RECLAIMING MY TIME
Monkey anthropomorph, convenience store Apus, curry jokes, your driver is Ramesh, do we live with elephants and snakes, overbearing smelly homes, mocking our clothes [error … RECLAIM … tired of this shit]
lustrous maroon garment curated, gold thread embroidered, created, chiffon cotton,
silk, decorating this
woman whom you have the pleasure to see
each pleat
each drape
belongs where it should be
in a mall or down the street
your mocking
does nothing
it does
nothing
for me
sneer at our way of being
then show up in bindis
palms with mehndi
butter chicken & ‘naan bread’
for the evening
Doesn’t it get tiring? The hypocrisy is baffling.
Selective acceptance? Now, that is just embarrassing.
For so long we stayed quiet
Thinking acceptance takes time
Only to realise, we were silenced,
it’s not like we had a choice when you colonised
Took years to fight back
and getting older to comprehend
Being selfish was a choice made by cruel intentions
at the wrath of your hands
Now it’s our time to make choices and our intentions are
reclaiming our voices
reclaiming our worth
reclaiming our right to exist
and we will no longer be shamed or mocked
we will wear our sarees and eat our curries
as we
reclaim our time.
To be
Many a night I wonder how I came to be
here in this city
With my hands and knees
clean and unblemished
A working body and mind
Sheltered, fed, kept safe
Many a night I wonder how I could’ve been
in another city
My hands not my own and bruised knees
Unclean and aching
Functioning and surviving
Fighting, fearing, unsafe.
Many a night I wonder
if it is luck,
privilege
that I get to be
happy, independent and
me.
Many a night I wonder
what it would’ve been
if I wasn’t so lucky.
Had my parents not made it out
and I grew up in a city
that never got to be.
Aastha Agrawal is an Indian poet and creative based in Naarm (Melbourne, Australia). She is currently enrolled in the Masters of Creative Writing, Editing and Publishing at the University of Melbourne. Aastha has been published in the likes of Fashion Journal, Adolescent.net, Esperanto Magazine, and Moody Zine, to mention a few. She works as a freelancer, however many of her endeavours can be found on her website enchantedclub.net