An intense woman-centric poem, by Nibedita, wherein she searches her identity, exclusively for Different Truths.
They ask me, what do I do the entire day? Their eyes questioning my identity as a woman… And I don’t know exactly what to say, How to put down my inner space in a few tangible words… I don’t know how to bare the earth inside me… The earth that has mothered saplings … Which are adolescents, now… Flowering luxuriant, telling fragrance around corners of my evensong... They feed on my unmeasured care... I bring them up with the precision of an expert nurse... Here my orchids grow in desert sands, fertile with foster love There my cacti shed off their angry thorns… I pour out all my warmth to give them that extra heat… And then I look on… I see in their radiant flowers that naughty smile of a teething child! Yet, to most, my life seems easy... without the trials of a hard-working mother… When they speculate that I have missed the essential pangs… They probably don’t see my sleepless nights and my wakeful days… My anxious moments inside out, my breaking walls... The convulsive stupors in the entire me… They don’t see the rush of joy in giving birth to an all-new dimension of mind and soul, How I lose and gain a part of my essential being every time I scatter Myself on a smooth white void… Thousand times or even more, my canvases grow out of me.... And like tiny fledglings they slowly gain feather and flesh... I tend them with gentle strokes, give them a coat of powder and oil... Brush them with a polish of love…they look like me... The blues are so much like my inner-scape and the reds they wear are my toughened bricks When you tell me that I don’t have much work to do… Since my home is somewhat lonely and quiet … I often wonder whether it is true… And whether you know That most of my time is taken up by them Who spent their formative years under my wings…? And I follow their manuals and handbooks line by line.... Lesson to myself to tame them best… Now my fridge does know me well, And the difficult washing-machine has finally grown, has come of age… all delicate things need to be pampered all the time…no matter what, no matter who... My pots and pans lose their glow when I am off for a day or two… And dimpled teapots frown and sulk… The chubby cushions cuddle and snuggle around my waist, When I tidy them up…. And when I do my favourite jig, the window sheers sashay along… And my walls vibrate with lullaby ballads I write on them, all the time… Porcelain cherubs do a waltz around laurelled pillars and concrete posts … My cradle arms holding my heaven within my reach… Leaning on walls, rolling on floors, I artlessly flow like the nib of a pen From an unfeeling zone into the impassioned world of magic bliss… Uncountable germs within me sprouting into animated joys In my inanimate world…
(Published in “The Journal” The Poetry Society of India, 2017)
Painting by the poet
Kolkata-born Nibedita Sen is a painter and a bilingual writer and a seafarer. She has worked with the visually impaired as a resource-person and a rehabilitation-counsellor and worked as a creative Art Therapist with spinal injured people and sexually abused, disadvantaged children. Her paintings have been showcased in prestigious galleries in India and abroad. She has travelled widely and has written for newspapers, journals, magazines, and anthologies in India and abroad. She stays in Delhi.
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Encore. Loved it.