Her Wings Are Clamped

What is education?
A one-way ticket to marriage.
A different form of dowry.
She is an excellent dancer, a voracious reader, and an avid listener,
Yet her life’s purpose is pre-ordained,
They tell her to dream,
To dream big, study hard, and get placed well,
All for what?
To settle.
Settle quietly into a new (stranger’s) home.
They tell her to fly only to clamp her wings just when she learns to take off.
She is endorsed for graduating top in her class,
Yet condemned for wanting a job and moving out.
Wasn’t education supposed to liberate a person?

Perhaps the purpose of those hard-earned degree certificates was to dust away.
Her purpose, her sole purpose is to churn out obedient children.
But like leopard spots never change,
Neither does traditional thinking.
Traditional thinking manifests in new forms every generation,
Its true colour never ceases to emerge,
Modern! Yet subtly, traditional.
Under the garb of modernity we pretend,
Yet in the shadows of shallow thinking, we are consumed.
She dreams of independence,
And travelling to all those places you see in magazines!
She is capable too.
But what can a bird do if her wings are clamped?

Rebecca Thomas is a 22-year-old student of law from Kerala. 

Featured image credit: 愚木混株 Cdd20/Pixabay