#kamaladas

Handcuffs on my hips,Flesh squeezed betweenThe pink Barbie-dress, Cut to mark the contours,Imagined by the tailor’s Acute, measuring tape. She began to hate pink that day. The fittings, the colourToo feminine a pallor, Keep your knees together, Serve and obey everyone. Curtail on your fats, Begin to love what it takesTo fit the imagined measuring tape. Let football be an orphaned memory, Limbs in…

"Words," by Kamala Das

The Sanyasi stopped the Boy and asked: “Child whom do you most love in this world?”

“My mother”, said the Boy.

“That’s wrong,” Said the Sanyasi, “Your Mother is a woman. It is God you have to love most. God is the cause of everything. For the sake of God you must be prepared to kill your Mother.”

“I will never kill my Mother,” said the Boy

“Then you will defy God, eh?” The Sanyasi asked angrily.

If I kill my mother who will lie beside me at night? I am afraid of darkness” said the Boy.

“Eat it. It is God’s own sweet offering”

The Boy ate it happily and fell down dead.

The Sanyasi,”Om Namah Sivaya”

ONE day when a boy was picking up and eating banana skins from a wayside heap of rubbish, a cow went up to him and bit off his banana skin.

The Boy felt sad, and pushed back the Cow. The Cow ran along the road mooing aloud.

Soon the Sanyasis appeared.

“Was it you who hurt the Holy Cow?” They asked the Boy.

“I didn’t hurt it”, said the Boy, “the Cow snatched away the banana skin I was eating so I drove it away” 

“What is your religion?” asked the Sanyasis

“Religion? What’s that?” asked the Boy

“Are you a Hindu? A Muslim? A Christian?  Do you go to the temple or to the mosque?”

“I don’t go anywhere,” said the Boy.

“Then you don’t believe in prayer?” They asked

“I don’t go anywhere,” said the Boy. “I don’t have a shirt. And my trousers are torn”.

The Sanyasis whispered to each other in private

You must be a Muslim, they said. “You hurt the Cow”  

“Are you the owners of the Cow?” The Boy asked

The Sanyasis strangled the Boy and threw his body into the rubbish.

The Sanyasis,” Om Namah Sivaya”.