Samyukta

Samyukta

The Goat

When she was forty-three, her fun-loving elder son told her, ‘Mom, when I see you, I am reminded of a goat.’ She joined in his laughter. But when they all went out, grief stricken, she examined her face in the…

Hostel Mate

It feels like yesterday. I joined the hostel a few days after the end of the midsummer vacation. Most inmates of the hostel had come by then. It was a Sunday. It was noon when I arrived. All the hostellers…

Sweetmeat

To a woman, love is a peculiar sweetmeat. Drugged in the sweetness of love, you can, like a magician, take her anywhere and get away with anything. You have only to take care that she does not awaken from the…

The Curse of Eve

The child was perched on the parapet, swinging her legs and watching the road below crowded with cars, trucks, buses and pedestrians. An aeroplane flew low across the sky. The child laughed and swung her legs faster. The grandmother who…

Poems

My mother came home one day without her uterus. The doctor took it out. Like someone heard me say Let’s act it out, act it out physically. I was the baby who never cried The snake on your breast who…

Morning & Other Poems

companions on my early morning ride milkmen ladies taught by lady and i to put education in unwilling heads who have reluctantly left their unyielding beds early morning joggers with pot bellies to hide dogs in hoary colours brown black…