My body. My rules?

She stared at the two lines mocking her. This couldn’t be happening, they had been careful. Too careful, in fact. But that stick couldn’t be lying…or could it? Maybe it was a false positive. Yes, that could be it. Twenty three was no age to bed pregnant. She’d just got out of college and started a job. She could tell Rohan about it but how would he react? 

Would he be angry and ask her to abort? Or would he ask her to marry him? And her parents? How would she explain it to them? She was their perfect daughter. How would she explain the pregnancy? Or the fact that their darling daughter had become an ‘adult’ while they were not watching? Would they even want to talk to her?

But wait. What did she think about this? She didn’t know. Not that did matter really. It didn’t matter, of course. Whether she wanted to keep the baby or not or whether she wanted to give it away…hmm, that sounded good. But what would her relatives think? She couldn’t go through the pregnancy without hiding it from the world. And what about her parents and Rohan themselves, would they be okay with her going through it? Rohan, maybe but her parents?

And could she actually give the baby away once it was born? She had seen it a million times before on TV, moms-to-be putting up their babies for adoption but changing their minds once they see a part of themselves in their hands? Would she be one of them? It was a possibility. Would anyone support her then? She didn’t know. There was too much she didn’t know.

Or maybe she could simply get rid of the baby. It wasn’t even a baby technically right now, just a cell- atleast that’s what science says. She would just be expelling a cell from her body. Yes, that would make it easy. Just. A. Cell.

But who was she fooling? Her heart knew and no technical term could change the reality that a life was growing inside of her, no matter how miniscule.

She had no option. She had to get rid of it and no one could ever know. Not her parents. Not Rohan. Not her best friend. Not a single soul. It’ll be her little secret.

But how would she do it? There was no planned parenthood here. She could go in a clinic and get a procedure performed but she would have been asked a million questions no matter if the law states otherwise. This was the society she lived in. She’d just have to get some pills. Online maybe. Bleeding for a month and pushing out the pregnancy outside of her was a much better option than doing it in a safer manner…

Such teenage pregnancy stories are not uncommon in India or throughout the world.

Every year about 16 million girls aged 15 to 19 and some 1 million girls under 15 give birth —most in low- and middle-income countries.
Complications during pregnancy and childbirth are the second cause of death for 15-19 year-old girls globally.
Every year, some 3 million girls aged 15 to 19 undergo unsafe abortions.
Babies born to adolescent mothers face a substantially higher risk of dying than those born to women aged 20 to 24.

And this is not me, this is the World Health Organization talking based on the teenage pregnancy statistics that are actually available to them. The real situation is much more alarming with millions of such cases going unreported.

Add to this the callous attitude of most governments across the globe, we face a massive problem that no one is talking about. And it is not just deaths but also various life threatening STDs that no one seems to care about.

Also, it seems people other than the female are in a better position to decide what she does with her body. And also apparently it is easier for people to buy guns than for a female to get the healthcare she needs. Yes, that’s looking at you Amurica. 

It’s funny that all the pro-life activists canvassing for the unborn baby do not realize that till the time the birth does not actually take place, they cannot dictate a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. Motherhood in itself is a huge deal, an unwanted one is just a burden that you’re putting on a woman specifically a teenager that she is in no position to handle most probably.

Now I am not suggesting anything or pointing fingers but maybe a change in the attitude of adults as to how they treat adolescents, health services as to how they help the troubled souls and how the governments frame policies for the future generations can go a long way in finding solutions and saving lives.

What the recent Orlando shooting teaches us.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, I’m pretty sure you’ve read about the Orlando shooting that took place recently and is being dubbed as the most horrific and deadliest mass shooting in the US. The shooting left a 50 people dead and hundreds injured and millions scarred for life.

So why the unrest? Probably because the shooting took place in a Gay night club. Or because the shooter belonged to a particular religion (read Islamophobia). Or because the IS took responsibility for the attack. Or because Donald Trump had to politicize the incident with one mean tweet. Or because Indians and many others who can be best described as homophobic are suddenly enraged by it. Or because you’re one of those people who’ll complain how the world does not care about what is happening in most areas of conflict throughout the world. I could go on and on…

But the fact of the matter remains that lives were lost and since it was an attack on certain people who are still trying to find acceptance from certain classes of people, the whole thing turns all the more nightmarish.

While Donald Trump uses this incident to propagate his anti-Islam agenda, I read a post by a member of the LGBTQ community who said that even in such difficult times, love is the only answer there is. That they may be enraged but there’s no place for Islamophobia in their world because at the end of the day we’re all the same people- made of same flesh and blood. And that is all the answer that one needs. If a person who’s so deeply and personally connected with the tragedy can see the situation so clearly, why is it that we are not able to do so?

Is it because we’re inherently racist but refuse to acknowledge it? And we use incidents like these as an outlet to justify our racism or our hatred? These are just plain facts that I am laying down over here. And it is amazing that for a society that prides itself on being so advanced, scientifically, we have failed to perhaps find the meaning of humanity.

There are hundreds of people out there trying to change the narrative of what happened but we have to realize that it is doing us more harm than good. Maybe it is time to process this all in a more positive light- for example, we Indians are enraged over what happened, atleast that’s what our social media accounts say, but how many of us feel no qualm in cracking a gay joke? Or terming a friend as ‘gay’ if they do something that is not in consonance with our definition of ‘manliness’. Or how many of us realize that we are guilty of the crime as much as the shooter till the time Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code is not repealed? 

These are some very hard questions with no easy answers but the recent Orlando shooting is the wake up call that the world has needed since long to be more accepting towards everyone not for some huge reason but simply because we’re all human beings and that is all the reason that we need to love and support each other.

The Untitled Poem

Sometimes it so happens that you read something, or come across a situation that leaves a profound impact on you and as a writer the only way at times to let go or in a remote sense, 'deal' with the situation is to write about it because writing is the only source of liberation out there for weirdos like me. 

So the past couple of days have been turbulent times coupled with finishing a soul stirring novel, The Pact (Hello, book review!). Anyways, I was basically writing aimlessly and ended up with this. I suppose I have taken a lot of relaxation with the "strict rules" of poetry but pretty sure that it remains within the broad confines of its meaning.

However, I was not able to come up with any suitable title for this work, which is ironic since I am a self professed writer but sometimes words just aren't enough so I just ended up calling it the Untitled Poem which goes like this:

"I saw death from the closest quarters and it was not me who was dying,
'twas someone I love perhaps more than myself; anything else, I would be lying.

First glance at him and I knew I'd found my guardian angel, but today I sat next to him in a vehicle with high pitched sirens, transfixed as roles reversed;
and my blessing turned into my biggest curse. 

I looked into his milky eyes seeing not even a cry for help,
my own cries doused by the sirens or maybe the alarm bells ringing in my head. 

I kept screaming his name and then some more for that's what the doctor told me-
"your words are the only thing keeping him alive, so just talk to him, please."

I was scared to death, an irony of sorts and yet my tears won't fall;
baby I've loved you more than you can ever know and I have to tell you that you're all I had been waiting for...

You can't leave me like this for we've just started and there are too many miles to go, too many places to be
and too many kisses left incomplete. 

He suddenly takes a short breath, breathing a new life into me.
Now the only challenge is to keep those breaths going, till the time we reach..."

- Mrinaal Datt