Parenting is a hard game to follow. Mainly because there’s no tutorial involved and all you can do is make it up as you go. But the one thing that parents would never hope is to see their child get hurt and in doing so, they sometimes cross over from being protective to over-protective without even realising it. In an effort to keep their children safe, they unlearn the difference between shielding and caging, taking a very Mother Gothel – Rapunzel approach to parenting. What you want to do is to expose them to the real world, not the make-believe version of it, filled with castles and fairies and victories of good over evil, however scary or dangerous or inappropriate it may be. And that’s exactly what Sonal Sharma talks about in her ‘Inappropriate Poem’.
Winner of “Poetry on Wheels”, Sonal’s ‘Inappropriate Poem’ charges tempestuously into the subject matter. “Dear parents, teachers and your father’s friends’ uncle’s cousin’s great grandmother who weirdly thinks she has a say in your life, sex is not an inappropriate word.”
“When your little ones come and ask you about sex, don’t call it the ‘S’ word tell them it’s okay, tell them it’s natural. Don’t call it making love. Tell them it isn’t necessarily love,” she says as she gracefully dials up the inappropriateness.
Through her feral, imaginative verses, Sonal talks of consent, casual sex, body shaming, insecurities, sexuality and gender identities, and how children can “rule the world” if only they are not walled up within our apprehensions.
By not being honest to kids about the world they’re living in, we leave them unequipped for a life an independent adult. We need to expose them to the demons that “look just like them” and teach them, that anyone’s capable of good or evil. So they grow up to be unlike us, without our hereditary reluctance, and evolve with a better understanding of the world so they have a better chance at reshaping it.
Agree to agree? Tell us what you thought about the poem in the comment box below.
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