Gatha: narratives

The poem talks about the subject of gender and identity, using the seemingly innocuous question “What do you want to be, when you grow up?” that is asked to children across all ages.

"What do you want to be, when you grow up?"

The terrifying lady

With the horrendous teeth

And jagged eyebrows

Asked us,

Her hair

A towering mass of grey

And her skin

A thick rubber sheet

Of yellow,

Her thick, brown, rope lips

Moved to bare

Thick, brown, nail teeth;

I don’t remember her name

(It was forgettable,

Like my own)

But I remember her piercing stare

As if

She was trying

To pronounce me dead

Or,

Even worse,

Living.

The thick air

And the stench

From her thick hair

Made me want to

Hiccup.

We were 10,

Standing in lines of girls and boys,

Lefts and rights,

Blues and blacks,

Blacks and whites,

And our ideas

Were a patchwork

Of mismatched colours –

The satin reds of wealth

Sat stained against

The cotton whites

Of poverty

As we rattled off

The words we knew

And had heard,

That had learnt to sit

At the tips of our tongues –

Some shouted

'Doctor',

'Lawyer',

'Engineer',

'Teacher',

'My Mum',

'My Dad',

'Not my Mum',

'Not my Dad',

Thankfully, no

'Heroin addict',

Or 'Dropout',

Or 'Artist',

Or 'Painter' -

We weren’t taught

To aim that high.

Some of us did, later, anyway.

We were just 10

And the glass ceiling

Was as tall as

6 foot 5

(The tallest Dad in the class)

And we learnt to say the words

From the Mums

And Dads

We wanted to be like,

And didn’t.

I stayed quiet.

I didn’t have much ambition,

My expectations reasonable

(Or so I thought),

The answer(s) I thought of

Were nondescript

Compared to the little boy

Swinging from the

Bars of the window

(At least he knew to use

The very thing that restricted him)

(I did not);

The jagged eyebrows turned

And they stared

At my oiled pigtails

(Made out of the hair

My Mum carefully tended to),

In sync with her teeth, they moved,

"And you?"

She turned to the left,

Her spit laced with the poison

Of inquisitiveness

Fell on my tongue

Just as I opened my mouth,

Trying to think

To choose

Between honesty

And honesty

(I knew nothing of safety, then),

(I thought I was nondescript, remember),

My eyes darted

Under the glare of her

Suspicion

(I bet she guessed. I bet)

And my lips moved in calm asymmetry,

With the grace of a

Puckered leaf

Blowing in the wind,

To choose one of the two answer I wanted to give -

I didn't choose 'Normal';

Instead,

I said I

Wanted to

Boy.

Prerna Prakash, is a first year law student who has a hard time writing about herself in two sentences because she never knows what is an important enough part of her identity to be mentioned; except that she loves French Fries. Everyone must know she loves French Fries.