Cruelty

Ill-treatment

I am Khushi Iyer, a Tamil brahmin, dont know how I am named Khushi being a pakka Tamil girl. I have asked my parents many times and they told just like that.

My friends kid me sometime with the mixture of names and I am very much used to it.

Being fat, little plumpy, I was always the punch bag in my friends bag, relatives as well as for my family.
Sometimes I became sofa for my brother and sometimes a bed for my 2 year old nephew.

My nephew is the best thing that has happened to me, because his smile, his cute blabbers and actions make my day. He teases me, beats with me his little fingers, giggles with me, complains about me, and all these things makes a happy feeling inside me.

But then my family, which looks beautiful from far is filled with some cracks as every family do. And its fine, but then to not let the cracks go much deeper, all we need to do is sacrifice, let go.

We fight, fight a lot and everytime my respect goes at stake. And I would be the one who adjust and goes for every matter. My brother speaks with me rudely everytime and it is hard to count how much times he had been sweet.

But I admit, he stood by me at some instances and had swept the floor from my ground in some instances too.

And now the big battle in my mind is which side to take, his good side or his bad side?

I know his harshness, his rantings, his words are baseless as he never means it from his heart. He speaks without knowing and he feels for it the next time.

But then words are much powerful than a dagger, and it hurts much more than anything. The memories of it, never fades.

I am still struggling with those emotions and in all this I have a mother who always supports her son, a father who always takes the right side and a Sister in law, who cannot be predicted that much easily.

In between all this, a storm called Corona Virus entered our family due to the stupid neighbor at the ground floor where my mom got tested positive for covid when she has no symptoms.

And that was the beginning of the biggest battle in our lives. We were subject to 14 days of quarantine with my mother taking our room which had AC in it since that was the room with attached bathroom leaving me and my father at another room which doesn't have AC.

We sleep at times in our brother room during that time. Almost every work falls upon me, and I feel, weak, tired, exhaustive and much more.

In all this, I got my irregular periods, and damn everything went on hell. I wasn't allowed even to enter the non AC room as it was actually my father and I was asked by everyone I stay at hall, because I am impure for 3 days.

I am not allowed to go anywhere except to the washroom and I have to keep all my things seperately and food would also be thrown towards me, it has happened many times.

Those 3 days on the month are the hell which I live in where I wanted to actually scream myself and run away to some other continent which is free of this traditional restrictions and mental torture.

And I forgot to say, I barely would have a person to speak with. It would be like only me, my time, loneliness.

So where I was, I was asked to stay at hall and I denied. Finally everyone, excluding my mother came to agreement that I would stay at the room and my father in brother's room.

And for the first time ever we shifted to a new house, I was allowed to enter my father's non AC room when I had periods. What an achievement right???

I think this should be recorded in history, for allowing a girl in a periods into a room.

World is changing, our lives are changing, then why holding those traditional norms and hurting people especially girls very much.

I agree that we need to follow, but why at the cost of our mental health??

Why is it that those 3 days I became a stranger to you and then a family member rest of the days.

Why are we to be treated so ill?

Why don't you even dare to see my face in those days as if you would get impure by me ?

Why don't you even care to see how my health is???

If your professor, calls and tells you that your daughter has fever, yet you deny to come to pick her because she has periods. Instead her friend comes and drops her, with utmost care.

What type of people you really are?

If you are not able to respect me during those time, then you never need to respect me. Never need to speak to me, or stand by me because you are not even eligible for that.

A man/women who cannot understand a girl's pain, thoughts, doesn't even deserve to be called as humans.

They display, cruelty, an animal who doesn't understand others and I am not an animal.

I am a human, a girl with all my emotions and self respect who would continue to fight this system every second till my last breathe......

**********End********

I don't know what I have written, it is not a story, but a point of view and I don't know how I started or ended.

It is just some thoughts put together with the questions buried in my heart.

How was it ?

Just a request to everyone reading.

Please try to understand a girl's emotion in those three painful days on a month. If you do so, you would be her life's most important person and she would celebrate you every second till she lives.....