereby
Can be pervert and the
Word ‘Pervert’ even doesn’t
Exist in her child vocabulary.
She was practicing on PC
And before she understood
What is it taking her breathe away
And overthrowing a heavy weight,
She felt an embrace from behind
Like someone covered her
With guilt and sent her to prison.
She felt even prison itself is
Less terrible than this.
She starts weeping and
She is freed to light the situation.
But that leaves her a mark.

She is fourteen and again
Goes to the same center
Where something bad
Happened to her.
She told none about this
And buried the pain within.
And the culprit had to leave
The center after some week
As he got a secure job somewhere else.
She felt relief after he has gone.
But never knew that daredevils
Can return with someone else.
And this time she got
Helplessly molested by her senior.
And he didn’t stop even if
She wept furiously.
Once returned home,
She got traumatized.
After few months she herself
Leaves the center once and for all.

She is seventeen now,
She got promoted in high school.
And she takes a car
To go for her tuition.
The car was carrying another
Passenger and the fellow passenger
Is giving her a very dirty sign
Every time their eyes are meeting.
She feels insecure, she knows
What may come for her
As she is now grown up.
She keeps the bag in between
To maintain a certain distance
From the culprit but
Nothing is of any use actually.
He is spreading his legs to touch her.
And now she feels a red bulb
Is twinkling in her head.
She buries her head in her bag.
She squeezes in the corner of her seat.
The destination comes
And even much of her surprise
The car stops and she hustles
To get off and by the time
The perpetrator slaps on her butt.
She drags herself out of the car.

She is now nineteen,
First year in college.
She is fully grown up.
Even if she can’t protest
She can now save herself
From sexual harassment-
It is all she thinks.
But thoughts are sometimes
Partially truth and often entirely false.
She catches a bus.
The bus is packed up with passengers.
One guy, fully drank
Starts taking advantage of her.
The moron started rubbing
His swelled up organ
On her butt and again
She feels helplessly alone.
This time too nobody
Came to save her.

Apart from these she got touched
A number of times and
Couldn’t help herself but cried.
She blames herself for having a
Vulnerable side and a female body
That makes her fall in trouble.

____________

 

Bio- Tiyasha Khanra is a poetess and an author, lives in Kolkata, India. She has been published on International Times, Inkpantry, Innsaei Journals, Indian Periodical, Ode to a Poetess, Storrymirror, Spillwords, The Lakeview Journals, Fevers of the Mind Poetry and Art Press, Setu Magazine (forthcoming) and elsewhere. She is a bilingual poet and writes in English and Bengali only. She writes on Female issues, teenage psyche, Modern Issues, Urban crisis, Patriarchy and Christianity.