5 commentsMother did you not
hear him laugh?
Laugh as he watched us
rent the river apart
for our clothes.
Clothes he had gripped
vicelike
in his hand.
Laugh as he broke our pots of milk,
let it pool over his feet,
let it pool over mine,
let its silken whiteness
leave darkened spots
over our clothes.
Laugh as he crushed my wrist
in his hands, his amusement
spilling in bursts of hot air
snaking round my throat.
He didn’t laugh like
the boy that he was.
He laughed with the confidence
of a man who had captured,
in the palm of his hands,
what he had wanted
before he could even ask.
—
Mother his laughter
followed me
wherever I went.
I could not breathe
without the winds carrying
the flutelike sway
of his boundless mirth.
But mother,
how could I scream,
when my friends were with him,
laughing back?
When they wept the moment his laughter
had left them?
—
When my daughters
begin to have daughters,
his laughter will haunt me again.
So gentle.
So teasing.
So sure.
He will look down from the heavens.
The men he sees
will be dots of sparkling dust,
a woman’s cloth crushed
in their python grip.
One of them begins
to strike his thigh.
The others laugh.
—
Krishna! she screams.
This woman whose flame-kissed feet
now struggle
to hold their ground.
Smiling, he will
lift the palm that had
once clutched the clothes
that I had worn.
He will lift his palm in a court where
no one dared lift a finger,
and cloth will emerge
as flames
from sacred pyre.
She lifts her eyes in gratitude,
knowing he will smile back.
He had kept his word
as a brother would.
All her life
she will remember
those hands.
—
Krishna! I screamed.
He had laughed
and refused to let go.
Mother,
How should I
remember this?
I am currently reading the Mahabharata so this poem really resonated with me.
Thanks…it’s one of the things I love about the Mahabharatha…so many subplots and so many layers!
Shit, Anu. This poem is so powerful that every line made me bristle. I love your retelling. It resonates with the current political climate rife with discourses of rape culture. Just yesterday in my Feminist Theory class, we were discussing Christina Sharpe’s Monstrous Intimacies and the Stubenville Rape Case came up. And now, this. Brilliant.
Thanks Sanchari! Exactly…discourses of rape culture don’t emerge out of thin air, they are built — sometimes layer upon sexist, racist, classist, heteronormative layer; sometimes by things we deem innocent which get transferred from generation to generation. I’m so glad this resonated so strongly with you!
Indeed a piece of powerful writing, but prone to misinterpretation. Especially because religious symbolism and figures of the Hindu texts are being portrayed in a light that is completely antithetical to their belief and faith. The poem, to put simplistically, can hurt religious sentiments.. A take on Krishna, but loading it with sexual imagery and rape culture – what’s your idea of Krishna?