She Asked What 'Udaan' Means: A Poem

A girl in the last row, ink on her thumb,
pointed at the word above the blackboard
and asked me, teacher, what does udaan mean?

I said, flight, and she frowned,
because birds fly and she was not a bird,
because she had never been further
than the well and the wedding-house and the field.

So let me try again, here, where she cannot hear me yet,
the answer I folded too small in the moment:

Udaan is not the sky.
It is the inch of air
between the ground and a foot
that has decided to lift.

It is the morning you read the bus board yourself
and do not hand your life to a stranger to steer.
It is the form you sign with your own crooked, certain name.
It is the no you finally say
in a voice that does not apologise for the room it takes.

It is not leaving the village.
It is becoming too large for the smallness
they measured you into.

Some girls are given wings. Most are given a word, and a door, and the dangerous suggestion that the two might be related.

So, girl in the last row, with ink on your thumb:
udaan means you.
It always meant you.
We were only waiting for you to ask.