in Phnom Penh

At the edge of the street where we sat over salad,
three children got in a brawl. A girl with a basket full of trinkets
tied to her waist, and a weeping toddler.
As he howled and kicked, his wire frame full of glass bangles
flew across the sky and scattered fragments
all over the curb. Later, alone, he sat by the tyre of a car
and looked at his empty hands.

The bustling streets of Cambodia had no space for his grief. The riverside
sprawled out like a dirty postcard.

Four days into an unknown country, the inevitable happened:
a man, perhaps drunk, sauntered over
with his eyes on my hesitant naval.
Where are you from, he asked my terrified stomach. Hey, lady. Where are you from.
Walking fiercely down the street, I could hear his footsteps behind me
as sure as his sleazy smile. I wondered
if he ever did this to the white women who visited,
their navels and shoulders and bikini strings carelessly given over to the city.

Even after the music in the open square, the sky blossoming with leftover light,
everything tasted of shattered glass;
the mug of beer with a chipped edge,
the quiet desperation that comes with vulnerability
or love. I filled my mouth with smoke
until my hands shook.

Being Woman

I am angrier than ever about being a woman. I've been trying to write this post for days, but I have too much to say and I'm afraid I won't do it justice. When I was a child, I always assumed that I felt afraid and unsafe when I was alone in most public spaces because public spaces belonged to adults. I'm an adult now, and I still feel afraid and unsafe in public spaces. I was wrong. Public spaces do not belong to adults. Public spaces belong only to men.

I know this shouldn't come as a surprise. We knew this all along. But somehow, it still does. I am shocked and bewildered and angry every day. I am trying to be conscious of all the ways in which I monitor my movements, try to make myself as small and inconspicuous as possible in public spaces. These are all things I never paid as much attention to as a child, because I was always out of the house with what I assumed were all-powerful adults. Since perhaps fifteen or sixteen, all of these things are a reality, and I have dealt with them only by ignoring them. Here goes:

Every time I step out of the house, I change. I make sure I am covered from shoulder to knee in sturdy fabric. Despite this, I also need to clench my jaw and be ready to be stared at. Give angry looks sometimes, but mostly remain silent and look away (read: look down. In shame). Don't really look anyone (read: men) in the eyes on the road. Or in a market. Anywhere. Even from inside a car, where I love looking out and just observing the strange circus of life taking place -- I cannot afford to catch somebody's gaze for too long. Somebody might flash me, or make a lewd expression, or follow my car. It will be my fault. I'm never too loud. Never really show affection in public. Terrified of doing that, of holding somebody's hand or grazing their cheek with a finger. Intellectually I know that these actions do not mean I'm giving a stranger permission to view me as 'easy', but I am still afraid. It will be my fault. My fault. To smoke, or drink, or laugh too loudly in public is scary. Angry eyes follow me. All of these things mean that getting out of the house is hard. The same street that I used to walk on so easily as a child, is totally alien to me. I get out of the house in a car, and now sometimes in a cab. 

I know that I shouldn't be doing any of this. I also know that I'm in a society where if anything ever does happen -- and it does, it has -- then nobody will even need to blame me externally. I will blame myself. I will be too afraid to act. The patriarchy roars in satisfaction, from inside my belly, where it lives now. These days, I am angrier than ever. In a dream where I was being chased and followed by a strange man and my boyfriend and parents weren't taking me seriously, I woke up crying. Not with fear -- I managed to escape, I hit him, I was fierce despite being absurdly helpless -- but with anger. It is unfair. Unfair, that I am twenty, and have not been equal given access to this vast world. I want to travel, and sit in parks, and in marketplaces. I hate coming home to Chandigarh, because I am trapped in these four walls for more time than I am used to. I am used to the privilege of college, of 3am walks and no slutshaming. I am used to Delhi, scary as it is, inhabited by so many kinds of people that there's almost always space for one more. Chandigarh has no space for me. I can go out if there is somebody to visit, or something to buy. Or else I am home. "Of course you are right, it doesn't matter what you wear or how you travel, but you still need to be careful na, you can't invite trouble", my grandmother tells me. She doesn't need to, I tell myself that. So I hide out here, in this safe and equal space.

Fuck that. I want to own this city, and every city I am in. I am angry that I am twenty and fierce and intelligent and yet bound up in a history and a place that is refusing to give me my fair share. Here it is: I will go crazy if I am kept in these four walls. My prison is beautiful and full of lovely people, but I need to see sky. This TEDx talk is wonderful and articulate, and yes, yes, yes, we need to loiter, we need to spend hours and days on roadsides and in parks doing nothing in particular, but sure as hell that we belong there. It is unfair that the fight is so hard, but here it is, and it must be fought. My boyfriend is kind and wise and wonderful, but when he tells me, "we must not compromise", he is wrong. Every movement of mine in a public space is a compromise, and it has been that way as long as I remember. I am still afraid, and anxious, and dream about strange men who laugh as they harass me -- I am not going to stop compromising. I do not know how to, yet. But I'd like to think I'm getting there, that we're all getting somewhere with the awareness and discourse and conversation. He changes it to, "we must compromise as little as we can". Yes. We must. It's going to be a fight every day, and it is. To reclaim public spaces for our vast and wide and skinny selves, and to change a status quo which suffocates more people than it liberates.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlgGNv5t92A&app=desktop

insides of my head

over the summer

edge

there is a certain hard look
                              that I wear on my face.

I wish I didn't.

there is a blade of truth
                               that hides under my tongue.

someday, I will get angrier
                                        at you
                                              than you will allow me to.

here, on the edge of things,
                                    it is slippery.
                                             the blade cracks like glass.
                                                      the sky shatters.

from the terrace

rainy evening I

you woke me up, and

we’re here now. I write poetry

in the damp insides of my mouth

and try not to break your

overfull heart.

the sky shudders and darkens. I hide

behind a bower in the mango tree, and smoke

a lonesome cigarette. the smoke is a silver thread

the wind pulls out of my mouth. like a secret poem.

listen, I still don’t know

whether I’m living okay. but I have words

like loose change in my pockets, and dreams

the size of cities. light slants onto my 

fingers and paints them gold.

my mother and I are listening

to the music you sent me. some of it

leaves me billowing, larger than the frame

of my little bones. a rag left in the wind

that expands to the size of a sea.

in the distance, I hear a train rumble.

the sky is quiet now, it has spent its fury.

everything is dewdrops and damp skin and light.

the lost birds start to call to me again. I tell them

to wait. to go on. to find me again.

on coming home

April 30: Closure

This time
I will be satisfied even
with no ending lines,
no last conversations
in my mind. I know
I am difficult to love.

This time, I am ready
to leave without asking
for the world. I am ready
to walk out to sea and taste
the salty air the seagulls
fly in. I am ready to fly it.

I try to be softer, kinder,
less insistent. I forget how
to love, every day, like a
language that peels off
my tongue and hangs
in the ancient rooms.

I need no names
for the trees. No names
for the different kinds of
breeze. No names for the
oceans my body meets and
falls in love with, no names
for the love I own and disown.

It is only ever endings,
and not even
in a tragic way. It is only ever
sunbirds on a terrace building
a nest that cannot last. It is
only ever lamplight and ache.

Like A, I want the good work,
the hearty meal, the tired eyes.
I want the long journeys and
I want new learnings, sunsets
that taste of rose and gold,
intimacy that curls my toes
and hurts my lungs
in happy ways.

It is only ever endings;
I am satisfied with my lot.

April 29: weight

the unbearable weight
of still feeling these
things, of feeling the
pain of a stranger's
voice scorching
your skin, of
misspelling
important words
when you thought
you never would.

my bed is full
of pieces of my life
i thought i threw away,
hid in ashtrays or tossed
out the third-floor window.

they come back in the form
of small things that itch, scratch.

the words still make me tender,
still make me ache, still hold me
underwater and naked and slick.

my body is a warzone
from a country i never saw.
i try to hold this alien grief
slow, gentle, in my palms.

i hold all the weight of
sky and forgotten dreams
on my shoulders, in my
eyes and in the words.