I have felt like cheap plastic leftover in picnic spots
when after spending hours, earnestly, choosing gifts for your close friends
my affection was subjected to reasonless prejudices and mindless banter
yes you stir up a hornet’s nest when you bring pretentious friendships and their uncomfortable half-truths
close to my fierce love for you that is so full of heart, that is in honest awe of its muse
that howls melancholy, that is profound with its devotion to its beloved
yes I am an unusually stubborn child of a wife (it was YOU who called me your wife before I called you my husband, husband, do you remember? and how grateful I have been)
who cannot, for once, stay placid when her husband is an object of someone else’s distortion
when he is dressed in twisted words, pitiable gossip and subtle insults
for I will dwindle and I will die rather than stay quiet before such disloyalties
husband, I have felt enough like Draupadi
pawned away to these useless debates and inane games
I had lost you once even before we began, remember?
I have been widowed for an evening I have suffered to no end
husband, you will never understand what it feels like being an affronted woman
women like me are not cowards in their doings
we eat and endure and live pain in our stomachs that know how to digest it
we bleed month after month and still don’t die, we break our ribs to bear your children
and what we love from our gut, we don’t let that be reduced to anything less than glory
how assertive you are with me when I discard an inanimate object given by a betrayer
and how is it that your blood doesn’t boil when he speaks of me being “possibly promiscuous”?
can you tell him to restore my respect to its place the way you asked me to keep that object in its place today? can you?
your misplaced passivity and assertiveness has hurt me to my bones today, husband
I am a sentient being, husband, not that toy-tiger on your desk
and your divine deafness and blindness to the injustice done to me has destroyed something in me today
for it has said a lot about your stances about my honour
husband, today, in my eyes
YOU look like the Pandavas who sat tight-lipped when their wife was humiliated for no fault of hers
and I shall not swallow this dishonour any longer
I refuse to be Draupadi for I have and I need no Krishna to keep my honour safe
now, I dare the world to stir up this hornet’s nest
I dare it
and before I dare others and the world
I dare YOU, husband, I dare YOU
to bring back this dead part of me alive, ever, if you can
for you have, at last, earned my corpse-like unfeeling silence about this. forever.
Silkworm Slumbers 