by Usha Akella

NAMING
….. for Jyoti, Delhi rape survivor

‘We want the world to know her real name. My daughter didn’t do anything wrong, she died while protecting herself. I am proud of her. Revealing her name will give courage to other women who have survived these attacks. They will find strength from my daughter.’ —Father of rape victim Jyoti,[1] Delhi rape case, 2012 BBC Hindi.

She was returning home from watching Life of Pi,
the hero lived to tell the tale
in a boat shared with animals… was this a sign from
fate? Her journey in a bus with predators:

………………………………………………..six men falling
…………………………………………………………………….upon her like hyenas,
………………………………………………..a wheel jack handle and metal rod plunged
in her private parts, the intestines  ripped out,
in a moving bus circumambulating Munirka,
bite marks across her body… death in a Singapore hospital.

Her mother’s eyes were dark charcoal, unspilled lakes,
She died but we die every day… Kudrat bhi ne hamare saath nahin diya[2]

…………………………When the dots finally connected they were black,
black gags, gnashes across their mouths, black dressed,
the women gathered in India Gate, Raisina Hill,
the drum beat of marching footsteps in cities spelt Justice…

……………………………………………………..  women as petroleum, she the wick
…………………………………………………………………….. keeping the flame burning.

If this day is a fruit, it is a papaya, with a black heart
in the gaudy gold of a nation; if a flower, the frangapani,
its milky sap blistering a nation’s veins; if a fish, vaam,
as her intestines like eels on the bus floor;
if a tree, the tamarind souring the breath of India.

And if a name:
Jyoti      emerging like a lion from a cave,
whisking the world like a tornado,
Enough!

[1] By Indian law a rape victim’s name is not published. The victim was given the name Nirbhaya in the media.

[2] Even God was not on our side.

Memoranda for baama
….. for bamma, paternal grandmother

1.

Here was the hip, here the heart, here the heel,
how small she is, was, in the length of these mounds of ash,
in the contours of my remembrance she is awash in gold-ochre dust,
she knew the language of dust, this grandmother of mine.

Like Sita, so many said of her
untouched, unburnt by samsara,
her wisdom was a settled pain,
like Sita, she had her sinews of steel, she survived,
she died peacefully as noble souls die, they said,
she had nobly walked, they said,
from the bedroom to die on a settee
in the hallway to spare my aunt
the cleansing rituals in the bedroom.

The priest scraped her bones and ash,
into a terracotta pot round as Ganesha’s belly,
deftly tying a string around the red cloth flap,
from one womb to another she went.

2.

Walking to her backward in my umbilical memory:
ramshackle shed, rumbling machines,
the stench of cow dung, coolies ambling around,
dark faces dusty with the ochre powder,
she had worked along with them at times,
in the dark ante room, slight unlit candle
in her new white widow-sari,
sans bangles, sans botu, sans magalsutra, sans everything,
they bled whatever color they could from her heart too,
I knew then I could feel hate for a country,
the way it was dark matter that could bend a woman’s light.

3.

The stories adorned her lips like marigolds blooming on a tree,
we lay on mats in the summer heat,
her hair a voluminous white spiral or
a hanging loose plait like an albino snake,
there was a flavor of longing in her voice,
a woman’s yearning for an embrace… masked in devotion,
stories from this movie or that myth…I remember
the leaking longing in her voice.

4.

My mother a raging demoness,
every cell suffocated with memory-gunk,
unforgiving, hating her marriage, her husband, her fate, India,
woman pounding woman like grain in a black rollu,
familiar epilogue: my grandmother always left,
a bundle of clothes or her cheap suitcase or bag,
unspilled tears in a yellow auto,
and we children ashamed of our mother
and the rituals of family,
never did I know then my heart was being prepared as a torch
to carry the story onward,
I too would know this rage one day that can consume a woman’s cells
and burn sky-high obliterating rain,
I would be Medusa, turn the living to stone.

5.

Gentle parchment in a frame,
outside, an antiseptic road full of metaphors,
the overstory of oaks is a sanctuary,
I wonder, what is the language of the trees?
Whom do the berries summon with their redness?
Does the sky mourn our stories?
Her life was hard as granite,
her hands calloused with the scrub of the years,
I picked a faded mango-yellow sari in memory of her,
Love comes frayed, it is used and uses for its own ends, it seems to say.

Usha Akella, co-director of MATWAALA:
In its signature spirit of community welcoming established and upcoming poets, Matwaala 2018 took place in NYC. Matwaala’s Big Read was hosted by Asian American Writers’ Workshop (AAWW) on 26 September 2018. The participating poets this year were Usha Akella, Zilka Joseph, Ralph Nazareth, Varsha Saraiya-Shah, Ravi Shankar, Vivek Sharma and Pramila Venkateswaran. 2018’s Poet of Honour was Ralph Nazareth. There was also a reading with a feminist theme hosted by Bluestockings Bookstore in NYC.