“Burning of women in India, most vividly of rape victims, is neither unprecedented nor inexplicable, and is an extension of the sociocultural habit of gender invisibilising.”
(Gender invisibility and women-burning; The New Indian Express, 26th January, 2020)
When they come for you
know there is no way out and
that they will stop at nothing short
of digging in you a tunnel to
fathom their own murky darkness.
Don’t scream. The chances are
that to a sadist spine every scream
is wine. Blindfold yourself, open wide,
play dead. Jump up the moment
it’s done. Gather your stuff. Leave.
Cease to think of your body as
copyrighted flesh. Understand it as
ground designed for plunder. Look at it
as a table where questions of caste, class,
language, religion, even education
must be decisively settled through
excavation. It isn’t about desire, clothes,
confidence, recklessness, lack of wisdom
or even about lust for that matter. It’s
simply about habit, their need to assert.
Ignore the intrusion as one ignores
flies. Don’t talk to the papers. Walk,
keep walking towards the sun. Remember
honour doesn’t blossom between thighs; it
cannot be nurtured or plucked overnight.
Breathe deep, thaw. Rejoice there are no
limbs severed; no acid on your face, no
iron thrust anywhere deep. Rejoice you live.
If, however, they’ve already set you on fire,
that part’s going to be a trifle problematic.
The ruins won’t speak, you see. It will be
difficult to conjure from ashes the story of
gags, rips, mauls, thrusts; to discover trails
of blood-semen branded on thighs. On the
brighter side, your clothes will retain dignity
in death. Burnt to cinder, they will be free from
scrutiny of form, length, texture, colour; will spare
your character of assault. Your invasion coffined
in you, you will live forever chaste in memories.
Yet, after every cremation will haunt a disquiet.
- featured in The Kali Project and Witness: The Red River Anthology of Dissent