While you stripped off
Your outfits
One by one
No one thought
Dear Smitha,
That you would strip off
The outfits of your soul,
That you would do a striptease
On the noosed piece of a rope
That,
Behind closed doors,
You would expose your mind’s nudity.
When the voyeuristic eyes in
Cinema halls
Undressed you
Neither Lord Krishna nor Krishnadwaipaayana
Came with a piece of cloth.
You, the Radha of
The fantasies of a thousand guys,
No one cares for you today.
They are there,
Sleepless, hot and sticky
In the streets of beauty pageants
Devouring blue beauties.
To be Kannans’s Radhika
To be Kannuan’s Shakuntala
To sleep cozily beside
The rhythmic shades of the flute
To leave home, bidding adieu to
The once nurtured creepers,
To bask in the spiritual aura
Of ideal love,
Like Virgins and Aarchaas
Were you so eager?
But what awaited you were
The camera eyes of
The guys of our age,
Unacknowledged
Her Nights,
Urbanized slums
And their pauper castles.
Benumbed waist
And its monotonous pangs.
There was no chance for you
To be Kannaki’s anklet
To be Unniyarcha’s uri
To be Jhansi’s sword
To be a single breasted
And
Burn empires,
Deconstruct the world
And rewrite myths.
Your tongue twisted
Your back turned
You were taught to flirt,
To crawl in feigned coyness
And to at(ex)tract masculinities.
Your masters will not teach you
To burn empires and rewrite myths.
But still,
You be grateful to us
For not stripping you
As you lay, bare and dissected
In the grave,
For covering your body with a shroud.
For not pasting your name
In the wasted pages of history
And destroying your herstory.
For not canonizing you,
With cries and hymns
Vestiges and mysteries,
As a holy mother.
[Translated by P. Shyma]
