29 Sept 1986

Dear diary,
Delhi 
Bangles:
My passion jangles through my trinkets,
I clink my bangles in the shadow of the night,
Flame in my heart blazes like the wildfire,
Waiting, yearning, dreaming, the hunger reaches starvation point,
At the threshold, in my lavender Saree, I twitch my slender thighs,
I rush inside to check the time, getting uneasy and uptight,
Fidgeting and stirring in and out, butterflies in my tummy itch inside,
In my imagination, is an unknown opportunity, 
In my fantasy, is an unknown place,
In my patience, is longing for the unknown, 
I have been sitting on my haunches, muttering words of passion,
Words remain unheard, pleas un-answered,
My morals question me repeatedly, 
Is it sinful?
Is it a crime?
To desire.
Under the creamy lihaaf, what sin? what crime?
Perhaps I should search within, pursue pleasure inside,
Then, it breaks into a surge of desire, burning and beaming,
My passion jangles through my trinkets,
I clink my bangles in the shadow of the night.
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.

Previous poems in the series: Unturned, Kitchenette, Silk Veil, It is a good day, Ma, Witch of the night