Prologue
Every time the metro door clasps close
And I'm a spectator.
Precisely to the door
Opening into freedom and purposefulness
Allowing the traffic to wilfully exchange their positions
But here's the thing,
When it beeps before, the determined doors of doom close shut.
I'm always scared they'd close on someone briefly before opening again
The skin of liberation
The skin of future
The skin that's sometimes their own daughter's
Does your mother caution you too?
To pause before throwing back a helpless array of arrow-like words.
One
Tracing the curves of letters
With blistered fingers and pale lips
Smears of turmeric and tea
On the edges of the manuscripts
An automated arm churning the curry
At a distance, a polar world of jarring laughters
Tears rolled at her daughter's birth despite the yajnas and prayers to
Four
The gurbani strings a song of peace and strength in the heart
While the autumn brings a letter of post-graduation acceptance
Five
She lays on her mattress with a thud
The saree undid halfway
She removes the bangles
Laughing a riot, deciding on a triangular pose
Six
The embellished chains- payals
Weighing down the sprint and spring in her feet Alerting the guards of naaz and nazm
Of her bastard ill whims
Pouncing to exit and exist
From the map of this borrowed life
Seven
A collective midnight burial for remembrance
Eight
Love of men has made her cruel
The roses she grows twirl for grief
Her tongue is a knife,
The honey coating has run dry.
Her shadow is a wailing child.
Who stitched the curse of emancipation in her heart?
Nine
The pursuit of ancestral favours
Older than the rotten nails of a ghost town
Leads to my grandmother
Who wasn’t oblivious to the startling hymns and gnawing claws of patriarchy
Epilogue
She cautions because she once fought too
The keys are our heirloom
Inevitable is rise.
by Siddhi Joshi
And I'm a spectator
Un-wooed by the observing the mobile stories called people or unsullied in the
Un-wooed by the observing the mobile stories called people or unsullied in the
musical instruments of coke studio's playlists
And I'm a spectator.
Precisely to the door
Opening into freedom and purposefulness
Allowing the traffic to wilfully exchange their positions
But here's the thing,
When it beeps before, the determined doors of doom close shut.
I'm always scared they'd close on someone briefly before opening again
Shaking their being
For a long minute,
Out of their steady goals
I'm scared they'll close on me too, again, if I'm a little lousy or dreamy
The same way men scream and scream and scream
Like a war cry and a boundary of caution and the last word
Before declaring my way or the highway
While threatening and precisely cutting through
For a long minute,
Out of their steady goals
I'm scared they'll close on me too, again, if I'm a little lousy or dreamy
The same way men scream and scream and scream
Like a war cry and a boundary of caution and the last word
Before declaring my way or the highway
While threatening and precisely cutting through
Shells of porcupine piercing through the pores of A woman's skin.
A deviant's skin.
A rebellion's skin.
A deviant's skin.
A rebellion's skin.
The skin of liberation
The skin of future
The skin that's sometimes their own daughter's
Does your mother caution you too?
To pause before throwing back a helpless array of arrow-like words.
One
In the husks of the pine trees, fields of paddy,
a handful of crimson berries and the eerie of the valleys
Sprawling shimmers of incessant precipitation
A rusty dagger on the waist
Kilos of fodder overhead
The hushed yet alert stare,
marching the cardinals systematically, marking safety
Unsynced rhythms of a hurried payal tracing a minuscule history.
Two
Tracing the curves of letters
With blistered fingers and pale lips
Smears of turmeric and tea
On the edges of the manuscripts
An automated arm churning the curry
At a distance, a polar world of jarring laughters
Jua and bundles of stacked jewellery
United by smoke.
Three
United by smoke.
Three
Tears rolled at her daughter's birth despite the yajnas and prayers to
thirty-three crore gods.
She must run away
She must run away
She must run away as soon as she can crawl to break away from a bitter land.
This land wouldn't fend for her or save her
This land is breathless to swallow her.
She must run away
She must run away
She must run away as soon as she can crawl to break away from a bitter land.
This land wouldn't fend for her or save her
This land is breathless to swallow her.
Four
The gurbani strings a song of peace and strength in the heart
While the autumn brings a letter of post-graduation acceptance
Opened with shivering fingers
To a first-generation immigrant whose country is still to taste freedom
To a first-generation immigrant whose country is still to taste freedom
Shaky limbs and a spark in the dreams.
Five
She lays on her mattress with a thud
The saree undid halfway
She removes the bangles
Laughing a riot, deciding on a triangular pose
to sit legs for caressing rest to the feet
A demeanour of not a woman but human
Away from the chains of the male gaze and grace.
A demeanour of not a woman but human
Away from the chains of the male gaze and grace.
Six
The embellished chains- payals
Weighing down the sprint and spring in her feet Alerting the guards of naaz and nazm
Of her bastard ill whims
Pouncing to exit and exist
From the map of this borrowed life
Seven
A collective midnight burial for remembrance
To tuck away the bruises and blood of the night
In a courtyard of widening knots,
Before their growling husbands
Become hungry again after the night
Before their growling husbands
Become hungry again after the night
Eight
Love of men has made her cruel
The roses she grows twirl for grief
Her tongue is a knife,
The honey coating has run dry.
Her shadow is a wailing child.
Who stitched the curse of emancipation in her heart?
Nine
A fragile button
On a daisy dress
The glass shards
In the palms of departure
A rented home with the company of misery
On which map aeons of subjugation
doesn’t expand into banished grenade of revolution
Ten
The pursuit of ancestral favours
Older than the rotten nails of a ghost town
Leads to my grandmother
Who wasn’t oblivious to the startling hymns and gnawing claws of patriarchy
She whispered fragmented maghrib prayers to set them all ablaze.
Epilogue
She cautions because she once fought too
Smashing the glasses of a robbed childhood
Tongue aching to unfurl a thousand rebellions
Her lungs drought's roof
Spilling the lentils bargained to half price
Future's blurry guide
Picketing the streets - bookstores to spice markets, broken slippers, underneath
Spilling the lentils bargained to half price
Future's blurry guide
Picketing the streets - bookstores to spice markets, broken slippers, underneath
her dupatta, stacked posters of forbidden phases, carefully struck in her pyjamas
knot, five combinations of keys to the paradise.
The keys are our heirloom
Put on your armour
There's a fight to conquer.
Inevitable is rise.
by Siddhi Joshi
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