Jyoti Kanetkar, INDIA

HENNA

Your hennaed hands

Depicting peacocks in

Full bloom, write

Histories of a softer

Culture, when there

Was leisure for love,

To taste the wondrous

Beauty of being a woman.

To wear *Gajras of jasmine

Through luxuriant strands

Of hair, already redolent

With **Shikakai, Ritha,

Brahmi and Amla.

When to be a woman

Was the proud heritage

Of the womb; the

Passing of time measured

By the Phases of the Moon.

In these flurried times

When watches adorn

Wrists previously covered

With tinkling glass bangles,

The Henna on your palms

Gives me hope that a

Woman is still a woman

And she will remember

To revel in it

Sometime very soon.

*Gajra – short flower garland used by Indian women to adorn their hair

**Shikakai, Ritha, Brahmi and Amla – Indian Ayurveda products said to be good for luxurious hair

*HAMPI

Another night of sleeplessness and discomfort

With your picture of the river at Hampi

To keep me company. It speaks volumes to me.

Its mysterious broken depths hide the

Sighs of centuries. The water course between

The boulder-strewn sides speaks of creation

And all its cries.

The stillness of the stream where mindless

Destruction has obstructed the course,

Tells me yet of the human efforts that have

Kept Hampi alive, through three weeks of

Twelve thousand sledge hammers wielding

Destruction.

The upside-down carved statue flung

Carelessly by some unknown destroyer

Speaks of the nobility and vision that

Went into its creation, also of the

Needlessness of the destruction of

A civilization.

It could not be a woman who gave

The orders to destroy all that was Hampi;

Though surely it was a woman who gave

Birth to the one who did.

Can we feed an elixir at birth to prevent

The repetition of what happened to the

History of the thriving civilisation

On the river at Hampi? 

(*Located in Karnataka, India near the modern-era city of Hosapete, Hampi's ruins are spread over 4,100 hectares (16 sq mi) and it has been described by UNESCO as an "austere, grandiose site" of more than 1,600 surviving remains of the last great Hindu kingdom in South India)

                                                                    

#ME TOO

The grey in the mirror

Gets me thinking...

I’ve been there too before

The # Me Too; only

Very silently, not a sound,

No sharing, no words,

Only the feeling of desecration

Of something so beautiful,

Clear and pristine… and

It was supposed to be OK,

The wall of impenetrable

Silence protecting the

Murky muck.

Now that it’s out in the open

The pus oozing out, all

The immeasurable pain

Of aeons of female history

Inundating the present,

What I can only do is

Stand in the midst of

History and silently

Clap and cheer on

Those of today that

Have the voice and

Wherewithal to right

A long time wrong.

More power to you all

My sisters out there –

May your ilk live on and

Conquer – I stand validated.

Jyoti Kanetkar is an international and national award-winning writer and poet, both in English and Marathi. Her poems, stories, essays and articles have appeared in magazines in India, UK and US. Her published material includes three short story collections and a collection of poems in Marathi. A fourth collection of short stories and the second collection of her poems is being published soon.

---

Women, Power & Creativity :: Setu, March 2019