Soibam Haripriya
‘Typewriter Talks’, Shoili Kanungo, Image courtesy the artist
Dystopia or Acche Din
A meat for a meat
That is the new law
A meat for a meat
A slaughter for a slaughter
That is the new law
Ram’s rajya is dystopia
Sita’s blood is the colour of earth
Ram’s rajya is dystopia
Mohammad’s blood is the colour of meat
Ram conjures up the menu
Ravan weeps: all ten heads
wishes he guarded Sita better
Averted her ignominy
Now, not even Gujarat’s vegetarian earth
Swallows her whole
Come to Lanka, Sita
Ravan will ask the ocean
to
Swallow you whole
Have your death of the ocean
It is your ancestral fault
Your collective ancestral fault
to have chosen such a king
March towards the ocean
Part the waters
if you can
or walk into it
Ram’s rajya is dystopia
What consummates his appetite?
Meat cooked by torching of houses?
Ravan, the ten headed demon king
weeps with all ten heads
Nowadays
Everything gets called a revolution
But never it was before
That a king’s deed
was called a revolution
In the absence of a corpse
So, what should we do in the absence of a corpse?
I heard he died in training
In Bangladesh or Burma
What day do we choose for the Shradh?
Is this better than the stench ridden corpse?
The son of the neighbour next door
Reclaimed three days late
Death degrading itself into stench
The mother says “He isn’t dead
I haven’t seen his ghost yet
You see, there are no walls, to contain the dead
They have to come back”
In the absence of the corpse
How do we convince her,
she isn’t a half widow
but a full widow
And you thought half and full
is only the proverbial water in the glass tumbler
In the absence of the corpse
Can’t we just get another?
Give it her name and set it ablaze
in her name
Many do come back after the cremation
Not as spectacular as second coming
But no less a miracle
They come back, sometimes to grief
sometimes to happiness
sometimes to indifference –which is worse than either
You see, sometimes in the absence of a corpse
We are given to too much hope
Untitled
Hear Hear
Election is near
Call to arms
Armed one
Armed all
The enemy is here
Quench your blood thirst
Nothing is a mystery
For those who see
This is not a prophecy
From the Indus on
The enemy should recede
It is easy you see
Burn a train, plant a bomb
Call it development
And we will be blinded
By dreams of blood drenched gold
But it is only a dream, the gold
But it is only an excuse, the blood
Plant a rumour
Let it sprout
The enemy is beloved of your daughter
Love jihad
Jihad the jihadi then
The republic drowns
in riots
Summer is freezing
In silences of history
In the sky
One band of the rainbow is blood
One is shards
One is tears
One is saffron
The rest is silence
Common Objects of Our Times
You are common
Your body is common
You are as common as a corpse
We will turn
your body into a corpse
Money is paper
crisp but common
One common object
can be exchanged for another
Your nakedness is common
can be exchanged for another
We will parade you
one common naked body
followed by another
Naked bodies with orifices
We will put common objects
into common orifices
A stone, A twig
A stick, A baton
A muzzle
Common objects
of our times
Soibam Haripriya is Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Guwahati. Her poems have appeared in an anthology Tattooed with Taboos (Partridge, 2014). Her works are also included in 40 under 40: An Anthology of Post-Globalisation Poetry (Paperwall, forthcoming).
