If Only My Mother Had Money And A Room Of Her Own… (Thank You, Virginia Woolf!)

Here’s an Ode to Virginia Woolf on Mother’s Day…

If my mother had had a room of her own
I imagine or fancy
That she would write about:

drying her long black hair,
lying down on her khatia in the aangan of her house.
Soaking in the sun,
feeling the warmth grow in her scalp,
millimetre by millimetre.

I imagine she would write about being the youngest child,
surrounded by pampering brothers.

I imagine she would even write science-fiction,
About a parallel universe where
she would be married off without her consent and sent off at 18 to a stranger’s house to be a slave.

Where she would live to cook and clean for 25-30 people everyday.

Where she would be –
Taught to keep her mouth shut,
beaten,
abused,
suar ki bachi.
Bitten.
She would even watch her daughters be sent to the same fate,
and eventually die from a broken heart from being abandoned by her children in her old age.
Forgotten and discarded.

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This parallel universe mother of mine would write all this I imagine.
If she had a room of her own.

Image source: a still from the film Secret Superstar

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