Vandana’s haunting poem, for Different Truths, explores the intergenerational cycle of trauma, depicting a mother’s systematic erosion and her daughter’s defiant, unyielding survival.

My mother knew a fiend
from the first breath of youth.
Her will was systematically eroded
into absolute acquiescence.
This terror, a master sculptor,
wrought her soul to be
a perpetually open conduit,
a willing font of sustenance for
the shadows that feasted on ego.
One day, she was yoked
to a consuming leviathan,
a ritual played in sport,
whom she now renders
a lifelong, desperate worship—
to be his withered anchor.
To bear the weight of his crushing necessity
My mother forgot
to forge me
in that same submissive iron.

Picture design by Anumita Roy

Vandana Garg

Delhi-based author and researcher Vandana Garg holds a doctorate with distinction in linguistics from the Department of English Language & Cultural Studies. Her key 2024 book, Harold Pinter: A Study of Cultural Memory (Jewish Holocaust and Genocide), captures her major research. She has published the Hindi short story collection Refugiyon ki Ladki, delving into the 1947 Partition refugees’ struggles and aftermath. Her debut psychological thriller, Twilight Zone, launches in fall 2025.