Not Reading and Other Poems

Not Reading

For Sindhubala first, and then for Chandrahas

I am not writing anything anyone has requested of me or is waiting on, not a poetics

essay or any other sort of essay, not a roundtable response, not interview responses,

not writing prompts for younger writers, not my thoughts about critical theory or popular

songs…I am not writing a history of these times and not even a history of these visions

which are with me all day and all of the night.

Garments Against Women, Anne Boyer (50-51)

What happens in a village (perhaps by the sea) in Odisa in the early 20 th century is almost the same as what happens in a village on the other side of the map (which is not the map we know yet) in Gujarat.

Aai, decades before she was your Aai, wanted to read when others did not.

It will spoil her for marriage, the neighbour said, make her look beyond the pond (picturesque on a one-day trip to meet relatives), make her look to the world.

On her death bed, the neighbour said ask Krushnapriya to come and read me the Ramayana. Not for her. Young Krushnapriya, though she could read, refused to go and read the Ramayana.

Nanima at the village well

Nanima used to love sitting on the swing and read. That is the photograph I wish I had of her. The one I do have shows her at the village well, looking straight at the camera, head only partly covered, a ghada under her arm. The tree to the right, maybe a young neem, throws a shadow on the ground.

I don’t know if this was before or after she refused to cover her head anymore. But on that day, she did something else upper caste Rajput women in the village did not do—she walked through the village, went to the well, filled the pot with water, and walked back home.

Maybe this is the picture I want of her—of the woman who would have understood my desire to curl up with a book to read, to travel with my body beyond my body.

Tiffin Carrier

After the textile mill in Rajkot (where he worked as a mechanic) shut down, my grandfather worked in a forge, beating iron. Each pounding stroke of the hammer searing through his head. Not one of six children (two of them girls) dropped out of school. Three twelve-hour shifts during festivals, eyes plucked open by fire so the family could celebrate, without him.

I know him only in the still-polished-perfection of the dented aluminium tiffin carrier my father (or one of my uncles) would have brought to work for him at the exact minute the whistle would ring for lunch, or change of shift. My mother, obedient daughter-in-law, measured her days by factory whistles.

The food inside cooked with the exact measure of ingredients he set down. A modest meal, but a full one. Rotli, a green vegetable, dal, small salad of tomatoes and onions, green chillies and pickle. The green chillies as accompaniment to be fried in a spoonful of oil before the same oil was used for waghar, to flavour the vegetables.

I think of him when I fry green chillies, sprinkle salt and cumin powder, move to the sink to drain oil. I taste ash as I drain away blood. Mother says he played with me, only a year old, for an hour before he died. He had called out to her to take me away from him and I had cried, or I like to imagine I had.

**

I have never seen this photograph of my mother under a newspaper headline: banner raised, head cover slipping off, mouth open in a slogan against the closing of the mill. The photographer catching her in that moment of letting lose, exasperated with a silent crowd unable to find its momentum at a protest.

That morning there was furore—young vav had appeared in a newspaper, head uncovered, sloganeering at the protest. On their behalf, they forget.

Ma always tells this story with glee, returning to the person she could have been—not failed housewife.

Her words

Her words are wrung out in hurried gasps between closing the door and flushing the toilet—pencil stub tucked back into bra strap and writing hidden between pages of fading newsprint rolled and pushed into the window grill just high enough not to be noticed by him-who-hates-her-poems who flies into a rage each time (as if by magic because he never sees her write) her name appears in print to declare her authorship—a woman who writes

            appears on radio
            recites publicly at mushairas
            speaks with men
            possesses words
            as they possess her
            has words to speak
            that make her raise her head
            and lift her eyes

            to his face to the window out of the window to the sky

            in his rage-red mind
            her words become her body
            become her gaze
            looking out of the window
            escaping
            turning to sky
            his hand grabs her long plait
            pulling her willing her back to him

housewife again