Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 3, Number 2. November 2020. ISSN: 2581-7094
The Handkerchief
--- Kajal Jha
Flowers
Blue, pink, blue
On each corner
Formed a tripartite club
Saving others from me
When I sneeze upon them
They soak the droplets
Sometimes it rains
They lose their colour
But never character
They absorb it all
Sometimes, they couldn't.
Becomes too wet
For further flushing
Nose is still running.
Those are the only flowers that couldn't harm me.
The ones swaying in the fields
I have seen them
On internet
On televisions
In movies
Whenever I try to go near them in the park
I sneeze
I sneeze
And I sneeze
The tripartite club comes to rescue
Blue, pink, blue.
Floods and flowers
--- Kajal Jha
It's been a while
I couldn't hold myself
I couldn't contain myself
With all the melting glaciers
Each drop pressurising my bounds
Testing my patience
I want life to thrive
I want the lands to bloom
I want to see the sunflowers
Reflecting on my surface
I want to contain their dead remains
I want the soil to be
To be not disturbed
I want it to flourish
With all the possible colours
But the people want cash
For it they have sold
Sold everything that was beautiful
People are not beautiful
But the reflection
That I tattoo
On myself
Of that yellow sunflower
Smiling towards the sun
Is who I am.
For the flow of cash
I couldn't stop myself
From pouring unto the lands
With all my emotions
Gushing
Washing
Pissing
Flowing
Over that sunflower
For I am the sea
That you people cannot see
The pain I bear
For all the world
To upheld
That beautiful beautiful sunflower.
Saree
--- Kajal Jha
A simple cloth
I.
Length
Lengthier than
My English answers in the paper
Each sentence
Ornamented with words
Crafted with intelligence
And love
And love!
Still madam only gave me a seven
I bet she doesn't know
She doesn't know
The only thing that could beat my seven
Was her pallu
Her pallu swayed
Always longer than my answers
Donne would have mentioned her bosoms
Like a sunne rising1 from her blouse
I am not Donne.1
II.
Sarees
Are not simple cloth
But a trickster
Like the wheel of time2
Passing from one generation
To the other
Garbing the atrocities
Brought upon itself
By the true nature of bondage
Under marriage
A saree is not a simple cloth
It beholds ages of abuse
And no poetic justice
It doth had some floral patches
Of discoloured blood
Preserved for I
My mother preserved it for me
My Nana did it for her.
But I won't
I won't preserve
I won't preserve
A discoloured legacy
A blood ridden saree
My daughter will
Wait no more for a Krishna
She will wear pants
With pockets
Never a saree.
III.
Dear Saree
I wonder
How you'd look
In Blake's imagination
Engraved with wrinkles
Worn by angels3
Torn by Tyger
Sweeping soot
Used as menacle4
To forge the angels
Or
Poisoned
Poisoned
By himself.
IV.
The length of a saree
Saved many a Draupadis
But Mahasveta devi's
Needed none5
She was a saree herself
Engraved,
Worn,
Torn,
Menacled,
Poisoned,
But in the end
Free
V.
Free from the sheath
Free from the bane
Free from the grain
Patriarchy in the drain
Free from the time constraints
After all my mama's saree shouldn't go in vain.
And everyone should sing!
Sing her Saree
Writ with verses from domestic Hurricane.
Notes for Saree
1. John Donne’s Sunne Rising.
2. Hindu concept of time as an eternally rotating circular wheel.
3. William Blake’s vision of a tree filled with angels.
4. William Blakes’ poems Tyger, The Chimney Sweeper and London
5. Mahasveta Devi’s Draupadi.