While driving past Marine Drive, one evening,
I was so happy with sea-breath tingling my lips
that organically I bellowed my belly
to take a deep swig of the intoxicating sea mist –
Lips puckered up, lungs puffed up to optimum capacity,
heart-chakra expanding with joy, neurons getting musical –
I was slipping into a meditative bubble.
Happy as I was, I let out a happy whistle!
Have you ever known prickly people who try bursting your bubble?
Itching to place me in her self-separated assembly line,
said my self-conscious Aunt, sitting beside:
“Stop misbehaving. Girls Don’t Whistle.”
“What!” I thought a sexist can diagnose a gender-decided reason, purpose, function, role.
Can act like a Dementor, a kill-joy, an emotional blackhole
in the happiest of moments, in the tiniest units of life –
For breath even!
Must say, “Great skills, Congratulations!”
But the non-conformist in me had to speak up,
“It shows my lungs are strong and I don’t smoke.”
Defiantly said I. Even more horrified,
she hissed like a secret agent on a lethal mission:
“Don’t say it ever again! Girls Don’t Smoke!”
Wow, I wondered.
If someone’s pursuing techniques to divide;
to squeeze an entire life through a needle’s eye
as though life was meant to be shrunk to fit an outdated job profile –
where even the appraisal was narrowed down to a fixed style:
All depending on the body in which you reside,
then, yes, one can find gender linked to even smoke
that holds no promise, shape or form.
Boys can burn their lungs, Go On!?
But if a girl, even takes a puff
It’s no more a health concern
but a sudden blast of pointy questions hurled
at her dignity, her morals.
It’s no more about her self-care or her lungs.
Whom are we kidding, it never really was!
“It’s bad for your looks!” Say the well-meaning ones.
One breath of fresh air and pure joy
revealed two different yardsticks:
One for girls, One for boys.
Nobody knows exactly why Girls must behave and Boys mustn’t cry.
Yet everyone wants to take charge to sound wise -
To be self-appointed managers who pick a small bodily difference and magnify to match their own corrupt mind.
A difference has become more sacred than health, character, happiness and life. Why?
My Aunt didn’t know her own ‘Why’.
So I let this pass by.
I was there to win the war, for petty battles I had no time.
Soon I got lucky to whistle on a Radio channel.
Promptly said my threatened Aunt,
“No big deal. Not that you got a world record.”
I shrugged and continued to whistle.
On my show-day at a famous festival,
the same Aunt said, “Wow,
Can I come watch you!? This is brilliant!”
You see, people change, it makes no sense
to start, to rebel, to deny, to stop, to settle, to comply,
because of what anybody says.
Bless those who curse you,
if they can’t beat you, they’ll join you
the principle works just the same.
So, no disrespect to those who don’t
but I value my breath AND I whistle.