Standard Issue

The drawing room is clean now
Little dolls' sofas
the mandatory glass-top coffee table
piles of scattered books have become
rows in a shelf

I know this house inside out
My mother phones me to find things
even with bifocals.
The first grating sound in the morning
is my grandfather's bathroom door.
Appa honks once, very softly, politely.
The doodhwaala and presswaala
are usually late
When Amma needs to leave
for work,
teaching at the school
where I spent nine years
searching for an identity,
learning stereotypes.

I can hear the squeal of the TV
before the sound comes on,
the yell of the Aquaguard.
I think I can hear dog-whistles too.
I could always hear better than most.
I conduct a choir,
is it a wonder?

But then there are places in the city
I have never seen
Places I have heard of.
Places not too far either.
I know this house
(which belongs to our landlord)
inside out
But I managed to speak to
the boy next door
only this summer.

I have been
to the corner to buy bread, eggs, butter
to the chemist to buy an emergency dose
of sanitary napkins
to the shop to buy the supplies
that ran out,
noted on our tab; no cash required here.

I can count these times on my fingers.
One hand, mind you.

There was a boy in school
Whom I was not allowed to meet
My father was not posted here,
My mother ran the house,
In fear.
I still don't know why it was not allowed.

Last year
(which was my second in college)
I went out on Diwali
to meet face to face
a man from Hyderabad,
a Muslim I had met online.
On Orkut.
It was allowed,
a faute de mieux
(This is a fancy term I came across
while researching for a compulsory essay
on Jane Austen-
it means "a decision for want of a better choice").
That time, I informed my father,
I did not ask for permission.

That boy from school-
Now that the burden of years
is on our shoulders
he has been crushed enough to be permitted,
I suppose.
He has an off day on Thursday.

Ten years of confinement,
not solitary confinement,
maybe that would have been worse;
Now I can recognise stereotype
like a font size too small or too big
in which my sentence was written.
In India
(and perhaps elsewhere in the world as well,
I wouldn't know)
it is not when a girl starts
menstruating
masturbating
becomes sexually active
gets married
has children
runs a household
goes to college
goes to work
rebels
acquiesces

that she grows up
It's much earlier-
The day she begins to fear
is the day she becomes Woman.