When daughters are erased from the hearts of higher gods!

 

The heart of that old house came along with me,

Hid into the crevices and layers of my somnolent skin,

I walk with the burden of one old home,

That oft weighs heavier than my emotions,

But its bones are all I have to take me to the past,

I am that vagabond who tries to smell that known air,

That essence of an old grandmother sitting on her bed,

Her tiny room filled with gods of earth,

That smell of sandalwood from her creased skin,

Still sits on my body, some of it I was able to bring with me,

Didn’t her god, teach those lessons, a daughter is another goddess!

Why that well was broken, covered, and two houses,

were built overnight over its chest, yet I played all day with one foot in one house,

other foot in another, that well soaked all the tears of an ailing mother,

Whose tombstone was also buried within it.

It was that same house, on whose chest every year Kali was worshipped,

I played around her, watched from far, I had no time to listen to her plights then,

I wonder now, she too went to her home, after standing silent for days four,

None heard her agonies, and again she was sent back,

A daughter has become silent too, many daughters have,

The Shenanigans told Gita says, daughters are erased from the hearts of higher gods,

But this thirst doesn’t seem to quench, what am I always probing,

In the faces of myriad aged women, in the hearth of many houses,

That known smell, of soggy walls and crevices,

it doesn’t rain anymore from my eyes, the walls of my house are still barren,

Still the haunting doesn’t stop, they follow my dreams,

And again, and again take me to that dying old house,

I hear its sighs in my ears, I am carrying a good part of it,

Within me, the only place it stops me from coming is,

its heart, in that one moment I again become a beggar at its door,

Kali was sent away too, then a daughter, none were the goddesses ever…

  

 ~Monalisa Joshi~

 

Image Source: Pinterest