On this piece of a very parched Earth
I walk ten thousand leaden steps
under the burning merciless orb,
We call the life-giving Sun
dangling on hips a pot full of water
while I carry two on my stiff head
to provide succour to my thirsty hearth
where the heavily pregnant first wife
Of my middle aged husband
bake millet chapatis for the master of the house,
as I wash away the dirt, sweat and blood
to ready myself for the nightly chores
befitting a dutiful new wife.
-Neha Bansal
I am hardly Devaki,
celebrated for the auspicious
womb that carried the divine.
But incarcerated in these four
lime-washed walls,
fading in the memories
of the husband who conveniently
remarried for a motorcycle,
a sofa set and an air cooler,
I did give birth to my Kanha
among the other Devakis
with no Vasudeva to ferry
their Kanhas safely out
to a picturesque Gokula
where peacock's feathers would
be woven in their hair.
Here the only feathers
are those of the crows,
that sometimes sit on the coping
of the high parapet walls.
-Neha Bansal
Dreaming of rainbows I left home
happy to be rid
of the leaking roof and
perpetually hungry five younger siblings.
Relieved to be no more haunted by
the ghost of a widowed mother
whose eyes were the waste land
where no hope grew.
Safe from that lingering dirty gaze
of the maternal uncle whose hands
often brushed my breast accidentally.
I eloped with the man I loved.
The one whose plagiarized couplets
swept me off my adoloscent feet.
The one whose rakish eyes
teased a certain string in my heart.
The one whose feverish hands
sought the secret treasures in me.
We traveled many towns
and stayed at many cheap inns.
And one night as I lay dreaming
sold me to a hirsute pot-bellied man.
Twelve years have passed since then
I am a mother now
of a child whose father's identity
I know nothing about.
I have been abused, insulted, slapped,
suffered diseases, bitten in to and raped.
All wounds heal eventually
but for that of the betrayal
by the one who had once made you dream.
-Neha Bansal
Those are not fields of wheat
of our landlords
but the gold of our labour
which brings morsels of food
to the ailing elders and crying children
back in the shanty villages
that no longer provided enough.
These are not the brick and mortar
for the homes we build for our contractor
But the gossamer silks of our dreams
that bring a new tin shed
and proof the leaking dilapidated hut
in our little hamlet by the river side.
These are not mere machines
that produce in surfeit for our factory owners
but the magic wands of a wizard
that conjure up clothes for half naked children
and dowry of our unmarried sisters
as they wait every evening for the postman
to bring by the monthly relief.
At this home away from home,
my husband and I
worked by the day bathed in sweat
and dreamt by the night
of all the succour we provided
to the people back at home in the
wasted villages that were once
replete with self-sufficiency.
In this home away from home,
we were grateful for the benediction
our masters so graciously bestowed.
And then, it happened
when the cities and towns were plagued
with an unspeakable horror.
A disease that alienated them from us
and made them throw us out
Of fields and construction sites,
From factories and even their hearts.
The disease that made us undertake
the long journeys through the ghostlands
where all magic fizzled away
into an infernal reality of human apathy.
- Neha Bansal
