Why can't my tiny feet go loose?

I too wanted to be footloose. Can't my tiny feet take longer strides? Can't they go to places where they had never been before?

But I had climbed that guava tree and had reached the highest branch, to pluck that perfectly mellowed guava. Isn't that a height I had never reached before? I had felt at the top of the world, when I had graduated from those tiny green raw guavas to the big yellow mellowed ones.

It had come with a price, but. My tender skin has preserved a memento of that event, as mark on my back. But it's my graduation certificate. It will always remind me of my graduation day. The one, so different from what that landlord's daughter had. A day which I always dream of. A day, which will never dawn in my life.

I had once taken a sneak peek at the landlord's daughter, while being photographed with a black hat and a certificate.

Oh! the euphoria of achievement.

Even I had tasted it quite a few times, before I joined this factory. When I had caught a fish with my empty hands, while taking a dip in that muddy pond. When I had jumped from that highest boundary wall, and had managed to balance on my legs, without squatting. When I had answered something first, at my outdoor school, beneath the old mango tree.

I have carefully shelved them in my memory and take them out on special moments. They used to distract me from my work, and my back had refused to take any more lashes.

Why are my feet so heavy, even when they are so tiny? I have to drag them all along, to work. Why can't they reach places where the landlord's daughter's feet had reached? Why are my 10year old feet carrying a burden, which 30year old feet should bear?

Can't I be footloose too?

Stumble It!

How Loose is an Indian woman's foot?

Do women in India have a loose foot? Or is it bound by the shackles of culture and tradition? How often has she crossed boundaries?

There has been lots of screams about emancipation of women in India. Politically she deserves a right of 33%, when it comes to education and employment. What's the figure of her social rights?

Does that answer put us to shame? Or are we hiding behind the public images of Pratibha Patil and kalpana Chawla? They represent only a small percent of women population in our second largest populous country in the world.

It wasn't a long time back that we had come across a case of dowry death. Media TRP and circulation bask under its heat. Forget the big media stories about mundane people. How about mundane stories in the lives of big people? How about you, me and our next door neighbor?

Have we broken free of that traditional hierarchical set up? Don't try to put your urbanity before truth. Well, does your dad sweat in the kitchen chopping potatoes, while your mom slouches as a couch potato?

These mundane issues reflect our centuries of mental seasoning which looms on us as inhibitions and stigma. For an average Indian woman to have a loose foot, not only the political system, but the entire society has to make a move.

There should be no Ravana to abduct her, when her loose foot crosses social boundaries.

How footloose are you?

My loose foot decides the course of my life. It crosses boundaries of rules, discipline, reasoning, constraints. It has dragged me along to a horizon, with limitless expanse. There is so much of space to live. So much of freedom to breathe. Time can't bind you here to limit your growth. Ever since, my mindscape is expanding like the ever expanding universe.

How far has your loose foot gone? When was the last time you did something freaky? When did you last broke a rule? When did you last asked your mind to shut up, and went the way your heart led you? How footloose are you?