The Ghost In The Cradle

I was birthed

and brought up

by a strong woman —

a woman of virtues,

of opinions and principles.

A woman

who wouldn’t take no for an answer.

A woman with an impeccable vocabulary

and an erudite’s ego.

A woman who matched her sarees

with the gravity of the occasion

and how she felt about it.

A woman who spoke like an orator

and debated like Parliament was in session.

A woman who inspired ambition

and instilled fear in the same breath,

without a word ever being said.

A woman who gave up paychecks

for parenting.

I was birthed

and brought up

by a strong woman —

of preconceived notions

and rigid faith systems.

A woman

who taught logic and rationale

but preached God and religion

like her existence depended on it.

A woman

so stubborn and preoccupied

with her ideas of what was acceptable and what wasn’t

for her children —

that she would rather sacrifice them

than watch them disappoint her.

A woman who taught

that conversations at home

meant monologues —

hers.

With silent nods

and loud apologies

as the only viable responses.

A woman who taught

that trauma and abuse

don’t count

if it comes from a mother.

A woman who excused

every inch of otherwise questionable behaviour

with her favourite catchphrase:

“Parenting.”

A woman so strong

she couldn’t imagine

being human enough to err.

A woman who raised her children

to believe

she was nothing short of godly —

and that wasn’t narcissism,

but a humble observation,

at best.

I was raised by a woman so strong,

I almost forgot

I was raised by a man, too.

A man who existed mostly in the fringes.

A man who was barely — rarely — home,

so much so,

he was a visitor in the house

built with his blood and sweat.

A man who didn’t speak much,

unless it was a post-mortem

of my report cards.

A man who never taught,

but passed on the quiet rebellion

of questioning what’s told

instead of believing it.

A man who didn’t fit

any textbook definition

of “strong.”

A man who stuttered often.

Who smoked to think.

Who held poetry too close.

A man who wasn’t threatened

by the idea of marrying a strong woman

or playing the bad cop

so she could be the adored one.

A man who didn’t reek of testosterone —

only contradictions

held loosely together.

When you grow up in a family

that anomalous —

or as they call it now, progressive —

how do you expect me to believe,

let alone endorse,

that women are fragile, helpless creatures

grasping at sunlight

under the shadow of men?

How do I believe

women don’t get a say in their lives —

when I haven’t spoken to a woman in years

because she wanted more say in mine

than I ever could?

When the woman who birthed me

towered over my life so completely,

I barely got to know

the man who raised me too.

And that —

is just the story of my father.

Where are the stories

of those hundreds of thousands of fathers —

men whose sacrifices and silences

were systemically erased

because parenting

could only afford

a pedestal for one?

A woman carries life within.

A man?

He only gets to be a witness.

A journey she’s part of.

And he —

the taxi driver at best.

Except no one ever asks

what it feels like

to carry a traveller with you —

every day,

every hour,

every minute.

No visual cues. No user manuals.

Hormones and emotional wreckage

in more varieties

than ice cream brands.

Nine months of that —

and that’s just the beginning.

Where are the stories

of men who burnt their notebooks

so women could write history

in their own ink?

Nowhere.

And nowhere they’ll ever be —

not while fiction parades

as conditioned memory.

Because revolutions

don’t make history.

Narratives do.

Especially the ones

edited with mirrors —

angled just right

to hide the men

who disappeared behind them.