Hindu Brahmin with a Muslim name,
She was born to defy destiny.
She fretted over the fas-fis of her silk dupatta
flowing like the Brahmaputra,
the Ithmid around her eyes dancing with every moment.
Her dark eyebrows were wings to a big red dot,
and her hair fell down like roots of the peepal tree.
Dusky little dainty little dreamy little something.
It often felt like she craved care
Perhaps, of a man who would throw veils around her
which only he could enter.
The undertones of her profound speech
about being powerful like Durga
told them of it.
The puny buildings of society tried to wash over
the span of her bejeweled minaret,
atop which she screamed the ideas that were only her own
echoing the same indifference.
She spoke of Unity
Rich with visions about tomorrow
Wrote volumes, made paintings
that conveyed extraordinary desires
They laughed at her folly.
So she threw herself in the books
And found a Vedic Allah
They pulled out her hair
And cried Mashallah.
And the Hindus, they disowned her
Set fire to her ideologies and burnt her arm
And chanted Ram Ram!
But the way she rose made a thousand phoenixes tremble
Half-torn hair and charred black arm
And to everyone’s surprise she plunged her hands
into two containers of colored powder
Smearing it on her head, her breasts and her feet
And she grinned with her partially colored teeth
at the pygmy humans who never learned to rise.
