Two Poems in Pratilipi/Thumbelina-Charit

Two of my poems came out in Pratilipi. You can find them here. In many ways, the poem "thumbelina-charit" is one of my most personal poems, political too. So, seeing it within a journal-space, I could not help wondering, how will my readers read it. Or, will they read it at all? In many many ways, the poem is an attempt to put in words my reflections of the gender-politics of the leftist social movements, the way they often think of "women's participation" as the ultimate goal. Consequently, the emphasis begins to fall on mere "participation" and never really on how that participation was achieved, and what that participation entailed. Now, that I re-read it, I think, there is also a fair amount of that political confusion which had been mine for the last two decades. I know, it's not the confusion/experience of the majority. And, if I have to be perfectly honest, it's that kind of confusion which is not only "obsolete" now, but is fit to be kept inside the glass-cases of a museum. But it has been very real for me, for a lot of my friends, who in a post-Naxalbari Kolkata/West Bengal/India had tried to find political direction in non-CPI/CPI(M) Marxism, while questioning a lot of the basic tenets of Marxism itself. How does that confusion look from the perspective of a woman? That has been my quest throughout the poem. But then, the poetic speaker here is not me. There are lots of personal stuff in this poem, but not enough of auto-biography. Neither, in my opinion, is it confessional. I think, trying to fit the historical/political material into the Thumbelina-story framework, had also helped me to prune out some of the more autobiographical stuff, which was there in the earlier version of the poem, had been pruned out. In so many ways, the essential visual of this thumb-size woman of the Thumbelina story, had always disturbed me. I found it to be extremely violent, and there was no way I could ignore that aspect. And the two, the basic theme and the material I was bringing to fill the gaps in the fairy-tale plot, I think, complemented each other in the end. Now, it's for the readers and the critics to decide on the rest.

In a way, I am happy, that this poem found home in an Indian journal. For lots of different reasons.