Where Is My Name? Poem by Ajit Das

Long ago the Bard said:
what's in a name?
Rose will emit fragrance
in whichever way you call it.
True! But, what about identity -
unmistakably one's own?

I'm a woman, endowed
with all human traits.
Yet I've no name, rather
I'm someone's ‘wife' or ‘daughter';
everything is planned for me
under the cover of a veil.

I want to tear it off,
dismantling the tradition:
a ‘black-headed'
belonging to somebody else,
and reveal my own name -
the elusive identity of my own.

*An Afghan woman seeking
right to identity