|chaos|

Chaos looks like a thousand colours splashed onto black- colorful but not quite. It looks like what you see when you close your eyes in front of a bright white light. It looks like TV cable static but it isn’t black and white. It has no shape, no structure. It is abstract but it does look like something. It looks like something that can only be felt.

Chaos sounds like the sound a radio makes when it isn’t tuned- monotonous but not quite. It sounds like the inconsistent dripping of rainwater on a tin roof. It sounds like violent violin music. It sounds like the consistent ringing of a school bell when you’re too close to it.

Chaos tastes metallic in your mouth- stings but not quite. It tastes like the blood that bled from your gums when you were eight. It tastes like milk gone bad. It tastes like how I imagine soap to taste.

Chaos feels like an ice-cold bucket-bath on a january morning- refreshing but not quite. It feels like your mouth is full of bland, coarse sand. It feels the way you feel when glitter sticks to your skin.

Chaos smells like lajpat nagar on a late summer afternoon- nostalgic but not quite. It smells like a thousand spices that cancel each other out but still manage to itch your nose. It smells like wet paint.

Chaos is nothing and Chaos is everything.

Chaos is home.

-Saahil Sanganeria

#chaos #Poetry #slampoetry

The Mango Plant.

Mango plants are extremely slow growing ones. I planted a mango seed when I was in kindergarten. It was nice. I did it with my mother in our garden, and it was an important moment in my life. Somehow, that mongo plant, the concept of it, always seemed to represent my life. It made me the teensiest bit more self aware, and I have been extremely thankful for it’s existence, especially recently.

The plant thrived, just as I did, in my childhood. It grew and grew, but one day, in grade 4 or 5, it died in the house renovations. I became sad, I probably threw a tantrum, but then I planted a new one. I couldn’t let the concept of ‘my’ mango tree die out, you know? I never realised it before, but as my mango plant reincarnated, I did too. I changed, subtly and slowly, but I changed, a lot. It was a tough time then. Di had left for med school and that was a huge shift in reality for me. I stopped growing for a while, as my plant died, but after a few months, I started growing again, just as my new plant grew it’s first leaves.

I grew and grew and my mango plant grew with me, until one day, some birds made a nest on one of its branches. It was the sweetest little thing. They gave tiny brown eggs in it and I remember how I went to my garden and looked at the eggs every single day for a whole week, but then one day, the nest was empty. There were no birds there. Only eggshells. The eggs had hatched and the birds, they had flown away, but somehow it felt like they took the life of the plant away with them? The plant stopped growing. It didn’t die, no. It just didn’t change. The half dead leaves didn’t fall off and no new leaves sprouted. I waited. I waited for the plant to start growing again but it didn’t. And somehow, for a reason yet to be availed to me, I stopped growing too. This was grade 9. I didn’t grow much in the first half of 2016. It was a slump for me and the plant. Then I decided that I had to do something. I had to be me. I had to be… there. So, I forced myself out of it. And it worked. It worked amazingly. I went from eh to great. I was super active in life. I had my life in my hands, and I felt like I was on top. I was the king of my world. I grew immensely for 7 months. I became confident about my personality for the first time in forever, you know? But my plant still didn’t grow.

Towards the end of my boom, I told my mother that I wanted to move the plant to our frontyard-which had much better sunlight for growth-and plant it on the ground, without any pot to restrain the growth of its roots, so that it could grow into a healthy, strong tree. Two weeks passed, then a month, but my plant still didn’t grow. This time, it had started dying. I had started seeing signs but I fell face first. After all, it’s true what they say, the faster they climb, the harder they fall. Something happened which was supposed to hurt me a little, but it broke me. I was tapped with a nail, but instead of getting dented, I shattered into a thousand sharp shards of glass. I was too weak and naive. I was too attatched to my fairytale life and life did me a favour by making me realise that.

I was too broken to make sense of myself. I was.. too broken to be fixed, I thought. It was a ruthless time for me and somehow, for each day of that painful time, my mango plant lost a leaf to the unforgiving earth too, just like me. By the end of it all, my plant and I, we looked quite similar. We looked broken, dead even. And so my plant was representing my state again. Maybe it didn’t grow when I did as a warning to me. Maybe it was telling me to slow down, but I didn’t listen. So there we were, both of us, quite miserable. And it, quite dead.

I tried to plant another mango seed after some time. It didn’t grow. Not even a little. All of this, everything, it saddened me, and it has been, for the past 4 months. I have been miserable but I have been developing my thoughts so that today, I can write this. I have realised that I wasn’t ready to be reincarnated right then. I hadn’t really learnt anything from that experience then, I was still hurting. Maybe that’s why my seed didn’t grow this time. Maybe it wasn’t time yet, but I feel like when I plant another mango tree next summer, it will thrive again, because today, I feel like I’ve left all the bad things and I’m ready for a new beginning. When I plant my mango seed in 2018, it will grow, and it will grow stronger. 2017 was a good year for me. It taught me things, it gave me important lessons, but most importantly, it broke me so that I could be fixed again, so that I could become more beautiful. Here’s to a wonderful new year.

Child Marriage- it must be stopped.

Her distinctive sea-green eyes glistened in the mildly warm afternoon sun. The little girl looked so innocent: there were no creases on her face, it was completely relaxed, and her smile added to the sense to joy she radiated. She started laughing, her chipped-off, snow-white teeth were exposed, but that smile told me that there was nothing troubling her. She was wearing an off-white, vintage colour kurti, with a still neatly ironed green dupatta, a typical Indian school uniform. She laughed with joy as she gossiped with her friends and her pleated, dark black hair bounced. She held a heavy schoolbag on her shoulders and she didn’t seem bothered, she was accustomed to carrying those heavy books day in and day out. She is an aware, confident, innocent school-going girl of school-going age who thinks nothing less of herself than a boy her age. She is a girl who does not know that her gender needs to be ‘shown its place’.

I have a dream. I have a dream that one day the above description will be the reality of all girls in India and abroad. I have a dream that one day this society will achieve real equality where everyone is aware. I have a dream that one day the women of this world will not be oppressed. I have a dream that one day the women of this world will be able to express their freedom of will in all its glory and there will be no one to question them. I have a dream that one day the men of this world will stop being so full of themselves and that they will no longer be the only alphas. I have a dream that one day, I will live in a world where we will no longer be defined by gender.

This dream of mine, ladies and gentlemen is mighty great and it won’t surprise me when people call it impossible, so I believe we need to start working. But we need to start somewhere, right? So we start with irradiating the extremes. We students, live with the availability of all resources in urban modern societies, and sitting in our ivory towers we often overlook the world beyond.

The truth is that each year, 15 million girls below the age of eighteen get married. That is 28 girls every minute – married off too soon, endangering their personal development and wellbeing. The girl and her family are often forced to do so because of harsh socio-economic factors. This is an example of a vicious circle of gender inequality. Gender inequality causes child marriage and as child marriages develop and increase, the contribution and participation of girls and women is undervalued. They limit their own possibilities for growth, stability and transformation which further increase this.

According to UNICEF, India has the highest absolute number of child marriages in the world, coming up with a whopping 26 million child marriages with Bangladesh way behind at 2nd place with 4 million. This only tells us one thing: We need to start with ourselves.The only way we can even try to solve this problem is to know why it happens in the first place, and I turn to our global and especially national culture and heritage for answers.

Why are about 82 per cent of those married before the age of 18 girls, while only about 18 per cent boys? The root reason is gender inequality. The global society treats women like a lowly race, while saying that they are treasure chests. There is nothing that could justify calling them either. The men of this society have announced themselves to be the superior beings that supposedly have greater intellectual and physical capabilities. These same men have dreamt the notion that the women need ‘protection’ and they need a strong leader/figure in their lives and that is the men themselves. They have been successful in fooling people that that dream is a reality. That is the one reason why the parents of the girls have to hand over their daughter, who might still be a child, to a boy.

The boy is supposed to take care of that girl but in front of the world, all he does is use her as an expensive painting, hung on the wall, in a room under lock, only there for observation. Inside the four walls of their home, the wife is an unpaid slave, an object present to cater to all of the husband’s wishes, from mopping the floor and cooking to being a prop for domestic violence and sexual assault. It doesn’t matter if the wife has a brain, because she is forced to act on all the decisions he makes about her life.

Child brides are deprived of their fundamental human rights of health, education and safety when they get married to older men, often strangers. Their freedom becomes nonexistent as they are trapped in this cycle until their self esteem and self confidence fall so low that they start to feel disempowered and isolated.

This is the situation for most girls of still school going age and that is only one of the many things that are wrong with child marriage. Young girls who are still not physically, sexually or even emotionally mature are married off to become wives and mothers; they are at a greater risk of experiencing dangerous complications in pregnancy and childbirth, often contracting HIV/AIDS. With little access to education and economic opportunities, they and their families are more likely to live in poverty.

These young girls have to become brides because of socio economic factors such as the shortage of money to educate and to relieve the parents off of the ‘burden’ of getting their child married. In India, families are somewhat foolish in the sense that they don’t feel the need to educate their daughters because she is not going to remain ‘theirs’ in the long run after all. They feel that it’s a waste of money to educate their daughters and it’s better to teach them how to cook and clean, because that is what she is going to do in life. The lack of education prevents the girls themselves to speak up against the crimes they face and they feel forced as they feel they have no other choice; if they don’t comply, their parents may run short of money.

A lot of money is also needed to get girls married because of the concept of dowry. The family of the bride must pay a certain amount to the groom’s family along with the bride and includes cash, jewellery, electrical appliances, furniture, bedding, crockery, utensils and other household items that help the newlyweds set up their home. This is usually a big problem when poor families try to get their daughters married. As a result, her marriage becomes a burden on the families’ finance. Indian weddings are also usually very celebratory and require a lot of money.

Many parents marry their daughters young because they feel it is in her best interest. When families face hardship, they may even see child marriage as a coping mechanism in the face of poverty and violence. The parents may feel that marriage will save their daughter, even if they spiral down with poverty and disease. Parents may also think that if their daughter will eventually ‘go away’, so why not as soon as possible? They want their child to be set with life as soon as possible and they may believe that marriage is a step down that path.

All such socio economic factors encourage many parents to try and get their daughters married off too early. We must solve these reasons to stop child marriages but if we observe carefully, the reason why each of these socio economic factors even exist, is because of the gender inequality rooted inside our society. In the end, I can only say, we can try to treat the symptoms as long as eternity lasts, but we need to try a holistic approach as opposed o a symptomatic one. Nothing is going to change unless we change ourselves, and hence the society, to not be defined by gender.