My Women Have Spoken
Prerna Bakshi
After Meena Kandasamy
My Radha is a slut
Who could care less
About people questioning her morality
In full control of her sexuality
She freely lusts over her men
Relentlessly lusts over
Krishna - The God of love
My Laxmi is not
Shy of asking
For her share
For her unpaid
Domestic and reproductive labor
From Vishnu - The accumulator of wealth
Laxmi regarded as the embodiment of beauty
Covered from head to toe
With ornaments
For Vishnu though
Is merely an object of adornment
A marker of his status
His wealth
A "trophy wife"
If you will
As I sit here reading
The Theory of the Leisure Class
By Thorstein Veblen
No more, says
My Laxmi
As she calls for seizure of his wealth
Stands for redistribution of the wealth
That Vishnu - the capitalist
Made by stealth
My Rati is a whore
She is all about
Sexual desire
Rati - The not-so-mentioned sex Goddess
The Goddess of carnal, sexual desire
Lust, passion and sexual pleasure
The Goddess who mastered
The art of sex techniques
The inventor of countless
Sex positions
The Goddess who could enchant, and
Bring any man
Any meditating sage
Any king
To their knees
To her cunt, and
Could ask them to
Suck on it…
Suck on it…
More…
My Rati taught men
About the intricacies of sex
Long before
Vatsyayana came along
Claiming authorship of Kama Sutra
Alleging he taught the world
As the legend goes,
Born of desire ridden sweat
Of king Daksha, Rati
Was apparently considered 'impure'
For bodily fluids produced during
Sexual activity, ironically, regarded as
'Impure', in Hindu philosophy,
Were never foreign to Rati
For she symbolized
Arousal, personified those
Droplets of desire, sweat,
Cum, all bodily fluids
Labelled polluted
Rati embodied this very 'pollution'
My Rati rejects 'purity'
'Purity'-The other continuum of the Indian
Caste hierarchy-legitimation scale
My Rati dismantles it
My Sita is a transgressor
Who takes risks
Who violates rules
Who breaks moral laws
Who crosses laxman-rekha
Boundaries of patriarchy
My Sita is a brave single mother
Who can brave any storm
Without the need of any Rama
My Draupadi is promiscuous
She seduces
She disrobes
She takes on the
Monogamous marriage institution
Turns it on its head
She questions the age old adage
"Love only happens once"
As she falls in love
Several times
With five different men
Whom she marries
And the one
She loved the most
Her sakha - Krishna
Her secret lover
Yet she refuses to be shamed for it
She refuses to be shamed for
Falling in love
Several times
With each of those men
She refuses to be shamed for
Falling out of it
As many times too
My Draupadi fights against patriarchy
She mocks kings
She dethrones them
She agitates
Armored with sharp words
That cut deep
Like knives
She hones them
All my women misbehave
They break rules, cross lines, defy norms
They narrate their own stories, chart their own destinies, brave storms
Patriarchal myths can no longer define us and will be broken
For I have spoken
My women have spoken
My Radha is a slut
Who could care less
About people questioning her morality
In full control of her sexuality
She freely lusts over her men
Relentlessly lusts over
Krishna - The God of love
My Laxmi is not
Shy of asking
For her share
For her unpaid
Domestic and reproductive labor
From Vishnu - The accumulator of wealth
Laxmi regarded as the embodiment of beauty
Covered from head to toe
With ornaments
For Vishnu though
Is merely an object of adornment
A marker of his status
His wealth
A "trophy wife"
If you will
As I sit here reading
The Theory of the Leisure Class
By Thorstein Veblen
No more, says
My Laxmi
As she calls for seizure of his wealth
Stands for redistribution of the wealth
That Vishnu - the capitalist
Made by stealth
My Rati is a whore
She is all about
Sexual desire
Rati - The not-so-mentioned sex Goddess
The Goddess of carnal, sexual desire
Lust, passion and sexual pleasure
The Goddess who mastered
The art of sex techniques
The inventor of countless
Sex positions
The Goddess who could enchant, and
Bring any man
Any meditating sage
Any king
To their knees
To her cunt, and
Could ask them to
Suck on it…
Suck on it…
More…
My Rati taught men
About the intricacies of sex
Long before
Vatsyayana came along
Claiming authorship of Kama Sutra
Alleging he taught the world
As the legend goes,
Born of desire ridden sweat
Of king Daksha, Rati
Was apparently considered 'impure'
For bodily fluids produced during
Sexual activity, ironically, regarded as
'Impure', in Hindu philosophy,
Were never foreign to Rati
For she symbolized
Arousal, personified those
Droplets of desire, sweat,
Cum, all bodily fluids
Labelled polluted
Rati embodied this very 'pollution'
My Rati rejects 'purity'
'Purity'-The other continuum of the Indian
Caste hierarchy-legitimation scale
My Rati dismantles it
My Sita is a transgressor
Who takes risks
Who violates rules
Who breaks moral laws
Who crosses laxman-rekha
Boundaries of patriarchy
My Sita is a brave single mother
Who can brave any storm
Without the need of any Rama
My Draupadi is promiscuous
She seduces
She disrobes
She takes on the
Monogamous marriage institution
Turns it on its head
She questions the age old adage
"Love only happens once"
As she falls in love
Several times
With five different men
Whom she marries
And the one
She loved the most
Her sakha - Krishna
Her secret lover
Yet she refuses to be shamed for it
She refuses to be shamed for
Falling in love
Several times
With each of those men
She refuses to be shamed for
Falling out of it
As many times too
My Draupadi fights against patriarchy
She mocks kings
She dethrones them
She agitates
Armored with sharp words
That cut deep
Like knives
She hones them
All my women misbehave
They break rules, cross lines, defy norms
They narrate their own stories, chart their own destinies, brave storms
Patriarchal myths can no longer define us and will be broken
For I have spoken
My women have spoken
Listen to Prerna read the poem here:
Working notes
This poem was written in response to patriarchal myths and narratives that have long ignored, excluded, and marginalized women's voices. It attempts to retell, recreate, and reclaim history, myths, and folklore from a feminist perspective. In the context of India, doing so is even more crucial today when dissent is increasingly being stifled, especially under the current Hindu nationalist right-wing government. This poem was a small attempt to re-imagine, re-interpret, and re-construct dominant texts, epics, and scriptures such as Ramayana and Mahabharata. In case this poem has disturbed some people, maybe they’ve been comfortable for far too long.
About the author
Prerna Bakshi is a writer, scholar, translator, and activist of Indian origin, presently based in Macao. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Linguistics at the University of New England, Australia. Her work has previously been published in over three dozen journals, newspapers, and magazines, most recently in Silver Birch Press, Wilderness House Literary Review, Kabul Press, Misfit Magazine, Peril magazine: Asian-Australian Arts & Culture, and Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature. Her full-length poetry collection, Burnt Rotis, With Love, is forthcoming from Les Éditions du Zaporogue (Denmark) later this year. The poem “My women have spoken” will be a part of the collection. She tweets at @bprerna.