Don’t take to the title and presume, I love being a girl. I love getting dressed up, I love being able to cry. I love the girly giggles and long hours on phone. I love being a little whimsical and I love being cared for. I love every bit of it. But I just don’t love being one in the place I am.
The horrendous, astounding and the inhumane gang-rape of Delhi has once again opened a long existent wound, only this time it practically tore through it. I don’t know for how much time I cried when I heard that the braveheart died. I pulled the blanket up and didn’t get out of bed and cried my eyes out; I think my mother saw me. Nevertheless, she didn’t console me, I wonder what she would’ve said or more precisely, could’ve said. I realize now, she is as helpless as me.

Then I read the statements in the newspapers, Asaram bapu, CJI’s wife, president’s son. And I curse myself for being a 17 year old in Delhi, I curse being a girl in this vile and senile society. These politicians, these political women, our ever so smiling speaker doesn’t get it, how would they? They and their daughters and wives roam around in cars all day, surrounded and secured. But I don’t, I can’t afford to. I have to walk to my tuition every day, come back alone. I have to be extra careful in fixing the time so that I am home before dark. Wherever I go, I have to be extra careful in dressing up so that I don’t seem ‘inviting’. I have to make sure I am not travelling alone in ‘public’ transport. I have to cancel my plans if my brother can’t pick me up or drop me. I have to report my location to my mother every 10 minutes, if ever by any chance I happen to outside home or school, alone. I am the one who has live by all these restrictions and yet, if something happens I am the one who is blamed. Am I really the victim? Because I am sure this society perceives me as the criminal.

I am sick of it, I am thoroughly exhausted of facing this battle every day, and I every day I lose the hope of winning, even the more when I see the apathy and the insensitivity of people who run our country. I live in a land where a woman can only have a body, not a brain. So I can’t wait to make something out of this brain and settle somewhere where it is revered and wanted. I’ll be one the best this world’s has ever seen. But I’ll never be one for this country. Why? Because I am a girl living in Delhi.