Women’s writing has always been marred by allegations that declare it emotional, passive, weak and not intellectual and rational. With that, profound observations, situations, responses and struggles of half the humanity are rendered oblivious.
“Scissors to cut with, a needle and thread to sew my lips with. If I write my subconscious the earth will be covered with paper,” Anamika says of what she does not write, afflicted by self-censorship.
Anamika was born and brought up in Bihar, studied in Patna, Lucknow and Delhi. Her poem Striyaan [Women] is an oblique and subtle, ironical and slant, gentle but firm poetic comment on gendered expectations, assumptions, allegations, and definitions that impinge on women’s lives.
सुनो, हमें अनहद की तरह
और समझो जैसे समझी जाती है
नई-नई सीखी हुई भाषा।
Ankita Anand, poet and an independent journalist, recognised for her contribution towards promoting gender sensitive reporting, reads Anamika.
English Translation by Ritu Menon, from Interior Decoration: Poems by 54 Women from 10 Languages (2010)
Women
They read us
casually
like one reads the torn pages
of a child’s notebook
before it is made into paper-cones
for chanajorgaram
They looked at us
crossly
as one looks, half-asleep, at the alarm clock
when it rings too early
in the morning.
They listened to us
distractedly
as one listens to filmi songs
on cheap cassettes
in a crowded bus.
They suffered us
Absently
like one suffers, barely,
the distant pain
Of a relative far away.
One day we said
we are human, too
read us carefully
one word at a time
as you would a job advertisement
after your B.A.
Look at us with yearning
as, shivering, you would look at a fire
out of reach.
Listen to us
as you would the soundless void
and try to understand, slowly,
a language newly learned.
As soon as they heard this
out of nowhere
like a locust-horde
wild rumours, screeching
‘Women without character
spreading like weeds
Egged on by the misguided
women with no virtue
well-bred and bored
vagabond self-indulgent
whiling away their time with idle verse…’
Then with sidelong glance
with mocking gesture
‘And even this poetry is not theirs.
The rest is dismissal.
O blessed Fathers
O men of eminence
-we beseech you
spare us
this attention.
