Here’s a powerful and intense women-centric protest poem by Meenakshi, in Different Truths.
I have always been a cuckoo bird
Raising, egging my being in other’s nests
Always in search of a home of my own
Where this life could blossom
Well, I am an Indian woman
I have always been a caged bird
My cage is made of those metals
Metal of my ancestral honour
The metal which has to get malleable with men
Well, I am an Indian woman
I wanted an abode
Where there aren’t any walls
Those walls of subjugation
Where love is cooked and served
Hot, delicious without expectation
A home where I don’t need masks to put on
A home of my own, searching eternally
Well, I am an Indian woman
I wanted an abode
Where I don’t need to make the bed
Yet I could have a slumber, forever
An abode of celebration
Of my existence, just as is
Haven of ecstasy
Where people talk to each other for hours
Not their fingers doing the text talking
And look deep into each other’s eyes
Where people could get up and dance
In the middle of the night
Would I always be a gypsy?
I wanted a Home
An abode as permanent as a broken heart
A cottage as temporary as the lover’s embrace
A place, a palace of my own
Well, I am an Indian woman
©Meenakshi M. Singh
Photos from the internet.
#Poem #Women #Gypsy #Homeless #DifferentTruths