Getting through the days is harder. Nights are nightmares. Meanwhile, a dull summer and a long winter has whizzed by. I try to write. Maybe writing will help me to stay afloat. Only writing helps me to stay afloat. BUT I can’t write. AS of today, March 8, 2025, I no longer know how to write. I wonder how I wrote all those stories. I wonder if I’ll be able to write again. I stare at the screen of my laptop. I type. I untype. reclaim
I remember seeing my psychiatrist early this week. I told him how I am struggling with my thoughts in general and writing in particular. As always, he says things I don’t follow. He knows that. His fat cat, Chichi, knows that too. What the doctor doesn’t understand is that I am lost. I feel constantly impatient, angry, and alert. Is this why I can’t write? Have I lost it? The craft, the art, the muse, or whatever it is called. reclaim reclaim
Also Read: Spring Blossoms in the City
Lately, I can’t recognise myself. I can’t recognise the city where I was born and grew up. This city has become an inferno. For girls and women. Name a place where we are safe. Can you? Neither at home nor workplace, at cafes or restaurants, in cars, on bus, at roads, nor at midday or midnight. Sexual assault is not just a crime, it’s a habit that men have adopted. And women are showered with friendly advice. reclaim reclaim reclaim reclaim
THEY ASK US TO tone down our make-up, wear long dresses, talk sensibly, and behave sensibly. You know what you should do, they say – give up your late night addas, these dangerous hobbies, habits of yours. TAKE PRECAUTION. Don’t go out at night, don’t go out alone. Carry one of those sprays in your handbags, check whether the mobile phones are fully charged before going out. And please call someone to come and pick you up if it’s late, if it’s night, if it’s crowded, if it’s uncrowded, if … if … if … STOP – we know.
WE have heard; we have been hearing them since childhood. We’ve more or less followed the rules, performed the roles, the benign characters. The truth is we have tolerated; we have tolerated for so long that there is a colossal scream inside us, and it’s growing viciously fast. It has turned into a gigantic tsunami now. Next time one of you comes and preaches us, we will ask you all to just leave, what we really should do is to lift our middle fingers and shout. SHOUT until our voices choke. aim reclaim
I look at the screen of my laptop. No longer blank. I heave a sigh of relief. What we really need to do is believe that we are not the naive damsels pining for the prince. That we are the fighters, the warriors. We are Sita, we have paid the price; we are not going to prove our chastity ever again. WE are not going to wait for either
Ram or Hamlet. It’s time we refuse to do too much labour or let our lives dictated by biological clocks or societal pressures. It’s time we take a stand, control the narrative. I stop typing. After a very long time, I feel happy. I feel empowered. I close my eyes, smiling. I imagine myself part of a procession of fierce women, taking up the alleys and the gullies and the roads and the streets, proclaiming: from now on, we won’t live in fear. reclaim reclaim
We’ll walk on the streets,
we will sing songs,
we will dance in the rain,
we will go on safari,
we will climb mountains,
we will dive into the ocean,
we will fill ourselves with calm, peace, colours, hope, happiness.
And we will flood social media with posts and hashtags
#girls#women#let’sgrowwings#letsreclaimtheworld
I close my laptop. I stand up. Why? BECAUSE. There is a procession I need to join. reclaim reclaim reclaim
Image Courtesy: Flickr
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Marzia Rahman is a fiction writer and translator. Author of two books, Dot and Other Flashes and The Aftermath, her flashes and translations have been widely published in both print and online journals. Her novella-in-flash If Dreams had wings and Houses were built on clouds was longlisted in the Bath Novella in Flash Award Competition 2022. Her work has been nominated for Best Microfiction 2023 and Pushcart Prize 2024. She has recently co-edited a flash fiction anthology Flashlights.
