26 Jan 1985

Dear diary,
Delhi
Unturned:
Leaves of paper unturned, ink dried.
Words flow like river, silent yet swift,
Oozing from the stream, they flood under moon-light,
In wee hours, they die with the slack tide.
Water germinates the tree at the bank,
They spread into branches then leaves and twigs,
Spring sunlight ripens up the citrus, ripe grapefruit, mandarins, lemons.
But beware! Frost cuts through the wintry night.
Daisies, poppies, hibiscuses blossom in the early day,
Budding, blooming, posing under naked sunlight,
Then shut as darkness envelops the night.
Leaves of paper remain unturned, ink dried.

With devotion,
Sukshma

***

About the Sukshma Series:

The Sukshma Series is a first-hand account of an educated woman of post-colonial India reflecting on how the social and political set-up of the country defined the status of an Indian woman.

The title of the poems is “Sukshma”, the title is very deliberate because Sukshma essentially means dormant energy and in the context of the central character’s feelings, it is quite pertinent. Sukshma is an educated middle-class house-wife in the 1980s in India. Sukshma maintains a personal diary in which she scribbles about her emotions, fears and anxieties in her life and expresses them only through the medium of poems. Evidently, her writing is mature and literary, but she is torn between the responsibilities of the household, family, children and the rigid social structures of the society that prohibit her aesthetic ability to write, so she keeps them private and writes very irregularly. Sukshma keeps her writing energy dormant and concealed from the rest of the society because she fears the aftermath of being deviant. Through her writing, she speaks volumes about her predicament as an Indian woman and reflects on the violence and horrors of her critical situation.