?

now love is all about 
rum and coke, and
wild, sweaty jazz.
not the kind of jazz 
that those white-skinned
pretending bastards play.
no, no ! not that kind.
the hat-wearing, 
cello turning black jazz.
and the sheer sexiness
of wearing a red shirt

Poem

Here, I give my body to you.

but is my body mine?
And to give?

could I have any entitlement
when my body is writ
with the rules of the father;
the blood that runs in your veins
bring power and glory
mine begs to be washed off
with cheap detergent
early in the morning,
lest anyone knows that I bleed
through the openings of life.

if I ask you to not enter my body
could you imagine
a love without violence?

what will you do with my body?
with me?

Poetry

I have become slow

No i havent become old, it is not my age

I have become slow

My body drags like melted wax off an old mirror stand

If i look into the mirror i find that my words escape from eyes ears my skin

And i shudder scream scramble to snatch back my words from the wind

I cannot hold on to my words and i cannot make sentences

How will you understand me if i cannot say what i know is dancing in the front of my eyes

Here, my poetry dies.

FATTIE

People i run into everyday,

Women, and mostly men,

who have been friends and lovers

for moments on sultry dawns,

tell me they cannot recognize me,
as they run into me on streets and corners, 
tell me, i have become very fat. 
baths, mirrors, and clothes and sweat in crevices
and other secret folds of the neck, armpits and belly
remind me that I've become fat. 
Today i have spent the entire day

hearing from every second person,

how i have become fat.
being fat is a strange thing.

for me, it begins with itching

that large piece of skin, that

does not get any air, because

your belly is hanging,

till where it should not.

usually, that part of my body

itches at night.

when the chores are done

the lights put out,

and i'm thinking of all

the things i've done in

the day, that i shouldn't

have,

it begins to itch.

itch, like the things i did

that i ought not have done.

the sweat, the rawness of

skin, the fat and that

itch--

it is almost as if i am

paying for my sins.

Of Men and a Woman

Checking my phone in between writing

Shows ‘no notifications’.

Not getting WhatsApp and Insta messages

Makes me feel forgotten by the men

Who remember me when they are horny.

My life revolves around men

For them I postpone my heartbeats

And adjust the pace of my pulse.

I am trying to learn self restraint-

In this, one cannot give away one's tinder stories.

Like the time a guy climbed off of you

And said “I am done.”

Or the time another one

Looked down your bare back

And said “whoa you are hairy”.

I mistake longing for love

And desperation for love

And loneliness for love

And silent screams, for love.

I am naive and stupid

All their synonyms and everything in between.

I scroll through profiles of strange men on dating apps

And send them clever one-liners

And questions that I think will grab their attention

Because I have reduced myself to an existence

That depends on the might of a man.

I say I am a feminist

All I am is a lonely little bitch.

TRIJITA

(for elisabet velasquez, whose name i faltered with.)

I began when my Dadu named me.
A name of three syllables
That i had forgotten to pronounce
By the time i grew up,
Because i had heard so many variations--
Srijita?
Trijeeta?
Trajita?
Trijata?

Men, when they have heard my name
Would remind me that Trijata was a rakshasni.
I would correct them and say it means
The one who has won the three worlds-
Swarg, marta, patal.
I had to justify my existence to them,
I could not be a demoness.

Men who have made love to me
Have chosen to call me by different names
Because three syllables
is too much to remember
When all your blood
Is flowing to your penis.

My hindi teacher in class V
Reminded me the meaning of my name
And said, "but you havent
been able to win over any of us."--
One of my earliest memories of school.

I have no attachment to my name.
I preferred to be called tatun-
A more mundane name given to me by my parents.
A better name for friends
To shout from their car windows.
A shorter name for men to call out loud
As they come into me.

But here is an act of self defiance,
An act, of self love.
Trijita-- the one who won over herself.

DADU

The name plate on the outer wall of the house says
Dr. N. Mukherjee
B-15/74

Dr. N. Mukherjee is a grandfather and he resides in this house, I tell you
in the photographs on the walls in the drawing room, the tv room, and his bedroom
in front of whichy grandmother, M. Mukherjee
lights an incense stick everyday.

He lives in the medical books now collecting dust on table in his bedroom,
In the cotton and woollen shirts and pants in the almirah,
in the bottles of sorbitrate tablets hidden in various corners like the lining of the sofa, under mattresses, in the fridge, on the dining table
in the event of a sudden heart attack-
he suffered eight heart attacks my mother has told me.

He lives in the broken stethoscopes and other medical instruments on a shelf,
bills stuck for the last ten years, in case he ever needs them, on an iron rod,
his walking sticks, one dismantled, the other resting against the sofa in the tv room.
There are shelves in the kitchen with
empty bottles of Horlicks Lite because he had diabetes.
Tea mugs he drank from, gathering oil and grime- he loved gobhi pakoras in the evening.

In the big closet hangs his sweaters and coats from the loving, dear sisted from America
and batteries, pliars, screwdrivers with which he could fix anything in the house
and playing cards and a plethora of broken, unused things like staples and staplers and paper weights from various pharmaceutical companies on the dressing table and in the drawers.

If you sit in the verandah in the evening
you will sometimes see him walking around the house with his hands behind his back- he is scared to venture out of the house anymore.

Dr. N. Mukherjee lives in this house.