Till peace does you apart-

Was watching 'Tamas' ( the fictional television soap on the partition of India ) being aired again after many years..only this time it brought back memories of not only a partitioned country and its horror stories but of the stench that continues in different ways in today's times. It also brought about a few lines hidden stoically somewhere. The poem rambles between the present and the past and rests in nowhere-

The morning after-
she stood
ravaged and still.
The intruders had come,
torn her and him
each other too, it seemed.
Devoid of shame and compassion,
a sudden chaos to austerity.

Fear of being burnt down,
having burnt oneself
of all one ever had,
or the promise to have-
at least.
She stood calm
picking her shreds
from a map so convoluted-

Revolution and revolutionaries
look pretty in history books
in reality there is blood,
only blood and its stench-
of unloved for flesh
and hungry mice.
She cries out
in lonely hunger,
questioning which ideology was greater
than her dead son,
his dreams of spinning yarns,
their flesh she wanted, in return.

Callous hands had beheaded
her pubis
where the dark smell of desire
breathed life.
Only the poor,
the helpless
knew the truth
of life from death,
of shame, and the humour of living-

Go hide your ideology
in your cupboard full of dead bodies
where blood mingles with
songs long dead.
Tomorrow you shall burn too,
and I shall laugh
criminal in my desire for revenge,
'vulgar' defining every home.
I shall dance in my mad pyre,
till madness strikes you dead,
what you fought for
writ in the black
of another's innocence
alive and palpable still.

Now you are the murderer
and so am I,
we live in similar houses,
with crushed flowers
and mangled posies
from lustrous graves
in every city.
We burn the green
kill the love
and then we laugh,
in cupboards dark.

In every little desperate hole-
like rats we move,
in dark abandon.
When ideology sleeps
in a mother's sour breast
go pluck the milk,
feed the wolves
kill another
till peace does you apart.

- © 2013 Maitreyee B Chowdhury


(Image courtesy http://www.queensmuseum.org/5884/the-rising-phoenix-a-dialogue-between-modern-and-contemporary-indian-art )