VEILED SHAME

 Crimson of shame,
sometimes peered through
my school salwar,
when the bodice of a pubescent
twelve-year-old me,
became a thing of gawking, at last.
Translucent white,
so obstinate, to make things
transparent and vile.
A cotton dupatta was no relief
as it failed to obscure the skin,
which even my innerwear
didn’t care to conceal.
The two thick oily braids of mine
also became a part of the struggle,
trying to hide, the white straps
which mustn’t look so daringly, at “them”.
Them, who were suddenly interested in sitting behind us
in the hopes of adding color to their dark fantasies.

Source-Pinterest By- Bifng

Vaguely aware of this,
as my brothers often warned me in hints
I began lamenting winter days,
when the blazers became my only mates.

An obnoxious rangoli,
long remains a source of consternation for me,
crammed with the color black in it
same as their intentions about my long skirt.
Which, then exposed a bit of what was beneath it
while I was ludicrous and busy
with what I shouldn’t call a rangoli.
Afterward, they were joking about this,
and I accidentally heard it, in tits and bits.

Never again could I participate in those competitions
because of the fear of my own body postures.

Source- Pinterest By- Behance

An olive crop top, the mere remembrance of it
always make me drown in an ocean of disdain and guilt,
all because my mother’s father once commented
“Isn’t it too clingy for me?
You should refrain from wearing this”.
Another magenta one suffered the same fate
once when I was out playing with my brother’s mates
and one of the kinds of suddenly commented,
that he wanted me to be “his…”.

Even though I was unaware of the weight of the word
which came after that ‘his’
yet mortification still engulfed me, at that moment
when some pair of eyes fell on that ribbon
that rendered disentangled and displayed
the skin of my neck deep.

BY- DAMNEET SANDHU