Stranglehold of expectations.

(another one from the decade and a half old diary. makes me smile now, cos the hysteria has died down.)

Thy ask me if I’m a feminist
I tell them I don’t know
But it hurts, oh yes, it hurts
When her fatigue is dismissed
And becomes a cooking vessel
When they cast the stone at her
Cos she did what he too did.

It hurts, godammit, it hurts
When she is called to be
The paragon of virtue
When she is put in her place
With ‘a woman is blah blah blah - -

It hurts, bl---y s—t, it hurts
When she is told
A lady shouldn’t speak like that
A lady shouldn’t sit like that
A lady shouldn’t think like that
A lady shouldn’t think at all.

Dash it, who the hell wants to be a lady?
What, by the way, is a lady?
Who, tell me, is to decide
How many lines a poem should have?

It hurts, oh God, it hurts
When one of your own gender
Turns around and fires
That final fatal shot.

Anniversary

(another entry in my diary - made a year after my mother's death. she, by the way, was the most powerful influence on me.)

A year since she left.

A year since the detonation

In the chest—or brain?

The steadying hand. Stunned Disbelief.

No more.

Gone.

Where?

Deaf to our grief

Dead to our grief

Where are you?

WHERE are you?

Then the vacuum.

The struggle for air in nothingness

Clawing to grasp the reality of absence.

The quake was better.

Can vacuum be so heavy? Oppressive?

Crushing the nerve from feeling the pain?

When was this sunya infused with grief?

When did it happen?

Brine and migraine

Sobs toppling poise?

Stealthily, absence grew into day to day existence

But - - - -WHERE are you?

Something in me sometimes screams

Can you just cease to be? What strange heaven bewitches you

That you choose not to reach out

And balm my pain

Which once you could not bear?

You too, heartless, ma?

Heart, I guess, belongs to the flesh and bone.

Alas!

MA

(i discovered an old diary today - and in it my poor attempts at writing poems. this was written a couple of months after my mother died.the metre was all wrong, so i left it. today metre matters little to me)

Her stars were all wrong

She should never have been

But gods for cruel fun

Willed it!

The formula was ideal

For the tragic role

Misfortunes they came

In battalion

She withstood them

Her soul unscathed

Never did she wallow

In self pity

Clamouring for sympathy

Was alien to her grain

She bore her jagged cross

With poise rare.

Knowing the sting of pain

She spanned out her wings

To shelter those writhing

In anguish great.

What strange philosophy

Permeated her being?

A complete and total

Denial of self?

Was it worth it, Ma?

Not having afforded them

Their amusement

Did the Gods greet you

Heads hung in shame?

Elusive regions of the mind.

Blue or green?

I couldn’t decide.

Blue morphing into green

Or green into blue?

Bur the thought returned

Or was it feeling?

Thought morphing into feelings

And Feelings into thoughts?

The blue green waters of the ocean

Taking the colours of the earth

As they approach the shore

Only to return

To its never ending pursuit

Of blue or green

Or both?

Once again

That strange sensation fills me

Every cell in my being

As they did

Ever since I remember.

Sitting on the steps in the evenings after shower

Waiting for amma to complete the ritual

Of dusting with rasnathi podi

The line where my wet hair parted

At the center of my scalp.

It was gloaming, almost

And the coconut trees stood large

To my five year old eyes.

They seemed to touch the heavens

And beckoned me to come

With the breeze that moved them.

I watched the birds trail across the heavens

And envied them

As some disappeared into the trees

So close to the heavens.

And that strange sensation

Of thought morphed into feelings

Spread in my chest

Creating a sadness

Or was it joy?

I do not know.

But it purges,

That sensation

And transports

To an unknown region.

I get the feeling

Or is it thought

That strange truths inhabit that land.

The blue green sea merging with the distant horizon

The sky and the swaying palms that shelter the birds

awaken in me

thought or feelings I cannot fathom.

But tell me

I have in me the elements of those regions

I long for a glimpse of - - -

The return of the enemy

When the dreaded foe resurfaced

My heart crashed against the ribs

Knocking me down.

But soon I picked myself up

And the ground steadied beneath me,

And I faced the foe.

The apparition which had petrified me

Was now but a shadow of what he was

The first time

He’d been demystified.

His cards were exposed

And my reserves I’d discovered.

I mocked him.

You can kill only me

You can’t touch my spirit

abandoned

my muse deserted me

leaving behind a vacuum

which grows and grows

and engulfs.

how did I frighten it away?

will it ever return?

dwelling in a vacuum

is no fun.

thoughts drift in

and drift away.

like a yo-yo

with the string snapped

i roll away

and stop in some corner

till the cleaner sweeps me off and dumps me

in the waste bin

to be trashed.

The Downpour

Earth holds its breath
while light withdraws
at noon
slowly but steadily - -

strange silence charged with routine sounds of noon
awaits it
in the air thickened by the pall of monsoon cloud.

And then it comes

The downpour.
Sheets of rain lash the earth
Pleasant smell of the soil
Warms the heart
As the watery assault slackens its attack
And darkness withdraws
And noon returns

Like joy reinstated
After emotional decongestion
In the wake of heartbroken sobs.