5 Sept 1985

Dear diary,                                                                
Delhi 
It is a good day!
Koo Koo Koo, the Koel sings on the ledge of my house,
The break of the dawn tells me, today is a pleasant day,
There is something vivid about the first ray, unchallenged, undisputed,
I recklessly peg my wet laundry, unorganised, unkempt,
Grimacing, worries of the everyday dig my toes, 
‘But it’s a pleasant day’, I remind myself,
Then, the sun tickles my skin, I glide with the veil of my Pink Saree, 
Abstract, lips simulate and feet dance to the sweet tunes,
Koo Koo Koo, the Koel sings on the ledge of my house,
The break of the dawn tells me, today is a pleasant day.
With devotion,
Sukshma

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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.

Previous poem(s) in the series: Unturned, Kitchenette, Silk Veil

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Photo by Alexandra on Unsplash