The Mad Woman Outside the Attic

The Mad Woman is no longer confined to the attic. 

She has a room of her own now. A house of her own. 

A job and rights (albeit on paper) and (some) say in her life. 

She is the empowered woman of today. 

Highly educated, highly career oriented. 

She was told there was nothing she couldn't be, nothing she couldn't do 

By parents, elders and teachers and everyone else. 

So she kept pursuing those goals prized by society. 


There's nothing she couldn't achieve if she her mind to it, 

They said. So she kept scoring goals after goals.

Steadily believing that she was inching closer to the life that was promised. 

School, college, higher education, she won at everything.

But overtime, she realized that there are no jobs that fit her bill.

So she made a House of Cards with the job applications she made every year

And watched them fall apart somewhere during the mid of each year 

Without fail. It's a routine yearly activity now. 

Finds respite in some odd contractual job 

To float by in the meanwhile. 

One needs illusions of safety and security to live 

She pats herself in the back and tries to move on. 


A new year arrives and brings with it a new deck of cards. 

She builds another house of cards and patiently waits 

for it to scatter with the winds. It's only a matter of time. 

The cards fall, one by one. And unfailingly, they fall, year after year. 

Like Sisyphus, she'll silently build the house of cards again. 

Even as she questions everything that she once believed in.

But like Sisyphus, she'll send applications after applications. 

Sit for interviews after interviews, for she is the Mad Woman outside the attic.