Portrait with Women

A prose poem by Srijani Mitra

Our silences have tired now. We are walking from the woods to the streets, leaving behind the search for that very palki – that false sense of security and belonging that was never truly ours. We are displaced women. We are missing girls. We are those very survivors that you objectify in your ecstasies of power. We now laugh at your hollow might, your staggering, false stride. We have leopards breathing between our thighs. We unwrap our tarnished stories and lay them on the foliage of earth like embroidered sights. We write odes to our mothers and sisters who fought for our rights but were silenced for generations. We bring forth portraits of women from immemorial times. We talk of harems and autonomy. We are unafraid to be Baijis or unconventional wanderers. We are fireballs burning in the heated ire of protest. It is time that we reclaim this land where queens have ruled, where creation itself  speaks of how we have borne your bloody lives. Now we look deep into our perpetrator’s eyes and strip them of their borrowed shine – with a single sight, a single word, with only stories long buried, long untold. We are resilient and we splash colours as we make love to revolution and admire the beauty in our fight for our rights. We rise.

Indian terms glossary

1. Palki: A palanquin or sedan in which a woman or a bride sits or is carried to her husband's place on the day of wedding. 

2. Harem: A number of women including the queen and the concubines living with one man, the king or emperor especially in Muslim societies or empires. The part of the building the women live in is also called a harem.

3. The Baijis: Also called tawaif in Urdu, they were a class of educated courtesans and dancers  forced to survive by prostitution during the British colonial Raj.

Hear Srijani read her poem:

Portrait with WomenSrijani Mitra

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Srijani Mitra is a writer and poet based in India with works published in It Gets Better, North Dakota Quarterly and Chatauqua Journal. Her poetry book is forthcoming from University of Alabama.

Image:

Sea of Women by Akash Banerjee