Tag: india

Reclaim

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When I turn my words into theirs
You’ll see that I’ve been heard
My fingers tracing the skeletons of books
Sunsets resting on my earlobes
Water streaming down my sloppy hair
It will all come back
When I’ll play around in their tongues

For you see, I will make myself a book
For everyone to read
You cannot escape me then
Can you shut your eyes and say
You’ve never heard of that story?

I will dance with your thoughts
Shedding skin in their tracks
A miniature version of torture
That you’re inflicting on me now

I’ll be out of print someday
And you’ll be the one
Madly looking for my manuscript
To finally collect my soul

You’ll make my words your own
You will come home.

Pausing to reflect

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Paint a pair of eyes on me
So I can look at the world and not fall apart
Dilute the blood of a rose
Sprinkle it on the glasses I wear
Make some goals for me
Add a spoonful of meaning

Yes, I’m asking a lot

But I want to be hopeful even when I’m not.
What makes me happy
Is what makes me sad
But what I regret are the feelings I never had

Am I just following my peers?
But I am still here
The road is too long and everyone’s ahead
Who will I be when I am but blank
Eyes emptied into screens
Memories of sand

I am not even
A palimpsest.
A charcoaled page,

Gone to waste?

Present

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I exist for the moment
But my back aches with history
They have twisted my tongue into a rope
I’m choking on their words
I’ve coloured myself fully red in their lashing
But they’ve set me free

Oh it’s another postcolonial vomit
Each word I speak
Is a slap of my own doing
I am dragging myself
To reach the primeval forests
Through the mud of patriarchal torture

I take every line of art
To operation theatres
And I dissect it
Until I shred myself to pieces

How do I escape the injustices
Forgive the centuries of their bloody horrors
My back aches with history
I am black and blue
And red
I am spent

Trying to live
A clean Present.

Residue

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The streets are empty and the sunny bricks of red call me home
I find myself in a saree
Rabindrasangeet playing on a loudspeaker
Bhalobeshe shokhi nibhrito jotone
Amar naam ti likho
Tomar monero mondire.

“Write my name with tender love
In the secret chambers
Of your heart, my friend.”
But the city is empty
Who do I call my own?
I rummage through the sheaves of paper in my hand
There are so many letters
No one to give them to.

I scatter them as I go
And I write a poem on the envelopes
Each telling them I’m sorry
I could not exist in my role.

The singing voice stops
The street is empty of sound too
The letters are but scraps of paper
Words melted into dust.

I empty myself in the deserted street
The standstill hour of the sunny day
Reduced to one long moment
I cry without tears.

The city is still picture perfect
Beautiful in its sepia ruins
I close my eyes for a moment
Rest at somebody’s doorstep.

After a long moment again
I open the envelop of skin
Renewing my vision
The night has creeped in
And it’s still a deserted city

I see shadows in each corner
Nostalgia of the souls who left
I try to communicate but they are gone.
I vaguely remember for a moment that
I’ll come back again here tomorrow;
Before I can be certain,
The sun rises

I return with a stack of letters
A ear for music
A soul of yearning
And I come home.

A song for everyday

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I

I’m digging my nails deep into my flesh
For a treasure that was never buried
Neither a time capsule for lost memories
(Memories, which reappear as shadows every morning
Like a cobweb over my eyes, gone in the next blink
As I look up at the sun to confirm it’s a new day after all)

I keep moulding my form
Sandpapering furiously the veneer of my vessel
A glossed up eggshell a second away from breaking apart
And I keep hitting the soil of my skin
For the fresh splash
From my fountain of worth

All the roots I had planted in me
Are loosening into veins
They’re dropping out in the strands of hair I shed
I am rethinking all the words I have said
Or forgot to say
Scavenging for imprints inside my heart before it turns black
Tomorrow when I look up at the sun
All of this will be gone
Perhaps.

II

The sun shines down through the skin of air
I’m not the same vessel of thoughts
The senses in me are swirling up
I’ve learnt to feel,
An acquired taste it is;
I am so happily full of myself
That you, a cynic,
You, my past or my future,
Cannot touch my hair
I am here, I’m here, see!
My heart is softly beating and my eyes are bright
Today I am feathery brightness and glow
Today I’m here
And tomorrow I will be too.

Oh woman

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Don’t be a metaphor-
“A flower trying it’s hardest to bloom
In the shattered cement ruins”
Be what you are
A woman of flesh and blood
Warring with words.
Your intangible insecurities, tangible tears
Your bleeding womb, intellectual fears
The friction of trying to transgress spheres
Makes you who you are.
Language may turn into metaphor
Or you can harden it into goals
In a void devoid of meaning.
What does it mean, to be feminine?

In my bed

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The melody of love songs from decades ago
Curl around my ears and ask,
When will you fall in love?
Ringing laughter from sitcoms on TV
Knock on my eyelids as well,
When will you laugh as much?
I am just beginning to live
Perhaps I need my cocoon much more
Much longer than I knew
I see the sun shining and the cat licking its paw
I feel the joy of eating a candy
And throwing the wrapper into the bin
Which falls on the floor instead,
I see, hear and I love
Conversations with myself,
My dreams
My life inside my head.

It’s still a life worth living
Curled up in your bed.

Modern Indian Woman

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Photo by Dark Indigo on Pexels.com
 I am looking for opulence
 The tags of success
 Houses, cars, and a bank balance heavier than a grieving heart
 Looking for all of it
 Of course, with my eyes shut
  
 How pretty it feels
 To be a careerist woman
 The glossy air of perfumed professionalism
 No more the stench of burnt rice and messy lentil soup
 How else to be equal to man?
 
 
 I haven’t got a plan yet
 (God forbid someone finds me out)
 Without a gold-aimed focus, what will I be?
 Just a girl waiting for the shehnai
 A gold-digger whose housework fails to fall under GDP
 To be looked down upon contemporaries
 To be ruled over by the smug elders
  
 There’s no room to aim for minor roles
 We should only look for big things
 Superimpose our sight with the really feminist aspirations
 No more petty positions
 You can be Lady Macbeth
 Let your ambition kill you
 But never the reverse
  
 Of course, I’m still thinking
 And looking
 With my eyes shut
  
 Padma, Qayanat, Lakshmi and Sheila
 Have all the doors already shut to them
 While I bicker in my cocooned metropolis
 While I compare my feminisms
 While I waste my words on them and myself
  
 So before I open my eyes
 To inevitably jump into the rat race
 Running to be equal
 To finally be a modern adult
 A modern Indian woman,
  
 Let me for one last time
 Dream of smallness
 Where I travel throughout the land
 Settle anywhere, work anyhow
 Just enough to keep alive
 Free as a bird
 Without any man or an elder snatching away my wings
 Terrorizing my honour;
 Free as rippling wind
 Strong enough to turn into a storm anytime I choose
 A wishful wanderer let loose
  
 Let me dream of simplicity
 Let me be.

Forgive me

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Photo by Kayley Dlugos on Pexels.com
 She was singing because she lost her mother
 I was listening but I did not cry.
 Her song gave me a perverted joy
 As I had something she didn’t
  
 I pitied her as night fell
 She went home to rest;
 We met again the next day and she smiled at the men
 How can she smile, I wondered
 How can she smile when I can’t
 Even though I have my mother
 And a family ten times larger
 And a house far more decked with ornamental books?
 It is wrong for you to smile
 I wanted to say
 But instead I cried alone when night fell and she went home to rest;
 I wanted to embrace my mother
 Tell her how delicious the curry was,
 Instead I felt guilt churning in my gut
 For that one moment of blasphemous joy I had felt
 When she had sung the sad song of loss
  
 Forgive me, friend
 God bless your mother’s spirits
 Forgive me, mother,
 For creating absences and pain
 Forgive me
 So I can forgive myself.

Stay/Go

ahonarcLeave a comment 
Sometimes I stop thinking
And paint myself into a blank wall
People who run into me
Leave behind a taste of their minds,
Their greasy forehead impressions.

I'm standing still
My blank face changes colours
A perfect background for any of you
I will be the poker face in all your pictures
Calm, quiet and free,

I can't move at all
But I can hear your songs
And I don't want to dance
I'm listening to your stories
How they've ended and begun.

If I grow weary of repose
I will start to flow
I'll loosen into clear water and ripple with ease
Maybe I'll occupy your minds,
And the stories I gathered
Will turn to sand-stones.

Flip me a coin, Fate, and let me know
Should I stay, or should I go?