Yours, naturally | Varsha Jha

My body is resourceful,
It is a woman’s body.
I will nurture a life within me and therefore I am closer to love,
they say.
His body is a giver, mine a receiver.
I will create and re-create many lives, because I am going to be a mother, like all the other mothers,
who are born with their children.
I will feed, suckle and bring him up,
because to be a good mother is to be a good woman.
I will love, because I am supposed to.
It is a pleasant world—
Values, dreams and desires here are cut out and you are made to fit in.
Feel as they say.
Act as they say.
I will slowly acquire the skills of a giver and the world will call me a ‘natural’.
I have a uterus and you don’t.
I will be kicked within and outside too.
You will never feel it, because I am the chosen one. The world chose me.
I will die laboring and be reborn again with my child’s cry.
They say all the pain will vanish in the moment of the maiden cries of my baby,
Who, will in-herit the ‘Name of the Father’
I will love the feeling they say, because I will have outlived my function,
The purpose of my life was from time immemorial reproducing my body.
But I don’t love myself enough. I don’t see why I should love anyone more!
I am a giver and I am a receiver.
When will the world return to me the accolades of having killed myself for having been born into him?

Indian Literature, Poetry and Fiction | Authors | Read the work of Varsha Jha on Indian Review. Featured poems from India.

Varsha Jha (Singh) is a PhD student in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Kanpur, India. She is working on “Epic to Graphic: Graphic Book Adaptations of Indian epics”. Some of her research interests include Literary Theory, Cultural Studies, Film theory, Narrativity.