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,
Or
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
Be
A
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.
The poem talks about the subject of gender and identity, using the seemingly innocuous question “ What do you want to be, when you gro...
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