If you ask me, what is it that I can do 350 days out of 365 apart from getting some sleep being sleep deprived I already am(as a working mom), I will say reading and writing poetry. When someone wants to know what I do and I have to reflect hard to pronounce that I am a poet, it crushes me. Just because I don’t make a living out of it robs me the worthiness of uttering loud out there that I am a POET, leaving aside other roles I play. Shouldn’t it be like what I hold dearest to my heart and even portions of my brain must define me first!
My pursuit or passion for poems will stay relentless and it brings me today with unbarred elation to reveal that my poem ‘Euphemism’ (Spoken Word) got published in Spring-Summer issue of Existere journal. Existere – Journal of Arts & Literature is a Canadian magazine that publishes twice a year at York University’s Founders College in Toronto, Canada. It was founded in 1978. The magazine publishes literary work, poetry, short stories, articles, book reviews, essays, interviews, art, photography from contributors around the world. Existere is now digitally published, and can be purchased online from Kobo@ https://www.kobo.com/ww/en/ebook/existere-38-2
Keeping intimate craving aside, I think we can live in pretense as long as we want. I can write about every second thing snubbing this, then my whole existence is a farce. I am a quintessential woman whom you find in your home, workplace, that supermarket you went this morning, or the weekend club where you were hitting on me. But that’s not the story. As a woman we had it harder in my own country or any other. In my life, there was no thunderbolt moment which sparked me to stand up for myself as well other women, but those everyday triggers which you see, experience and absorb from your mother or that distant sister or a friend. Each of us lived as archives of persistent undermining. So this is not just my digging, it is collective for the being called woman who is as human as a man can be.
I am not saying I didn’t have my even odds of life, maybe I am fortunate enough but that doesn’t take the blot of how I had to do it differently many times feeling abashed, confused and crushed just because of my femininity. My mother was married when she was 18 and her whole life was channelled to revolve around me, my sister and my father. She is not complaining but I did see the muffled potential, the fervour which did not catch the full flame. The daughter of my distant cousin who is pursuing education is almost cajoled to marry as soon as possible with a man to lead a happy life. What an illusion we live in. The stories are many as I mentioned before, there’s no end to it. The lives of unspoken aches, curbed aspirations. It is just not against one man, it never was! It is against that gross mindset or sensibility which exercises exploitation and disparity towards woman within a power matrix. The road is bumpy as bringing change to a heaped, collective conscience is not a snap. But then I can try, everytime I can. In times precarious, all I know as a poet or a writer we need to be the truth tellers. To let that blurred, clouded half of the sky get its fair shake of sunshine in someway. And I love to hope it’s coming.
For my blog readers interest, I put down the poem below for reading. Finally, my unfeigned gratitude to my readers as always.
