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To Avantisundari & other poems by Sanjukta Dasgupta

16th May 202216th May 2022  Sanjukta Dasgupta

In this selection of poetry from across poet and scholar Sanjukta Dasgupta’s published collections, the unheard, undesired and misunderstood voices of women, real and mythical, rise up with wit, verve and vengeance.

Trapped 

“Don’t” is a wrought-iron gate 

That I cannot open; 

Within my mother holds me in a fierce embrace 

For I am carrion to the slit-eyed hyenas. 

“Don’t” is my lodestar, 

My passport, my credit card, my social security. 

Because I don’t, 

I am so charming, simple, full of grace. 

La Belle Dame Sans Merci? 

Harridan, hag, witch, Circe, Medusa, 

Medea, Helen, Cleopatra, Ophelia, 

Kali, Durga, Draupadi, Menaka— 

I have them all in me— 

Yet I am lost and trapped 

Myths and masks suffocate 

I long for air and life. 

Am I so formidable mon semblable, mon frére? 

“Don’t,” “Don’t” jangles the gate 

As I shake its bars, 

The inscrutable without 

Echoes “Don’t,” “Don’t,” alas. 

Cloistered, claustrophobic 

I cohabit with “Don’t” 

For I cannot say 

“I won’t.” 

Red Ants 

So perfect and awesome 

Under my magnifying glass, 

Such an infinitesimal speck 

Otherwise; what will and instinct 

Propels the silent files 

Of red power 

Up the window frame 

Or along the kitchen table. 

Friendship with the red ant 

Is absurd; stinging body contact 

Urges anger and violence. 

With cruel fingers I crush 

An adventurer on my arm. 

Power and pride fill me 

As I stamp and rub a procession 

Out of life. 

Ants are without names 

Fancy or functional, unlike us. 

They know what they want 

We do not. 

They are always together 

We stand alone. 

Miners with no headlamps 

We falter and fall. 

Trained in a rare academy, 

Disciplined mobile queues, 

Each red speck 

Matching, as if remote-controlled. 

Till one red ant wanders off, 

Jonathan Livingstone Ant steals up my arm, 

My neck and bites my eye 

For seeing him so small. 

To Avantisundari 

(Avantisundari was a 9th century poet and a learned wife of scholar-dramatist Rajshekhar. She wrote poetry in Prakrit, as Sanskrit was reserved for use by the upper caste men for religious and courtly purposes only.) 

Quill rather than pestle 

Lured you, Avantisundari. 

Was Rajshekhàr your muse 

Or you his? 

Your Prakrit lines reverberate 

Through time, alas Sanskrit! 

Glorious, timeless fragments 

Survive like desert flowers 

No simoon can dry. 

Your footsteps unseen 

Provoke, tantalize. 

Till a sister ten centuries young 

Continues what you, incomparable Avantisundari, 

Began. 

Kitchen Queen 

Every morning the cold tea-pot, 

Mocks my indolence, challenges me. 

Every morning I re-enter the kitchen, 

Chef, combined hand for thirty years. 

Tossing a salad, currying a chicken, 

When the maid is absent or even when she’s there. 

Every morning, every breakfast, every lunch, 

Every evening, every tea, every dinner, 

I plan or buy or cook everything. 

By now I have barbecued and cooked 

Mountains of meat, ponds of fishes, acres of vegetables. 

Used gallons of oil and kgs of spices. 

Every day as long as I live, 

Every day when I am not too sick, 

I shall reign in this kitchen, peerless Queen. 

My subjects wait at table with eager plates, 

Gracious tenderness garnish the food I serve, 

Loud interjections of pleasure-preservatives I deserve. 

The New Mildewed Millennium 

When the foetus was murdered 

None felt her quiver of voiceless protest 

When the witch was slaughtered 

Her intense raucous cries were just grotesque 

Between the female foetus and the witch 

Falls the Shadow of the Woman 

Mesmeric threat through the centuries 

Tame poodle within their line of control 

Beloved Goddess of their smug myths 

Passive bonded labour in their households. 

Her anointed conditioned reflexes too narcotized to resist 

Marinated in cruel tradition and custom, as they insist. 

Though tribal Dopdi flings off her sari in disdain 

Though Mrinal and Satyabati break off their chains 

Yet Roop Kunwar did burn in helpless rage 

As jubilant eye witnesses eagerly gazed. 

Daring Taslima had to leave her home 

In sad strange places now she roams. 

Even now alas, the mined terrain explodes 

As she turns into that avenue unexplored 

Not just breasts, vagina and uterus she 

Fact, figures and fiction all agree 

Yet the unwept tears of the foetus 

The wild outcry of the witch 

Rage through Time’s corridors 

As deaf He-Man sneers behind closed doors. 

Glossary 

Dopdi: main woman character in Mahasweta Devi’s short story, ‘Draupadi’. 

Mrinal: Female protagonist in Rabindranath Tagore’s short story, ‘Streer Patra’ (“The Wife’s Letter”). She leaves her marital home after fifteen years of marriage. 

Satyabat: female protagonist in Ashapurna Devi’s novel Pratham Pratisruti (The First Promise). She leaves her marital home after thirty years of marriage. 

Roop Kanwa: burnt alive as “sati” on her husband’s funeral pyre in Rajasthan on September 4, 1987. 

Taslima: Taslima Nasreen, is the internationally known exiled Bangladeshi woman writer. 

More Light… 

Should I let these words 

Scar the pristine page 

Should I hang your severed skull 

Like a pendant round my neck 

A stark Kali, fearless and free 

Albatross or tyrant 

I had to annihilate you 

Piercing your lying heart 

With the unerring trident 

Of furious Durga 

Forgive me 

I could not be Lakshmi anymore 

In calm composure 

Forgiveness 

Like a misty halo 

Shielding the cruel and callous 

I prefer the Goddess Saraswati 

Armed with books and musical strings 

Weapons of mass resurrection 

Combating demons of deceit 

With the inviolate light of knowledge 

Softly awakening 

That embedded inner eye 

From ignorant slumber 

That tired surrender 

Narcotized by the alluring lotus 

Come, create the true and beautiful 

Express the good, noble and free 

Let more than a thousand words 

Blossom in a serpent-free world-wide Eden 

Come on, sing, read, write and dance 

In a swirl of uncompromising light.

About Sanjukta Dasgupta

Sanjukta Dasgupta is an Indian feminist scholar, poet, short story writer, critic and translator with twenty-one published books to her credit. She is Professor and Former Head, Dept of English and Former Dean, Faculty of Arts, Calcutta University and has been the recipient of a number of fellowships including the Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship and Fulbright Scholar in Residence grant, Australia India Council fellowship, and the Gender Studies fellowship grant, University of British Columbia. She has been invited to participate in conferences and has taught/lectured at universities in the USA, UK, Europe, Canada , Poland and Australia. She is the President, Executive Council, of the Indian Poetry and Performance Library, ICCR, Kolkata, and the Convenor of the English Language Board of the Sahitya Akademi, India’s national academy of letters. Her recent awards include the IWSFF Women Achievers Award, Kolkata (2019) and the WEI Kamala Das Poetry Award (2020). Two of her collections of poetry, Sita’s Sisters (2019) and Lakshmi Unbound (2017), are available to purchase online in the UK.

Feature image is a detail of In Search of Vanished Blood (2012) by Nalini Malani, under fair use, Wikiart.

Posted in Creative Writing, PoetryTagged: Avantisundari, Circe, Cleopatra, Draupadi, Durga, Feminism, Gender, Greek Mythology, Helen, In the Kitchen, Indian literature, Indian mythology, Kali, Lakshmi, Medea, Medusa, Menaka, Mythology, Ophelia, poems, Poetry, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Sita

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