We don’t need the colors
Rioting within our skins
Merging with the salt
Of our palms and dried tears
Shrieking against our breath
And yet we find ourselves
Drenched in thirsty colors
Of faith
We don’t need your gods
Protected in the sanctum
With doors of gold
While edges of our dupattas
Lie soaked with blood
Stuck on broken bricks
Of savaged streets
We don’t need your words
Dripping with rootlessness
And myriad dreams
Of a home,
That doesn’t exist, hiraeth
Vestiges of an estranged land
Mingled with
Unheard stories of Thoha Khalsa
We don’t need your weapons
Swords, guns and blunt agony
That you would need for a war
We have gathered leaves of a poison tree
Hidden under the mattresses
Should you come barging in
To encroach our bodies
We have hidden a well
Deep under the garden soil
The dark waters,
making diamond shaped ripples
Just so, us
Women forsaken by gods,
can cut ourselves
And bleed, choking on our own tears
Before your rapacious tongues
Can defile our soil
A score of us
Against a million of you
You said you have divided the earth
And so the women are looted
As per the side of gods they are with
Yet, no gods I find
In your zombie eyes
Only a furore, unblinking
all soaked with crimson
And a truck full of women
Dragged to alien earth
Orphaned, taken
Without consent
You talk about gods
Laminated in silver sheets
I ask you, ye faithful
You draw your weapons
And howl name of Gods that be
Tell me,
Who are the women with ?
-Rianka Bose Saha
***For this piece, I have to thank Shivani Salil. I have developed this insatiable thirst for the stories of Partition. Thank you for inspiring my words.
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