Country, Razed
While waking under a blue, blushing sky, you want to think that the world
is the resonant throat of a mynah, disguised on a branch bursting
with red flowers. That there are enough breasts to cuddle the babies
crying in unattended cribs. That a teenager on a bicycle will stop,
watching a black Mercedes crush the ribs of a dog, blood bursting
from its body like lava. But then there are
headlines in black bold letters,
videos of men in skullcaps and crocheted shawls swarming the airport,
chasing each aircraft, latching onto its wings,
before it moves out
of their clasp. The desperate women are
crouching on the hot tarmac,
holding morsels of naan, watching men with
rifles release fatwas—
Visit Market With Male Escort; No Revealing Sandals or Clothes;
Stones for Adultery, Execution for Tight Clothes. Before entering
the aircraft, a young boy with swollen eyes kisses his country
on the map, allows it to flap in the bruised air, hoping
that someday it will become a bird. Two girls, their bodies
once twined like fig seeds, twist the neck of a hen and listen
to life flickering out of its body. The neighbours walk holding hands,
sand slipping from their sweaty fists, clustering on the borders
like the paws of a leaping Urial. How, within minutes, a country loses
its frostbitten fingers, tomb-shaped chest, rickety heels to become
blood, bones, blasts of smoke. The drones of other countries circle
the cores of lithium, assess the risk-benefit ratio of each strategic step,
send planes to airlift only their citizens. The prime minister of my country
is busy hoisting the flag, speaking in his husky voice about a hopeful future.
Perhaps Auden was right about the human
position of suffering—
when light is slashing your eyes, someone across the street
must be opening his window to the splash of sunlight.
The Grackle Goes Tra La La
[Nikita Tomar] was shot dead by her schoolmate, Tausif, who was upset at her refusal to marry him. The case has not only put the spotlight on stalking but has also led to a communal flare-up in Faridabad.
Because tomorrow you’ll be creased
in the sleeves of news,
Because your mother failed to train
your pupils to constrict and dilate
in shame,
Because when I imagine you darting
against a mad bullet, my feet turn into ice
tongs clasping the cubes of my inability
and indifference—
a recurring decimal, not eager to yield
a zero.
I am thinking in my cozy room of you.
Why do you drag the goddess in saline currents after crusting her spine with the weight of your prayers—touching her feet with one hand,
twisting with another.
The grackle drifted down from the butterscotch sky with a tambourine tucked in her beak. She was in love with a vast-winged vulture. She would flutter her wings briskly, to fly next to him, but she never could match his stride. One day, when she tried to taste his world with her lips, he bit her tongue off into tiny wriggling worms. The moment before her head smashed, her eyes dribbled:
love is perjury, a jihad, a tra la la.
You say:
Dear girls, compress yourselves
in the gynaecophoric canals of the kitchen,
harvest Aryan-skinned boys from
your festered ribs, circumambulate
the temple of your husbands’ feet
to feel you’re home.
For home is a lion’s den,
and the lion tired of being a king,
will pounce on you soon—
you no longer the jungle’s queen,
but chunks of meat roasted
in flickering flames tamed
in the marriage’s stove.
If you are an Indian, choose from the two: Beti Bachao and Gau Bachao
If you are a good Indian, you will choose—
To whomsoever it may concern (or men in saffron robes):
Our sisters—no longer satisfied
by the motifs of Durga and grackles—
are whetting their talons; marching with Thais
and Lucretias towards men carrying pigs,
their glut snouts hoisted over their chests.
They are morphing into vultures—
scratching the sky with their flapping wings, chasing
the shadows snatched for becoming
good daughters and wives.
(This appeared in the print edition as "Arc of Chaos & Suffering")
The writer Kinshuk Gupta is a medical student and a poet
