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Every little girl knows how the story ends. The prince finds Cinderella. The glass slipper fits.

The wedding bells ring.The castle gates open.

And then, mercifully, the story stops.

Because fairy tales have always known where to end.

They end before the difficult quesCons begin. They end before Cinderella learns that

belonging oDen comes with condiCons. Before she discovers that every kingdom has rules.

Before she realises that acceptance is someCmes offered in exchange for pieces of herself.

No one asks whether she missed the girl who once danced barefoot in the ashes.

No one asks whether the castle loved Cinderella, or merely the version of Cinderella it found

acceptable. Perhaps that is why fairy tales end at the wedding. Because if they conCnued,

they would have to tell a different story.

A story about women who spend years learning how to belong.

A story about women who mistake self-erasure for love.

A story about women who become so skilled at adjusCng that they wake up one day unable

to remember where they end and everyone else’s expectaCons begin.

This is not Cinderella’s story.

This is ours.

Every li2le girl grows up hearing stories about houses. The house she will build. The house

she will belong to.The house she will one day call home.

The version of herself she slowly edits unCl she becomes acceptable to the people already

living there. No one noCces because it happens gradually.

The house does not devour her all at once. It eats her in pieces.

A li2le confidence here. A li2le freedom there. A boundary. A voice. A self. It teaches her

new codes. At first, the changes seem harmless.

Those taunts gradually become your inner voice.

Soon, Cinderella becomes fluent in a language she never chose to learn.

Scholars call it code switching – the pracCce of altering one’s language, behaviour,

personality or idenCty to fit a parCcular social environment.

We, women know it all to well. We call it adjustment.

The daughter who once spoke without hesitaCon, learns to measure every sentence. The

tragedy is that the gatekeepers of this kingdom are oDen women themselves-women whoknow the ache of shrinking, yet ask the next generaCon to shrink a li2le more. Women who

inherited the architecture of patriarchy and became its most devoted caretakers.

Perhaps this is why women across centuries have wri2en so passionately about freedom.

Virginia Woolf wrote that women need a room of their own. We misunderstood her. We

thought she was talking about walls and doors.

She was talking about psychological space.

The freedom to exist without constantly negoCaCng permission.

The freedom to think a thought before wondering who it might offend.

The freedom to feel without first calculaCng its consequences.

But how many women truly possess such a room?

How many wake up every day measuring their words, their tone, their emoCons, their

desires?

How many spend years becoming acceptable versions of themselves?

We tell women that marriage is about finding a home.

Yet countless women spend decades searching for themselves within it.

Sylvia Plath wrote of suffocaCon long before we learned the language of emoConal labour.

The women who compromise their bodies in the name of survival, are celebrated and

glorified for their sacrifice to keep the castle spotless to the outsiders.

Kabir quesConed the value of rituals that lacked compassion. Rituals that drains ones moral

beliefs and principles, how can they please the divine.

Mahasweta Devi’s Draupadi reminds us that the deepest violence is oDen the a2empt to

strip a person of their dignity and idenCty. The dignity that strips off every moment we

suppress our voice, every second we succumb ourselves and act against our personal beliefs.

UnCl one day we don’t that voice from within, also becomes silent.

The relentless pressure to become.

Not who you are.

But who others need you to be.

The daughter-in-law.

The wife.

The caretaker.

The peacemaker.

The absorber of pain.

The keeper of family honour.

The one who forgives.

The one who understands.

The one who remains silent.

“Ignore. Ignore. Ignore.”

UnCl one day she looks at her own life and wonders:

Who am I ignoring? The perpetrator? Or myself that is screaming and crying to break free.

When did I stop belonging to myself? Am I so flawed?Perhaps that is why so many women cry in private. Also because the tears invite judgement

of being “too sensiCve” or “over reacCng”.

The tears are not always about a single insult.

Or a single argument.

Or a single disappointment.

They are grieving a thousand Cny abandonments of self.

The dream they postponed.

The opinion they swallowed.

The boundary they ignored.

The disrespect they raConalised.

The apology they never received.

The version of themselves they buried in exchange for acceptance.

And the cruelest irony?

Even aDer all of that, belonging is never guaranteed. Instead we are expected to act grateful.

A woman can spend years sacrificing herself for a family and sCll be made to feel like an

outsider when conflict arrives.

The transacCon was never real.

Because true belonging cannot be purchased through self-erasure.

That is not belonging.

That is occupaCon.

Across centuries, across languages, across cultures, these writers were asking the same

quesCon:

What does it cost a human being to become acceptable?

We know the answer.

We have been paying for belonging with pieces of ourselves for generaCons.

Homi Bhabha called it mimicry.

The colonized subject was encouraged to become almost the same, but never quite.

How familiar this feels to us.

The daughter-in-law is welcomed as a daughter, in theory, yet quietly reminded of the

difference.

She is invited to belong, but only through adaptaCon.

She learns new customs, new codes, new loyalCes, new silences.

The kingdom applauds her transformaCon. Or do they ever? Even a mere

acknowledgement?The promise of even parCal acceptance remains forever just out of reach.

What struck me most in Bhabha’s work was the idea that colonisaCon is not merely about

controlling land. It is about controlling narraCves and idenCCes. It is about deciding whose

version of reality ma2ers.

How many women have been told:

“That’s just how this family is.”

“You need to adjust.”

“Don’t make a big issue out of it.”

With every such statement, our interpretaCon of own experience is slowly quesConed. Our

reality becomes negoCable. Our feelings become secondary. Our voice becomes something

that requires permission.

And yet, like every colonised people in history, we resist.

SomeCmes resistance is loud. SomeCmes it is quiet.

SomeCmes it is refusing to accept humiliaCon as normal.

SomeCmes it is pursuing educaCon aDer marriage.

SomeCmes it is earning an income.

SomeCmes it is seang boundaries.

SomeCmes it is simply saying, “This hurts me,” when everyone else expects silence.

The irony is that we live in an independent naCon. PoliCcal colonizaCon ended decades ago.

Yet many women conCnue to experience forms of emoConal and cultural colonizaCon within

the walls of their own homes.

They are expected to leave behind parts of themselves in exchange for acceptance.

They are expected to prove loyalty through self-erasure.

They are expected to maintain peace even when that peace comes at the cost of dignity.

The struggle for freedom is not always fought in parliaments, courts, or ba2lefields.

SomeCmes it is fought at dining tables. SomeCmes it is fought in kitchens. SomeCmes it is

fought in the quiet moments when a woman decides that her self-respect is not negoCable.

The goal is not rebellion for its own sake. The goal is not conflict. The goal is belonging

without surrendering idenCty.

Perhaps that is the freedom many women are sCll searching for.

Not freedom from family.

Not freedom from marriage.

But freedom to remain fully themselves within it.

If colonizaCon is the demand that one idenCty must dominate another, then true

independence begins when a woman no longer has to choose between belonging and being

herself.

The fight is about power. The ba2le was never between genders. The power play to subdue

one is pure schadenfreude that seems incomprehensible, especially in domesCc circuits. A

fight for a throne that doesn’t exist.

The biggest act of rebellion that a woman can commit, which is feared, is to own her self and

her idenCty. To not allow anyone to erase or subdue her.

Perhaps the quesCon was never whether Cinderella belonged in the castle.Perhaps the real quesCon is this:

If belonging demands transformaCon, silence, performance, and self-erasure, was it ever

belonging at all?