Today was a day full of learning. Learning to deal with emotions of people close to you, learning to empathise with emotions of those you have just met. Learning in many different ways.
My calling is such that puts me in touch with people from varied backgrounds. Today, I met three special women. All of them strong in their own special, God-sent ways.
It will take time to digest what I heard at the first meeting. Evening gloom has set in and I wonder what might she be doing now in her dingy room? She would most definitely be in the same pain she walked in when I first saw her...
This is a pessimistic song by the 13th-century poet Amir Khusro. Sad that hundreds of years later, at some point in time, most of us may have had this thought.
Attempting to translate part of the song:
You have done this once, don’t do so the next time;
Don’t make me a daughter again.
What is this fate that each girl gets?
The ones she believes her own turn out strangers instead…
She leaves her father’s abode, her mother’s bosom
To become an innocent bird caught in snares;
Only to be counseled at the top of it all:
“Don’t complain.”
Discarded like a child throws away a new toy after his fancy flies,
Where do we go?
You have done this once, don’t do so the next time,
Don’t make me a daughter again.
If I have the same parents and the same friends, I would like to be born a woman again. May be even if that's not the case. But does she, in her dingy room, think the same?
Translation (C) Gauri Gharpure
My calling is such that puts me in touch with people from varied backgrounds. Today, I met three special women. All of them strong in their own special, God-sent ways.
It will take time to digest what I heard at the first meeting. Evening gloom has set in and I wonder what might she be doing now in her dingy room? She would most definitely be in the same pain she walked in when I first saw her...
This is a pessimistic song by the 13th-century poet Amir Khusro. Sad that hundreds of years later, at some point in time, most of us may have had this thought.
Attempting to translate part of the song:
You have done this once, don’t do so the next time;
Don’t make me a daughter again.
What is this fate that each girl gets?
The ones she believes her own turn out strangers instead…
She leaves her father’s abode, her mother’s bosom
To become an innocent bird caught in snares;
Only to be counseled at the top of it all:
“Don’t complain.”
Discarded like a child throws away a new toy after his fancy flies,
Where do we go?
You have done this once, don’t do so the next time,
Don’t make me a daughter again.
If I have the same parents and the same friends, I would like to be born a woman again. May be even if that's not the case. But does she, in her dingy room, think the same?
Translation (C) Gauri Gharpure
