Saturday, September 3, 2022

UPCOMING PRATIK'S SPECIAL SOUTH ASIAN ISSUE HIGHLIGHT : RUKMINI BHAYA NAIR'S "Quartet"

 

RUKMINI BHAYA NAIR

Quartet




 

I. Hindu

 

Washed floors glow like children

Wiped clean after a muddy tackle

 

Earth-torn, weary, Sita rattles  

Her way through the job, a queen

 

A lotus poised on emerald sheen

Broken-stemmed mother, bent over  

 

Work, and girl-births, rebirths

She sweeps away the Ramayana -

 

Easy as rubbish, and not half so real.

 

 

II. Muslim

 

Perfect single-breasted dome

And four minaret phalluses, which   

Woman is more adored, and more

Restricted? This is Allah’s door.

 

Salma knows she cannot enter 

Woman within concealing burqua

Ignorant of Koran and Kaaba

Many prohibitions bind her.  

 

No and no and no, a jointed arc,

But, one night, she wraps the dark  

Round bundled child and bad naseeb 

And walks away. The id moon sparkles!  

 

 

III  Buddhist

 

I had thought to leave this space

Blank

For those women who do not speak

But the gesture stinks! It is twee

 

Surely nothing can be more weak

Than comfort parasitic on sorrow

My sister Shakti

Frail sparrow, flaps about, chatters, is free

 

And Shanti? She cleaves the narrow

Universe in two. This space is hers

Not she in it

For all my precious, bourgeois wit 

 

I dare not leave that blank unfilled 

Because Gekkutsu Sei, Southern Sung      

Has scratched

With a thirteenth century quill -

 

I set down the emerald lamp

                                                                             Take it up – exhaustless

                                                                             Once lit

                                                                            A sister is a sister.

 

IV Christian

 

Who is Sylvia? what is she

that all her swains adore her?

 

Plath is not in the poetry trade

Gentle, moronic, retrograde

 

Harakiri warrior, she disembowels

Deft as mishima - fetch the towels!

 

When the mess has been cleaned up

Gouged from the page is a pin-up -  

 

Everyone’s Best Woman.

 

 

Rukmini Bhaya Nair is Professor Emerita of Linguistics and English at IIT Delhi, received her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge and was awarded a second honorary doctorate by the University of Antwerp in 2006 for her work on narrative theory. Her earlier poetry collections, all with Penguin India, are: The Hyoid Bone (1992); The Ayodhya Cantos (1999); and Yellow Hibiscus (2004). A fourth volume, titled Shataka, is being published later in 2021 (Speaking Tiger Press). Nair’s first novel, Mad Girl's Love Song (Harper Collins, 2013), was placed on the ten-book final list for the DSC Prize. Often called “the first postmodern poet in Indian English”, she does research for the same reasons that she writes poetry – to discover the possibilities and limits of language.

  

 

Now available on Amazon USA, UK, Canada, Germany, Netherlands and India




 

 USA : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp

SPAIN: https://www.amazon.es/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp

UK : https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp

CANADA: https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp

GERMANY: https://www.amazon.de/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp

NETHERLANDS: https://www.amazon.nl/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp

INDIA : https://www.amazon.in/dp/B09RSWST7K?ref=myi_title_dp