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It’s 2018. I am living in a world of radical change. In a world where social dynamics are taking on a new significance, the global economy has risen to greater heights and robots are taking over the majority of the world’s labor force, I am still working out the details of where I really belong.

To start off, I first considered referring to a Biology book that read the definition of the female as:

“An individual of a sex which conceives and brings forth young or ( in a wider sense) which has an ovary and produces ova.”

Once I knew what physical structures set me apart from a man, I ran up to my mother whom I thought would be a perfect respondent to my long questionnaire about the incomprehensible discrimination I have to face despite there being no invidious difference in the creation of me and my male counterparts, for we both have been uniquely blessed with special yet balanced strengths. However, to my surprise, I was given an earful for thinking useless stuff for I, as an underling, am only supposed to serve my husband, father and brother in ways they ask me to, without a right to question. On further protest and justifications about the religious protocol given to my gender, I was forced to be silent and told:

“Larki buhat nazuk or hassas hoti hai. Iski izzat par halki si aanch iski puri zindagi par dhabba banjati hai. Aurat ko ghardaari ke liye banaya gaya hai or mard ko uski hifazat k liye. Tum mehkoom ho or mard hakim, yahi Allah ka nizaam hai. Tum qudrat se larna chahti ho?”

On hearing this, from somewhere in the corner of my eyes, tears rolled down. For a fact, I could not bring myself to believe it. Anyone who has a firm belief in the Lord’s glory, justice and His claim of ‘humans’ being the best of His creations, could not do either. What disturbed me was the rather unsettling discovery of an extra set of organs inside my own body which made me a lower-grade human and is seen as a matter of shame. Is it really an incredible system of giving birth that has enslaved me to my so-called ‘mighty masters’?

More horrifying was to accept a human being, merely of the same strength as mine, created by the same God, as my protector. Man, who harasses me in public; my husband for whom I am just a tool to let out his frustration, my brother who violates me sexually and when I dare to speak against him, burns me with acid, my father who offers me at an auction and sells me to the highest bidder. Bitter, yet an undeniable truth. If an imperfect being is to offer me security, I am sure it could not be any better.

I have seldom heard people having intellectual conversations about existence but have never quite felt it, let alone rights and freedom because I have never been allowed to recognize myself as an individual but a servant to a ‘superior’ existence.

Yes, I am a woman and I have been denied identity!