 I'm going to say hi. Everyone's going to say hi back. Hi. Hi. Okay. Everybody wants to talk about the rape. Everybody wants to talk about how my sari was untied over and over and over again as gods and kings watched lustfully while my body became the tapestry of a failed lineage. Five hopeless sons lost in battle. Five lousy husbands lost at a game of dice. Just plain bad luck that I became the inspiration for every Tamil movie sex scene. The poster girl for polygamy. Prostitution is permissible if a whore mimics my dressing. Sharing sex is acceptable if my name is uttered as an example just as my wrath is equated to a temperamental storm. I am remembered for all the wrong reasons. Droperty. Because you forget the core of my identity. Before I am goddess, queen, daughter-in-law, common wife or the raft that saved the drowning Pandavas. I am what you refuse to acknowledge. A woman. But a woman is not a woman until something happens to her and you want to know what happened to me. Choices. Dharma karma, whatever you call it, it began with bad choices. In my past life, I was born a queen. Successful but single. I was destined to be an unmarried beauty. I prayed to Lord Shiva for a man of five elements. He had to be strong, skilled, handsome, honest and knowledgeable. Shiva laughed. No single man could have all five qualities, he said. So he promised me five men in my next life as if one was not enough for me to carry. Now, now I'm not saying the other race is unnecessary. How can I deny the required essence of conception? I would be a vessel without purpose or direction. So I wanted a lifetime for him to. I waited a lifetime for him to arrive and when he did it was a competition of disappointment. Men came from east, west, north and south, made a beeline for my hand, but my heart was set on one and my mind was set on another. Karna was my first love but was of low birth. He was cast aside by my ego which had been pierced by Arjuna's arrow, who took me home to his mother Kunti and shouted from the front door, Amma, look what I won in the archery competition, but she did not have the decency to step out of the kitchen. Whatever it is, share it with your brothers and that is how I became the presence of Polly Andrew, wife of the five Pandavas. Till they traded me as a prize with a prize for their fragile pride in a game of dice, where the ancient law dictates that as a wife of more than four I am now public property. The fabric of my existence has been a comedy of errors, like the pause in a mantra, I am a constant breath of questions. Tell me why has my strength been forsaken when I am obedient to an ignorant mother-in-law, when I have been faithful in love to love itself, why are we not talking about my fidelity to look in the other direction when my husbands were bored, why aren't little girls thought of my loyalty to my best friend Krishna. In fact, I could have saved the Mahabharata at least 50,000 shlokas if I had been queen. There would have been no war like Kurukshetra, no bloodshed but my own for the birth of a legacy. Many versions of my story has been written, told, made into plays and TV serials on VJTV, yet everyone is afraid to change my description from a weeping woman to a heroine. As if we are trapped by the fundamental formula that some are meant to be great and some are meant to be happy, you can never be both. It is not the eternal law of the cosmos. For happiness to be measured by a companion or our pride decided by ancient laws we do not understand, so don't worship me on your knees, but make me a reflection of your past, present, to build your own future and should you forget all that I have said, then stitch this into memory, the unclothing of a woman is the collapse of a civilization. So you should be thankful for my presence, reminding you never to identify a woman solely by one thing that happens to her and remember you will never see coming when a woman happens to you. I don't do rappers. The last time I did he was 14 and I was 16. I was 14 and he's sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. I don't do rappers. The last time I did I was 14 and he was 16 going on 25 to life wore faded jeans and oversized navy blue lacoste t-shirt and couldn't say hi instead he went yo shorty yeah yeah you you cute girl you cute. I blushed till the color red pierced through my brown canvas my cheeks had not known any other words beside baby fat, fat being the keyword but I didn't move because Nancy Drew always played hard to get if only for 30 seconds so when he arrived at my table and waited for me to respond to his up I didn't so he went to a vending machine bought a can of coke placed it in front of me peeled off the layers of his personality and said hi I'm Arnold I see you care a lot books and all nothing you real cute so what's your name for love my first love I traded my name for a title they call me Arnold's girl and I was a shape of his shadow the silhouette of his persona that only appeared on small stages under dim spotlights he told me inspiration came from a joint so I learned to roll up and we got high on the word though he was mostly high and I had all the words I fixed them into his sentences I gave him rhythm when he had no rhyme propped him up straight so he could stand for all that he believed in I didn't give him my heart no I gave him my spinal cord which he shattered on August 30 2007 when the motorcycle did a cartwheel three times and landed on his pride and shattered every last cartilage that held together our existence at the funeral the pastor called him mischievous his teacher called him a dropout his mother called him a baby his friends called him a musician that never made it an eye I called him a rapper because no one understood that he was a poet first and they try to justify telling me he ain't no rapper haven't you heard of park drae buster of 50 and I said now look I know the gods of the word like the word of God he wasn't holy but they say the good die young and he's probably hanging out with Jesus right now so I don't do rappers that is w r a p p e r s I don't do rappers labels or titles because when a man dies he leaves nothing but a name and Arnold left nothing but a broken verse inside me so I have no title and I have no rapper anymore