Dr. Sangeeta Sharma, INDIA

A REALITY-CHECK!

No more is a woman-writer
Doomed or an individual crazed
 No more has she to hide her art
Through pseudonyms
Or in other books

Mere poetry she no more produces
But also essays, diaries and novels
A sentence she breaks
When she wants to
Not because she has to attend
To other errands
As the second-sex.
           
Today multitudes of women are earning
And they do have a room of their own.
But do they have
A share in maternal property?
Yes! But only in the law-books
Ground-reality differs.
A male-companion’s shoulder
To rest her head at?
Or a child in her arms
To satisfy her mother-instinct?
Not always as by the time
Women become self-sufficient
They have outgrown
The marriageable age.
 They now have props
To satisfy
Their libido
They lack the desire
To be an angel in the house

The ‘new’ woman
Wants to just earn
And splurge 
Adventure is not a word
To classify men alone

Time is to rethink
And reshuffle the binary oppositions
By the end of the second decade of the 21st century!


WIDOWS OF PULWAMA

Their hearts wrench with pain
They hollered and howled
But reverse could not
The mishap in which they lost
Their precious darling husbands
The widows of Pulwama victims
Their hearts wrench with pain

She was promised a video call
That evening –a small gain
In the national bargain
The one-to-one chat
But ordained that was not
The news that came the next
Was that he’s blown into smithereens
Denied the last glimpse
The horror- unfathomable,
Unendurable
The widows of Pulwama victims
Their hearts wrench with pain.

Old memories tug the aching heart
The tinkling of her bangles reminds
Her the day when he had tried to
Roll them up her wrists
With mischievous smile on his face
Tears roll down her swollen eyes
Raising sobs and snivels
The widows of Pulwama victims
Their hearts wrench with pain.

Money, tributes and assurances
Can never compensate the cataclysm
Still the patriotism
The valiant widow, nonetheless
Is all set to make her sons
Follow their father’s footsteps
The widows of Pulwama victims
Their hearts wrench with pain.

Those who conspire - the rogues
Against the nation ought to be
On the gallows, not allowed to flee
Eliminated at any cost, they be
Only that will bring solace
And make up for their solemn loss
The widows of Pulwama victims
Their hearts wrench with pain.


Dr. Sangeeta Sharma is a widely-published critic, poet and writer. In 2012, she authored a book on Arthur Miller and another a collection of 76 poems in 2017. She has jointly edited fives anthologies on poetry, fiction and criticism. A free-lance journalist, she currently heads the department of English, B.K. Birla College of Arts, Science and Commerce (Autonomous), Kalyan, Mumbai Metropolitan Region.


2 comments :

  1. Sangeeta deserves applause for her bold & sane view of the modern woman in her poem "A reality-check." And she deserves a hundred salutations for her powerful portrayal of the Pulwama aftermath ("Widows of Pulwama"), for blasting the pusillanimous attack on our (Indian) soldiers by the terrorist secessionists, for bowing to the war widows for their grit in encouraging their sons to be soldiers too..., without mincing her words. This is real feminism.

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