topics: |  poetry | hindi | india | translation

Hats off to Arlene Zide for having single-handedly scoured the country,
talking to interlocutors in a dozen languages, and translating the vast
majority of the poems in this anthology.  And shame on us, the readers, for
having forgotten this text, long out of print...

Some of the poems fail to work because they are a bit shrill in their
feminism, but it's still great to see such a lively compilation...

Although the book was published in India, it has been out of print for some
time now.  I was happy to find a copy through abebooks in the US!

Arlene is the daughter of noted Hindi scholar Norman Zide.

Excerpts

Shanta Acharya : A giddy mannequin p.1

A giddy mannequin discreetly naked
I pose for you in a glass cage,
out of your reach, perfect and undefiled.

I learned the use of facades
when you began destroying my porcelain dolls
so long treasured behind the purdah of my self.

Dead images and my mirrors in pieces
I strive to escape continually
the shards of my several selves
strewn casually over our encounters in time.

They glisten into life mocking me at multiple angles
as I puppet-dance to your discordant tunes.
I pretend not to take notice of such things.

Even this discerning unconcern
I stole from your eyes unaware,
perfected to an art of survival

As you, in perpetual ambush,
prefer to remove your glasses
before you come forward to splinter mine.

I have nothing to be sad about
as our images crackle and drag.
My body remains silent and complete,
a giddy mannequin discreetly naked.

Hira Bansode : Woman p.15

              Marathi; tr. Vinay Dharwadker

she, the river
said to him the sea:
      all my life
      i've been dissolving myself
      and flowing towards you
      for your sake
      in the end it was i
      who tuned into the sea
      a woman's gift
      is as large as the sky
              but you went on
              worshipping yourself
              you never thought
              of becoming a river
              and merging
              with me

Hira Bansode : Look, Mother 15

	       (Marathi; tr. Vinay Dharwadker)

Look, mother,
ever since father died,
you've been badly shaken
by all the grief and fear.
Think of it this way:
the wheels of a cart
are bound to move up and down,
but all they've got to do
is grip the earth under them
as firmly as they can.
Mother, we're people
from the backwoods,
it's an old habit with us
to stitch together
our sorrows and joys with thorns.

Don't you think we now need
to bear these wounds
without wincing?
Let go of the pain a little,
see how everything will become light.
If I have to do it,
I'll wash dishes in four more homes,
but I won't let you run short
of anything you need.
Don't cry, I'm going crazy too.
What can I do,
I've come to a strange place, haven't I,
for the sake of a living.
We live so far apart,
but it's as though your wings
were always spread over me.
You watch over me
and my burden of tiredness,
of pointless work,
grows a little lighter.
Oh'the train has blown its whistle!
Be careful on the way,
mother,
give everyone in the family
the news about me.
Stick to your plans for the journey,
and send me a letter
as soon as you get there.
Co carefully now'take care, mother, take care.

   Note: Hira Bansode is a Dalit woman writer. In the original, this poem is
   written entirely in a common rural low-caste dialect of Marathi. Its
   speaker is a young Dalit woman, who has moved to the city on her own to
   work as a domestic servant. She is at the railway station, saying goodbye
   to her aging mother, who has been visiting her and is now taking a train
   back to their village in the country.

   online at : http://www.kritya.in/0206/En/poetry_at_our_time11.html

Nirmal Prabha Bardoloi : He would have come long ago p.17

		 Assamese; tr. Emdad Ullah

He was to come
Along your razor-sharp vision
He was to come
Along the stream of your blood
Through your stretched-out shrunken hands
And clenched fists.

He wishes to come
But turns back again and again
With a frown on his helpless face

He was to come
In the flickering flame of your third eye,
He was to come
In your Bhujangasana posture.

He wishes to come
But turns back again and again
With the mute curse of fury.

On seeing your drooping head
He turns back
Seeing you locked in momentary infatuations,
seeing your pale, blurred vision,
Your watery blooa,

Your hands clenched in self-hatred,
Shrunken, unextended

He would have come long ago.

Nirmal Prabha Bardoloi : I am there p.18

		 Assamese; tr. Arabinda Nath Sharma


Wherever you are
Shy
There grows
My
Sal tree of
Promise.
Wherever
You feel helpless
You will find
My voice '
I am there.

Dishang
Rhine
Mississippi
Thames
Everywhere
You will find me.

Nirmal Prabha Bardoloi : Untitled 18

		 Assamese; tr. Hiren Gohain

In the smell of rice fields in autumn
My father comes back to me;
In the fragrance of the new scarf
As I unfold it fresh from the shop
1 find my mother again...

Where shall I leave myself
For my child
0, where indeed?

Nirmal Prabha Bardoloi: biography

				from obituary, outlook magazine Jun 2004

 
Sahitya Akademi awardee and Assamese lyricist Dr Nirmal
Prabha Bordoloi died here today at her residence following prolonged
illness.  She was 71.

The self-made Bordoloi was the former president of the apex Assamese
literature body `Asom Sahitya Sabha' in 1991.

Married as a child bride when she was just 11, Bordoloi acquired her
educational degrees with brilliant results after it. Motherhood came to her
at 13.

Prominent among her books are `Kabita : Mon Faringar Rong', `Samipesu',
`Antarang', `Asamar Luko Sangonskriti', `Siba', `Asamar Luko Kabita'.
She also worked in the literary journals `Natun Asomiya' and `Ramdhenu'
published from Guwahati in 1950s.

Survived by a daughter, the former academician had retired as the head of the
Assamese department of Gauhati University.

--
from the Assam Tribune

        Does the day break
        Because of the sound of guns?
        No!
        It breaks
        Because of the cry of the bird...

		- bardoloi lines, quoted by Nabanita Dev Sen in her address
		  at a writers’ meet in Guwahati

Nirmal Prabha started writing poetry as a child, from age nine, inspired by
her Vaishnavite world...

        To make your existence
        more meaningful
        I must plant
        Masculinity
        in the land.

Bordoloi as a researcher

in-depth and elaborate study of the original source-materials connected with
Tantrik Saddhana of Assam, like Yogni Tantra, Kalika Purana, coupled with
field studies of the Thans and temples connected with Shakti-worship of
Assam. The result is her monumental work Devi.  Another work of hers is
Shiva, dealing in the evolution of the cult of Shiva in Assam against an
all-India perspective.

Nirmal Prabha's poetry is often marked by her stringent protest against
social ills and the establishment.

        My name is Aniruddha
        A beautiful dream
        Has enchanted me.
        Nobody can stop my
        Onward march –
        That is why I am Aniruddha.

Nirmal Prabha was emotionally involved in Assam's agitation for identity, the
Assamese identity threatened by perilous inroads of migrants from
neighbouring erstwhile East Bengal, now Bangladesh. She wrote :

        O my beloved land
        I promise
        I will inflame this night of terror
        With the flame of your courage.

In another poem she writes :

        My mother says
        ‘Don’t play with fire’.
        If fire starts
        Playing with me
        What should I do,
        O my mother?

Nirmal Prabha in also known as a poet of love. But her love is more physical
than spiritual or platonic. To her "Autumn is more love-lorn, more so than
the spring."

her own words about what she
thinks of the role of poetry in life:

	There is no greater poem than life itself. Life is an endless poem? a
	poem of understanding and non-understanding, of moonlight, of storm,
	of non-fulfilment, of loss after fulfilment, of softness, of
	hardness, of darkness, of loveliness, of helplessness, of
	pronouncement of truth, of promise, of beauty, of dream, of
	exploitation, of burning, of distress, of cries of ferment and
	tears... 		- introduction to Sudirgha din aaru ritu

Anjana Basu : No Nuclear Night, Bhopal 19

Turpentine grass grows over this cold
steel town
its black fingers lick the blue sky

and the birds ooze down drip by drip
painted out, painted dead.

One night the sky split, spat bright
blood red

colour killed us

colour ate the night

cannibal colour

Glowing dust grows over this turpentine
town
Small birds scream at night
in dead droplets.

Shobha Bhagwat : Husbands p.22

	This woman has a job
	so her husband is unhappy
	this one sits at home
	so her husband is upset
	this one is very thin
	so her husband is angry
	this one is very plump
	so her husband snaps at her.
	[...]

White Asparagus: Sujata Bhatt 24

Who speaks of strong currents
streaming through the legs, the breasts
of a pregnant woman
in her fourth month?

She's young, this is her first time,
she's slim and the nausea has gone.
Her belly's just starting to get rounder
her breasts itch all day,

and she's surprised that what she wants
is him
        inside her again
Oh come like a horse, she wants to say,
move like a dog, a wolf,
                   become a suckling lion-cub -

Come here, and here, and here –
but swim fast and don’t stop.

Who speaks of the green coconut uterus
the muscles sliding, a deeper undertow
and the green coconut milk that seals
her well, yet flows so she is wet
from his softest touch?

Who understands the logic
behind this desire?
Who speaks of the rushing tide
                 that awakens
her slowly increasing blood – ?
And the hunger
         raw obsession beginning
with the shape of the asparagus:
sun-deprived white and purple-shadow-veined,
she buys three kilos
of the fat ones, thicker than anyone's fingers,
she strokes the silky heads
some are so jauntily capped...
        even the smell pulls her in–

Imtiaz Dharker : Purdah 1

One day they said
she was old enough to learn some shame.
She found it came quite naturally.

Purdah is a kind of safety.
The body finds a place to hide.
The cloth fans out against the skin
much like the earth that falls
on coffins after they put dead men in.

People she has known
stand up, sit down as they have always done.
But they make different angles
in the light, their eyes aslant,
a little sly.

She half-remembers things
from someone else's life,
perhaps from yours, or mine –
carefully carrying what we do not own:
between the thighs a sense of sin.

We sit still, letting the cloth grow
a little closer to our skin.
A light filters inward
through our bodies’ walls.
Voices speak inside us,
echoing in the places we have just left.

She stands outside herself,
sometimes in all four corners of a room.
Wherever she goes, she is always
inching past herself,
as if she were a clod of earth
and the roots as well,
scratching for a hold
between the first and second rib.

Passing constantly out of her own hands,
into the corner of someone else's eyes . . .
while the doors keep opening
inward and again
inward.

Kamala Das : The old playhouse 161

You planned to tame a swallow, to hold her
in the long summer of your love so that she would forget
not the raw seasons alone and the homes left behind, but
also her nature, the urge to fly, and the endless
pathways of the sky.  It was not to gather knowledge
of yet another man that I came to you but to learn
what I was and by learning, to learn to grow, but every
lesson you gave was about yourself. You were pleased
with my body's response, its weather, its usual shallow
convulsions.  You dribbled spittle into my mouth, you poured
yourself into every nook and cranny, you embalmed
my poor lust with your bitter-sweet juices.  You called me wife,
I was taught to break saccharine into your tea and
to offer at the right moment the vitamins.  Cowering
beneath your monstrous ego I ate the magic loaf and
became a dwarf.  I lost my will and reason, to all your
questions I mumbled incoherent replies.  The summer
begins to pall.  I remember the ruder breezes
of the fall and the smoke from burning leaves.  Your room is
always lit by artificial lights, your windows always
shut.  Even the air-conditioner helps so little,
all pervasive is the male scent of your breath. The cut flowers
in the vases have begun to smell of human sweat. There is
no more singing, no more a dance, my mind is an old
playhouse with all its lights put out. The strong man's technique is
always the same. He serves his love in lethal doses,
for love is Narcissus at the water's edge haunted
by its own lonely face, and, yet it must seek at last
an end, a pure, total freedom, it must will the mirrors
to shatter and the kind night to erase the water.

Gauri Deshpande : The Female of the Species 53

	Sometimes you want to talk
	about love and despair
	and the ungratefulness of children.
	A man is no use whatever then.
	You want then your mother
	or sister
	or the girl you were with whom you went through school.
	and your first love, and her
	first child - a girl -
	and your second.
	You sit with them and talk.
	She sews and you sit and sip
	and speak of the rate of rice
	and the price of tea
	and the scarcity of cheese.
	You know both that you've spoken
	of love and despair and ungrateful children.

Ashwin Dhongde: Small Ads: Matrimonials 62

Wanted a bride -- height 5 ft. 3 1/2"
	Age - 21 1/2 years
	Very fair and delicate
	Good-looking, slim,
	Highly educated graduate, working woman
	(handing over all money to husband),
	Gentle and submissive
	(able to live under mother-in-law's thumb)
	Highborn, from a well-to-do family,
	(able to provide excellent dowry and suitable gifts)
	Hard-working and modest
	Able to adjust to a joint family, no foolish ideas
	(the wind of 'women's lib' not having gone to her heard)
Advertising only for a better choice.

Wanted a groom -— No conditions
	(must be male)
	Adult, either
	Marrying for the first time or
	A widower with children, anyone will do.

Gagan Gill : The fifth man 78

				tr. Mrinal Pande and Arlene Zide

Moving towards the hangman's noose
The fifth man steps
Onto the fifth place.
Whether it is daylight or dark, the fifth man watches
His own shadow
On the fifth place.
Only the fifth man believes
That there are four ahead of him.
Till the very end he believes
That he will not be the fifth.

Shakunt Mathur : Waiting 126

		(Hindi; tr. Aruna Sitesh and Arlene Zide)

Scolded
the old servant
for his usual slowness.
For his mischief
gave a good slap
to my darling son.

To my daughter who'd been playing
gave a dozen hankies to hem.
Ordered
the oldest
to drink more milk.
Washed
all the dirty clothes.
Flipped through a few magazines.
Darned some torn clothes.
Sewed on some new buttons.
Cleaned the machine and oiled it.
Put the cover back on with care.
Took out the half-finished sewing
and repacked it in a different way.
Wiped the cupboards in the kitchen.
Cleaned the spice jars.

And still
he
hasn't come home from the office.

Pratibha Nandkumar : Poem 157

		 Kannada, tr. A K Ramanujan

When I was grouping for new poem
for the poetry festival,
poems danced all over the house:
in nooks and corners, in bed,
in boxes, in walls and curtains,
in windows and doors
poems beckoned with their hands.
They simmered on the
in the rasam pot, got flattened
under the rolling pins
on the chapati stone
and diced on the knife-stand
they boiled in the cooker
with salt and spices,
sautéed, smelling fragrant.

In the hall they were lying about
begging to be picked up.
If I swept them, they asked to be
mopped; if I mopped them,
they wanted to be dressed,
stubborn pests, thorns
in my flesh.
Curtains where little hands
had wiped themselves,
torn books, sandal dropped,
chairs and tables pulled here and there,
cloths strewn on the floor
took on the shapes of poems
and dazzled my eyes.

When I cleared the mess
and sat down to rest,
one of them pestered me
asking me now to wash it,
now to give it a drink,
now to come play with it.

When at last I sat down to write
not one letter got written
and my brain was in a fog.
Late at night, when a sleepy hand
groped and hugged me
'to hell with the poem' I said
and fell asleep.
But it tickled me in a dream,
made me laugh and charmed me.

When I read that
in the poetry festival,
it ran out, refused to come back,
went inside the listeners and sat there.
I let it sit there
and returned home alone.

Mrinal Pande : Two women knitting 169

		(Hindi; tr. by the author and Arlene Zide)

Rama said
Rama said to Uma
Oh my,
How time passes.
Ah me, says Uma
and then both fall silent.

The two women cast on stitches
Skip stitches, slip the skipped stitches over,
Knit over purl,
Purl over knit.
After many intricate loops and cables
Their dark secrets still lie locked within
They have thrown the keys to their jewel casques in the lake.
Put the keys in, and their locks will bleed real blood.

Two women are knitting
Clicking steel against steel
Passers-by look up amazed at the sparks that fly.
Loneliness comes at every other row in their patterns
Though they have worn each others' saris
And bathed each others' slippery infants
Even though at this very moment their husbands
Lie asleep in the rooms upstairs
Shaking them in their dreams.

Mrinal Pande : Her Home 170

		(Hindi; tr. by the author and Arlene Zide)

Every day
Before the crow of the cock and the thud of the newspaper
In that no-man's land between the law and the blood
The woman gives birth to her separate world.

The clay pots are her sons,
Clever and cheeky
The tongs clang their palms together on command
The matchstick immediately sputters into flame
While the brass pot bubbles over with curiosity
And the ladle slowly mashes the secret-filled greens.

That homebody, the hanging pot loves curling up
The rotund rolling pin rolls over laughing
Coiled up and irritable, chhichchirchhikk!
The narrow whisk prances around.

Here with a single calculated blow
The woman can behead four okra pods
Can slit open the heart of a bitter gourd
Then throwing a magic pinch of red chilli into cast-iron depths
She can create a smoking, spluttering hell.

Spotless, the radish stands like a gigantic exclamation point
Watches the woman sitting
With her back to the hard wall
And wonders, really,
How real is she?

Savitri: Dacoits p.208

         (Telugu; tr. C. Rama Rao and Arlene Zide)

When the teacher said:
I'll get you married off
if you don't recite the lesson
I was afraid.

When my brother said:
My 'husband' is my boss
who never grants me leave
even when I need it most
I grew suspicious.

When the neighbours said:
But, he's a man, a 'maharaja'
so what could he be missing?
I understood.

That marriage is a huge punishment,
that a husband gobbles up your freedom,
and that half the population
that we nourished at the breast
divides
and rules.

   [the original poem, baMdipOTlu (1984), can be read at http://rksanka.tripod.com/telugu/streevada.html )

Rajee Seth : My sisters p. 213

      (Hindi; tr. Lakshmi Kannan)

You are busy
sharpening your weapons
to unman the men
I acquiesce in my womanhood
Totally.
Totally.

I clean up the sooty walls of my hearth
And caress the sides of my womb
I feed the tender mouths
Of tiny infants
with live embers
Of a revolution.

Kabita Sinha: Curse p. 227

		(Bengali; tr. Enakshi Chatterjee and Carolyne Wright)

Look now, the entire forest has gone dead
as wood in this room,
Inthat polished four-poster bed In that
nocturnal chair!
You are sitting on a tree's tomb.
And on the table, the stony-eyed cockatoo
Is a dead bird hunched on a dead branch.
And you are absorbing their curses daily!

Because you alone have thrashed the whole forest
to death.

This chunk of wood once gave forth living flowers;
In side the myriad solid buds
thick, continuous life poured out.

Your fancy bedstead won't be decked with flowers now.
The pillow's cotton stuffing hankers for revenge.
It will throw its damning silken cobwebs
into your dreams.

The disembodied forest will breathe into you,
And among all this wood you will be
Slwoly turned to wood.

The life force will drain out of your five senses.

Kabita Sinha: Eve Speaks to God p.228

	 Bengali ; tr. Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

                                      		ঈশ্বরকে ঈভ / কবিতা সিংহ

I was first                             		আমিই প্রথম
to know                                 		জেনেছিলাম
that which rises                        		উত্থান যা
is the other side                       		তারই ওপিঠ
of that which falls                     		অধঃপতন !

                                        		আলোও যেমন
In your creation                        		কালোও তেমন
what is light                           		তোমার সৃজন
is also dark                            		জেনেছিলাম
I was first                             		আমিই প্রথম।
to know
                                        		তোমায় মানা
To obey                                 		বা না মানার
or not obey                             		সমান ওজন
weighs the same                         		জেনেছিলাম
I was first                             		আমিই প্রথম।
to know
                                        		জ্ঞানবৃক্ষ
First to finger                         		ছুঁয়েছিলাম
the knowledge tree,                     		আমিই প্রথম
to bite into                            		আমিই প্রথম
the red apple                           		লাল আপেলে
I was first                             		পয়লা কামড়
                                        		দিয়েছিলাম
I was first                             		প্রথম আমিই
to divide                               		আমিই প্রথম।
heaven and hell
with a fig leaf,                        		আমিই প্রথম
shame and                               		ডুমুর পাতায়
shamelessness                           		লজ্জা এবং
                                        		নিলাজতায়
I was first                             		আকাশ পাতাল
to water the stem                       		তফাৎ করে
of this pleasure-body                   		দেওয়াল তুলে
with pain                               		দিয়েছিলাম
first to know                           		আমিই প্রথম।
like you
we too                                  		আমিই প্রথম
can fashion dolls,                      		নর্ম সুখের
to see                                  		দেহের বোঁটায়
your face                               		দুঃখ ছেনে
in my newborn's                         		অশ্রু ছেনে
I was first                             		তোমার পুতুল
                                        		বানানো যায়
I was first                             		জেনেছিলাম
to know                                 		হেসে কেঁদে
grief and joy                           		তোমার মুখই
                                        		শিশুর মুখে
my slave                                		দেখেছিলাম
I was first                             		আমিই প্রথম।
first woman
first exile                             		আমিই প্রথম
fallen                                  		বুঝেছিলাম
banished                                		দুঃখে সুখে
                                        		পুণ্য পাপে
first to know                           		জীবন যাপন
this human life                         		অসাধারণ
is higher                               		কেবল সুখের
than heaven                             		শৌখিনতার
higher than                             		সোনার শিকল
heaven                                  		আমিই প্রথম
                                        		ভেঙেছিলাম
I was first                             		হইনি তোমার
to know                                 		হাতের সুতোয়
                                        		নাচের পুতুল
                                        		যেমন ছিল
                                        		অধম আদম

                                        		আমিই প্রথম
                                        		বিদ্রোহিনী
                                        		তোমার ধরায়
                                        		আমিই প্রথম।

                                        		প্রিয় আমার
                                        		হে ক্রীতদাস
                                        		আমিই প্রথম
                                        		ব্রাত্যনারী
                                        		স্বর্গচ্যুত
                                        		নির্বাসিত
                                        		জেনেছিলাম
                                        		স্বর্গেতর
                                        		স্বর্গেতর
                                        		মানব জীবন
                                        		জেনেছিলাম
                                        		আমিই প্রথম।

bangla source: http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/raneebhabanee/28852052
transln at:    http://www.kritya.in/0206/En/poetry_at_our_time12.html

Sunanda Tripathy (b. 1964) : Tryst 237

When the whole city is asleep
I take of my anklets
and come into your room
with soft, stolen steps.

You lie there, unmoving
on the disordered bed,
books strewn all around.
In their midst, alone, you lie asleep,
the smile of some strange contentment
on your face.
I sit quietly by the bed,
smooth your dishevelled hair,
then bend down and with my sharp nails
tear open your chest,
and with both my hands scoop out
a fistful of pulsating soft pink flesh.

I'm spellbound by the odour of the flesh,
I hold it to my breast.
For a moment
word and silence become one -
then sky and earth
become one.

Before you come awake
I put the flesh back in its place,
caress your open chest.
The wound fills up in a moment
as if nothing had happened.

As before you go on sleeping,
and I walk quietly from your room

    tr JP Das and Arlene Zide (from Oriya)

SA. Usha : To My Mother 239

	Kannada: Ammanige, tr. A.K. Ramanujan

Mother, don’t, please don’t
Don’t cut off the sunlight
With your sari spread across the sky
Blanching life's green leaves

Don’t say: "You’re seventeen already
Don’t flash your sari in the street
Don’t make eyes at passers-by
Don’t be a tomboy riding the winds."

Don’t play that tune again
That your mother,
Her mother and her mother
Had played on the snake charmer's flute
Into the ears of nitwits like me

I am just spreading my hood
I’ll sink my fangs into someone
And leave my venom.
Let go, make way.

Circumambulating the holy plant
In the yard, making rangoli designs
To see heaven, turning up dead
Without light and air.
For God's sake, I can’t do it.

Breaking out of the dam
You’ve built, swelling
In a thunder-storm
Roaring through the land,
Let me live very differently
From you, mother.
Let go, make way.

Contents (partial)

Shanta Acharya : A giddy mannequin                              1
Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen : The widower                           2
Meena Alexander : House of a thousand rooms                     3
                : No Man's Land                                 4
Malika Amar Shaikh : Megalopolis 1                              5
                      Megalopolis 9                             6
Bala: From you and you - me and me 8
      You and I                                                 8
Balamani Amma : At the pond                                     9
Banaja Devi : On my own grave                                   9
Sanjukta Bandyopadhyay : Not a goddess                          13
Shukla Bandyopadhyay : holding the hand of a serial love        14
Hira Bansode : Woman                                            15
               Look, Mother                                     15
Nirmal Prabha Bardoloi : He would have come long ago            17
                         I am there                             18
                  	    Untitled                            18
Anjana Basu : Yellow                                            19
              No nuclear night, Bhopal                          19
Krishna Basu : Gold coins                                       20
Ishita Bhaduri : Twenty-seven million years later               21
Shobha Bhagwat : Husbands                                       22
Amrita Bharati : The snake and the Man                          23
Sujata Bhatt : Udaylee                                          24
                   White asparagus                              24

Gita Chattopadhyay : The ritual of Sati 			31
			Thirty-five parganas 			32
Kamala Das : An Introduction   					44
		The old playhouse 			 	45
Gauri Deshpande : Workaday women 				52
		     The female of the species 		        53
Eunice de Souza : Poem for a poet 				54
		     Idyll  					55
    [...]							 
Imtiaz Dharker : Purdah 1  				 	58
		   Grace 					59
Ashwin Dhongde: Small Ads: Matrimonials  			62

Gagan Gill : She will come back in her body 			77
		The fifth man 					78
    [...]
Shakunt Mathur : Chilka Lake 				       124
		    Waiting                                    126
    [...]
Pratibha Nandkumar : Poem 				       157
    [...]
Mrinal Pande : Two women knitting 			       169
		  Her home  				       170
    [...]
Savitri: Dacoits 					       208
    [...]
Rajee Seth : My sisters					       213
Kabita Sinha: Curse 					       227
		 Eve Speaks to God 			       228
Sunanda Tripathy (b. 1964) : Tryst 			       237
                              Poem in motion 		       238
SA. Usha : To My Mother 				       239

[ ... about 160 more poems... ]