An ode to nobody..

She was born to be given off
She knew not.
Her childhood being an embarrassment already.
She was always asked
to keep low
Or simply shut up.
Speaking up her mind
was never her right.
It came as a disclaimer when
she was born a girl.
Many other disclaimers followed the suit
As in to sit properly
To avoid boys
Not to laugh loudly
like some loose woman
and so on..
Her plight never seemed to cease.
Adolescence was a whole new transition
Crashing her playful world
With further more responsibilities.
Her mom asked her to act like
a lady when she was only 13.
Like bleeding and cramps were a sin
She was asked to sit in a corner.
Days passed by
One day a family came to her house
Mom said they are here
to take a look at the girl.
Like a showpiece she was treated
among the strangers.
She was taught to nod her head
for everything the strangers asked about.
The guy who was meant to be her groom
had the only right to say.
He liked her at the end he concluded.
But no one ever questioned her say.
After the meet she saw her father shrinking
day by day.
His pressure to marry his own daughter
seemed like a burden to her.
Few furnitures were sold,
lots of gold were bought.
Moneylenders kept visiting at unexpected hours.
Soon she learnt
her dad bought a car,  a land
and lots of gold for dowry.
She never before felt so heavy.
The big day arrived, others were excited
But she was just playing along
under her wedding dress
Masked by the extra lot make-up
To hide her wrath and tears.
She was married off
Her mother had advised the previous night.
'Dear, you are a girl and you were meant to be married off.
All this while you were living by our identity
But from tomorrow you will be known
by your husband's identity.
So make sure you be loyal to him.'
These words shattered her.
Her existence seemed null now.
She laid at her husband's bed
Letting her husband prey on her.
Consent,  she chucked this word
through the window pane.
Things went fine for a week
and slowly all the threads came unfasten.
Her in-laws started to show their true colours
Their demands kept piling.
Her husband came drunk
and abused her for nothing.
Slowly the four walls of her new house
came closing in on her.
She was just confined to the kitchen
during the day
And her husband's room during the night.
Her nuptial chain was in a verge to break
And vermilion had dried up long back.
The thrashes and abuses
for more dowry never really stopped.
One day her mother was sent off with a letter to visit soon.
The little child her mother had nurtured
was now just remains.
Her mother-in-law lied, her daughter-in-law accidentally
burnt in the kitchen as the cylinder blasted.
But actually the poor girl
had enough she knowingly burnt herself
Tired of all the abuse.
She had written a letter to her mother earlier
describing her plight
and that she was ending her life.
The letter was yet to reach the destination.