Poem - Festival Lights

Drums beat, lamps glow,

colors bloom where dancers flow

but behind the rhythm, unseen,

a woman hides her silent pain.

Nine nights of devotion, of power divine,

prayers rise for the goddess in shrine.

We hail Shakti, her strength, her fire,

yet silence women when bodies tire.

She twirls in garba, her smile held tight,

but cramps coil sharp in the festive night.

Each step is heavy, each move a fight,

still she glitters beneath the temple light.

They whisper rules she must obey,

“Don’t touch, don’t pray, don’t join today.”

Her body is shunned when blood flows red,

though the goddess too was once misread.

Offerings laid at the deity’s feet,

but her own needs - food, rest, retreat

go unnoticed, dismissed as “small,”

while she carries the weight of it all.

She is the daughter, the sister, the wife,

bearing the cycle, the rhythm of life.

Still, in the name of faith and festivity,

her struggle is cloaked in invisibility.

So when you dance, when you chant, when you pray,

remember her strength that lights the way.

The goddess we worship for nine nights long

lives in her too, though the world feels wrong.

Her power is not in hiding the pain,

but in rising each time, again and again.

By Sonali Choudhary

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