Stalking trash trucks on weekends, she
waits by signals. Men reading their
morning paper or men midstride their morning
jog or men trailing a corpse in their mourning white
lift her skirt, slide a pointed finger in
between her cheeks, then out, then kiss it
reverently. In bars and coffee shops, she has heard:
This is no age for holiness. Do these men know this,
she wonders. She ambles away from them. They
thrust plantains into her protesting mouth.
They watch her swallow.
WHAT STOPPED ME FROM writing this for nearly five years was guilt and fear. What prompted me to start writing this was an old and sustained rage. A belated realization that telling my story is not only valuable, but vital.
Let me introduce myself. I belong to a small and elusive group, and I have many stories to tell you. They all tie into one, larger story – the reason why my group is so small and elusive, and why we inhabit the fringes of our very homes by choice. I am a solo Indian woman traveler. I heave my backpack up and hit the streets, walking my unique path along the greatest romance that human beings have ever dreamed up – the romance of the road. [Read More]
There are nights
of all nights
when the sky turns crimson red
and the wind hollow. And on moon like this
Chiyuki’s Hiroshi wails for her sea-sucked breasts.
Hunger mounts and the neighbours’ laughter
mounts higher still. Steady as a bat
with her drum like fingers. She plays.
The soft- mint like smile
cripples his hunger and he chews
his thumb to pieces. [Read More]
“I MISSED MY PERIODS”. Shantanu looked up from his newspaper.” Does that mean you…?”
“Possible. Or maybe just hormonal imbalance like the previous time” I cut in without waiting for him to finish. I didn’t want any anticipation to be built up only to be disappointed later. We had been married for five years now. It had been a mutual decision to not start a family until two years after the marriage. The passage of the years from two to five saw an increase in the questions from family elders. My in-laws were progressive people and that was a relief. They didn’t lament about passing away without getting to see the face of their grandchild. They were also not worried about the lineage coming to an end as their eldest son had already added two grandsons to the family. Their concern was that late pregnancy might create complications for me and the baby to be born. In a polite manner they were telling me that I was nearing thirty and my body would not be the same as it used to be five years back. Sadly the biological clock ticked only for women while men’s potential was not time bound. A few years back newspapers had an article about a farmer in some remote village of India who at sixty seven had fathered a baby boy. [Read More]
As you may have noticed, this site has been on unofficial hiatus for the last few months. A host of life changes including pregnancy, a move from Bangalore to Mumbai and huge amounts of work have left me short on time and more importantly, on mind space. My sincere apologies to those who have had submissions in queue and I will be publishing these in the next few weeks.
But the challenges of running this single-handedly (and for free) have not abated. I’m afraid I will have to shut it down soon. I don’t want to and so here is an open call for help –
If you or anyone you know would like to help me run this, please get in touch at my email ID (anu.sengupta@gmail.com). This basically means editorial help including soliciting articles and editing the ones received. All you need is sparkling editing skills and some comfort with blogging. Needless to say, this is a voluntary, from-the-heart kinda initiative and does not pay. But there will be endless joy, fufilment and other peachy things. Please pass the word around.
If I don’t find anyone to help, I will probably close it down once the submissions in queue are up. The site itself will remain so that people can look through archival posts.
“The Singh household was, these days, rather precariously balanced on its head.
With six females in it, patriarch PP Singh had been feeling for a while that it was losing its male essence. For that is what it was: an essence. A house could be filled with a dozen women but if one man ruled over them all like a dark lord, frightening even at his most benign, the household would still smell male. There would be a faint odour of man coming off the furniture, the curtains, even the kitchen. Even the women. Like in his own childhood, all the women in the house had vaguely given off a ‘man’ essence. It was not a scent. Just a flavour.
Patriarch PP Singh had worked hard to recreate that flavour in his own family. The disappointment of not having sons had long since evaporated. And to tell the truth, he wasn’t even sure he wanted sons. Sons are trouble. If he had a teenage son now, he’d be creating a little scene everyday – today a motorcycle; tomorrow a car; then girl-trouble; or he’d be out all night, smoking and drinking. Maybe there would be police trouble.
Now look at all those boys arrested near Rakabganj. Just think. They don’t even leave the gurudwara alone. Forty of them, sitting in jail, having their bottoms reddened. Serves the monkeys right. [Read More]
I HAD INDEPENDENT CONVERSATIONS WITH two friends recently, about the same topic. Both friends fasted/will fast this week, for Sharad Purnima and Karva Chauth respectively. Since I had never heard of the former and the only knowledge I can claim to have about the latter is a sappy scene from DDLJ, I got to thinking and reading more about the subject. I wanted one question in particular answered: Is gender-selective fasting (females, in all cases I read about) a covert form of oppression, and consequently, socio-cultural violence?
How to escape a Skinner box
Electronic relationships are the easiest to erase
Reject all phone calls, Blacklist the number, Block him everywhere
Just hit the ‘delete’ button and it’s all over
Go without talking to him this minute and you can
Go the next and the next and for every minute after that
As if nothing had ever happened.
If one plus one is no longer infinity
Cut him off;
Erase all memories as though you had never met or known or understood or loved
This man; Like no one had ever known or loved or understood you.
Remember how big the world is and how little you are in it,
How ephemeral your feelings and fallacious your knowledge
Remind yourself: you are just five senses and
He, seventy-two-point-six percent water;
If this river runs its course
Let it
What would remain of you but
A few photographs (delete them)
A song (change the soundtrack)
And the feelings after rosé-induced baby talk?
Ignore, ignore all stimuli and chant this like a mantra:
In a twenty-six letter world, eight are negligible
Only one is holy
‘I’
Escape.
***
Wendy Kroy
Your attempts to win her over are
The tale of Sisyphus’ life-
Her wounded eyes, the spider’s snare
When you lose yourself between her thighs, prepare
To have her endless legs crush your neck-
She’ll trap you in her web of lies
Smile when you meet her
Kiss her even; But be aware-
Of that pistol in your pocket
Never forget this: If you hesitate to kill her
She will kill you; Beware-
This is a woman to be worshipped, not loved;
Aspire to no more than being her designated fuck,
Whatever you do keep your opinions to yourself
If she wanted the truth, she’d torture it out of you;
Remember she likes her men like her drinks
Stiff, blue
Don’t try to run or hide
You may be damned if you do but
You’re dead if you don’t
For the moment, prepare
To be snuffed out like her hourly cigarettes.
***
There’s been a mistake.
You didn’t expect this glitch.
This vanishing point
of a private murmuring city.
This fumbling
in a void of spreading
formlessness
(they told you it would
be a flower, not a slit).
Greedy mouth,
how many fingers
can you swallow?
In the movies, you would
unzip her out of her dress
and she is sexy alabaster,
leaning against the stairs,
a sell-out pimping her nipples,
readying them for your touch.
In real life, she is tired
of the metaphors – earth
and mother and whatnot.
In real life, ecstasy is far
from pretty, a groaning sickness
spasming on the carpet.
You are quickly learning
about the revolution that
brews beneath her flesh -
a whispered language of
rite and ferocity and the
invisible mountain she carries.
That to sleep,
you must lock away
your inheritance.
To emerge,
a world must unlearn itself,
then flood, then burn.
When the twitching stops,
you uncork her
(of course, she is
a bottle of wine to you)
and pour out the paraffin
from her mangled bones.
Flickering tongues
from hell lick the salt
off her thighs.
No pain felt she.
Burn’d like one burning
flame together.
You went looking for strawberries,
instead you found the manic whore,
the universe’s relentless core.
PLENTY OF FEMINIST WRITING is churned out by people actively engaged in an area of expertise/field of work. As a therapist, educator and social worker, I have always had plenty to say, a stand to take and debates to relish. (Note: I am NOT saying working folks are the only ones with opinions of value!) But for the past 6 months, I was none of these. I wasn’t even (hushed whisper) a working woman. I was, to put it plainly, a hausfrau, and this is an account of my experience.
It happened the usual way. Marriage, partner’s transfer and move abroad. We were going to live in the United States, a country I was very familiar with, had lived in before and was acclimatized to. I knew it was only a matter of time before I re-entered the workforce. Having worked non-stop—often two jobs/businesses simultaneously—for the past decade, I was suddenly faced with swathes of time and the freedom to stare into space if I so chose. As a part of me watched from the sidelines, the job-juggling girl I once knew threw herself headlong into home decoration, baking and the maintenance of an immaculate home.
