A hard-hitting poem which enumerates a number of reasons which prods one to write poetry.
As if you haven’t asked yourself umpteenth time already, they keep asking over and over why poetry, of all things? After all, poetry is what just a signature on winds, a possible legacy, but mostly love’s labour lost ’cause’ money is still crap.
You want to take their hand and put it on the belly of heaving monster, so they might feel what is invisible to the eye so vast that it can’t be touched all at once but, you invite them for a walk instead till the end of the road to see, what lies beyond the bent.
Every time you step off the edge, to wander into the underbrush, you get to choose a different reason pure hedonism for one thing it’s a licence to get high on love and other stories tipsy enough to speak the unspeakable be provocative or maudlin, blame it on muse later and all is forgiven the next morning.
You write poetry to get away with shenanigans, or so you thought until Kalburgi. You know better now, no ink can get away as well as Karni Sena did, terrorizing school kids to defend the honour of Padmavati, no more a stray group of ignominious right wingers, fringe is mainstream now, growing out of sundry cracks on pavement, until it disappears under the thicket. Liberty is now conditional, catering to the whims of jingoists.
You write poetry to construct a new plot for your story, unsullied by the values of patriarchy, where the honour of an entire clan rests between thighs of nubile girls to be owned and controlled by men who believe that worth of women lies in their vaginas. You refuse to play goddess of convenience, invoked at will only to be sunk in wet dreams after days of revelry.
You write poetry to birth new gods comminglings of yearning and hope, in dystopia where secular is the dirty word, Washiqur Rahman couldn’t get away with and Gauri Lankesh paid for it with her life.
No land with a thousand flowers is pure enough for those who addled by complexity take refuge in false piety. You refuse to be part of ritualistic cleansing of chaotic, multifaceted composite you actually are and embrace your mongrelizing, even if it is the last thing you do.
You write poetry as unofficial civil disobedience because you do not count if silent and your personal freedom does not mean a thing, until all men and women are free, to live and die with dignity, something Mohammed Ikhlaq, Pehlu Khan and Junaid were denied in Republic of ‘Lyncherdom’. You write every time the monster heaves within, threatening to rip you apart, if you do nothing you write to save yourself, it’s as basic as that.
Image Source: Pixabay
read more...
Women's Web is an open platform that publishes a diversity of views, indivisual posts do not necessarily represent the platofrom's views and opinions at all times.
Stay updated with our Weekly Newsletter or Daily Summary - or both!
Neena Gupta shares her terrifying childhood experiences of being molested - like most assault survivors who often go to great measures to minimise these incidents by remaining silent, she was scared to tell her parents.
Neena Gupta shares her terrifying childhood experiences of being molested – like most assault survivors who often go to great measures to minimise these incidents by remaining silent, she was scared to tell her parents.
Trigger warning: This deals with child sexual abuse and may be triggering for survivors.
Hiding family issues to patriarchy, 'House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths' throws a light on several problematic aspects within the typical Indian family.
The spine-chilling Burari deaths that happened in 2018 were brought to light again with the Netflix series ‘House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths’. The eleven member Chundawat family were like any other middle class family who had been living in the neighborhood for the last twenty years. They also had a grocery and plywood shop in the same vicinity.
Rajeev Tomar the policeman who entered the Burari house after the incident, stated that he had never seen a scene like this in his entire career and the visuals still haunt him. He was in shock to see the entire family hanging with their hands tied and their eyes covered. The documentary mentions that there were 11 diaries that were found with various other notes that further deepened the mystery surrounding the deaths.
Even at 19, Rabia Kapoor has made a place for herself the hallowed space of poets, and keeping in sync with her generation, in spoken word poetry. Meet her at the #BangalorePoetryFestival.
Bengaluru Poetry Festival is a celebration of all things poetry. The third edition of Bengaluru Poetry Festival is on 4th and 5th of August 2018, hosted by Atta Galatta at The Leela Palace Bengaluru, and Women’s Web is proud to be a media partner.
Sophia Naz is a Pushcart Prize nominee, who writes in both English and Urdu, and is also the poetry editor and columnist at The Sunflower Collective, as well as the founder of rekhti.org
Pakistan’s Sophia Naz is a Pushcart Prize nominee writing in both English and Urdu, and also the poetry editor and columnist at The Sunflower Collective, as well as founder of rekhti.org