Open Relationship

You have wings
And, so do I.
Yet, when we fly together
Why does mine wither,
And yours
Take to the skies?

A Household

" A household, in fact, with its meticulous and limitless tasks, permits to woman a sadomasochistic flight from herself..."
Simone De Beauvoir (The Second Sex)

An Evening

It was an evening unlike any other...
Her man had gone out for a short spell
She assembled her forgotten women friends
They resurfaced like her vanished youth
with their loud laughters, thoughtless gestures,
Relaxed bodies, irrevarent jokes,
Her baby played with them,
Laughing with them, imitaing them,
Listening to them, sometimes mischeviously
Not listening to them...

Addiction to Fiction

I devour word after female word,
Written in pages and volumes
Of life stories of my land and far
I see my youth, dreams, songs and tears
In world after world of womens' stories.
I ride these waves
In fear of loneliness
This piece-meal of mental peace
This fragile web of pain and meaning...

The Laughing Woman

Her laughter was loud.
Like a man’s laughter…
Her mother had always told her
“Women never laugh loudly.”
People used to turn away embarrassed
They pretended she did not exist…
For, her loud guffaw would reverberate in their closed rooms
where good women moved quietly
Weighed by gold ornaments
And absolute obedience…
But…
She only laughed more.
For herself, and for them…

She started laughing
To hide herself.
To pretend a confidence that she did not quite feel
To tell the world she did not care.
In a world where she met other laughing women like her
She felt the suspicion finally…
That she was accepted
With her guffaws and loud entries.

Yet…
She knew deep within.
That, it was not a pure laughter
Her irony was the cloth that she clutched
To cover her naked desperation.
Her guffaws were only there
To hide her sentimental tears…
She had inherited the fine art of convoluted speech
From the dark side of her suicidal family
Where...
A smile meant revenge
A tear, victory!

Working Women

The Whore and the hijra
They shared a seat
In the early morning bus.
Going back after a night of tired work.

They were both speaking animatedly.
Friends meeting after so long,
Grabbing, savouring that moment of respite
After the labour of the night.

The Hijra wore cheap gold-plated ornaments
They dangled against her glistening, black skin.
The whore looked dishevelled.
She was not more than twenty.

They must both have blotted out from memory
That previous night of desparate gropings
Where time sucked rhythmically
Their youth away.

That night...
Like any other night...
Of sweat, labour, police whistles
And hard-earned coins.

Male Autobiography

The woman in his life
Appeared before him
With her spread out legs
And cavernous black hole
Trying to fill her interminable vacuum
With his sprouting seeds.
Stifling, smothering…like water around him.
He would surface once in while at stag-parties
For that breathe of fresh air
But, like a water animal
Would soon crawl back home.

Once the young ones started coming
He felt strangely relieved and relinquished.
For the first time
He understood the emptiness that she felt till then.

With no one now smothering him
He tries to sleep alone.

Growing up to be a Woman (Savarna)

I remember the early years of my childhood.
it was so difficult to convince others that you are an individual
you are a citizen with rights
which includes the right to privacy.
your letters are "your" letters
they cannot be opened and read and commented on by everyone
your time is "your" time
it cannot be pried open and demanded for public display.
i remember the days and months and years it took
for my family to just leave me alone.

by then, i had read feminism.
i had understood
it was really difficult for a woman to be an individual
and
being a person with rights? - a citizen?
impossible!
by then, i had a name to call myself...

a woman in patriarchy.

then...
after years of discovering women's friendships and the cracks within them...
After years of silence and madly running away from all that i had learnt.
trying hard to unlearn them...
after discovering that my freedom could be other women's rejections
my space could mean threatening for other silent women...

I ran into the arms of my father's waiting home
Where kithen utensils were to be cleaned endlessly
Where the time you spend in folding a soiled sheet used by another person
Is time spent, unacknowledged.
Where, I learnt to enjoy cooking different recipes
Though it was hardly noticed before being consumed.
Where, I became more accountable than my earlier self
Where some time spent with a long-lost woman friend
Came to be entered in the ledger-book of liabilities
That you had to pay off by days of silence and nights of lonely tears.

I realize...
i am facing the same situation
That i used to face as a child...
All families are alike...
Yet...
I had escaped apparently once...

the painful years when i spent in utter loneliness
in a women's hostel in a far away city
were also exhilarating years of freedom and exploration.

now...freedom is a word of disrepute
my freedom means his hurt and humiliation.
my rights mean his utter degradation!

but,
wasnt it the same for my father? my brother? even my mother and grandmother?
they left me because
finally, i was a woman.
someone who will go away.
as long as i don't express freedom (which was loose sexuality, for everyone!)
under their noses
their tattered respectablities would be intact.
and, i left them!
i cut off from the everyday negotiations that were necessary by simply walking out.

I think I will have to walk out yet again...
this time i am not saving his respectablity...
in fact, i can do that only by being bound.

but...
I knew what I was saving before...
my self...
Now...
In my shameful confusions and cowardices of middle age,

I am not so sure.

Life's Gifts by Olive Schreiner

Life's Gifts


I saw a woman sleeping. In her sleep she dreamt Life stood before her, and held in each hand a gift--in the one Love, in the other Freedom. And she said to the woman, "Choose!"

And the woman waited long: and she said, "Freedom!"

And Life said, "Thou hast well chosen. If thou hadst said, 'Love,' I would have given thee that thou didst ask for; and I would have gone from thee, and returned to thee no more. Now, the day will come when I shall return. In that day I shall bear both gifts in one hand."

I heard the woman laugh in her sleep.
by Olive Schreiner

Restraint and Wildness

What is there for a man to be restrained?
Nothing...
Whereas...How can a woman be wild?
In this mad, sad world?

Nameplate

my name in golden letters outside an office room,
my space, my refuge...my little hole
to brood, to think, to work...to be.

Produce? Reproduce?

What can happen in this one human life?
produce? or, reproduce?

meaning is derived only by producing.
but, security...
only, by reproducing.
when you reproduce...
it is a system, of exploitation, of pain, of misery.
when you produce...
you try to break it?
perhaps, perhaps not!

Motherhood

her misery made her cling to the relationship more.

but, she would steal moments away from the claustrophobic rooms of their love
To peek into the hard, male world of work, money and success.
each of her excursions left her exhausted.
his weak self fought with her need for anything other than his rooms.

to bring meaning to this meaninglessness,
she decided to keep the baby who had strayed into her womb.
to bind her once more into life, love and rooms...