the men have fled to the city
Ghaziabadh, India
2021, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
the brahmaputra is the only man-river, ma says.
the kaveri, with her gold and coal slippers,
is a woman. the jhelum, ravi, beas, chenab
all knead wheat and steam rice—like women.
the indus births men, molds them into kings.
she is a woman. even the ganges herself,
spouting from lord shiva’s scalp, the ganges too,
stretched thin and overwrought, is only a woman.
no wonder men dump their dead in her arms.
wash off their sins on her silica skin,
leave bleach and grimy sulfur under her fingernails,
wrap their polyethylene terephthalate fingers around her neck.
the world is cruel to women, crueler still
when she has wretched mouths to furnish full;
the waters of the ganges are best suited
for temple rituals, the kitchen stove, the laundry.
but the brahmaputra, he keeps the axomiya safe,
ma says. the man-river patrols the pristine pastures
like a night watchman, growls at the thieves,
by the fence-line, shakes his thundering fists
at the loitering miscreants. no mischief is made,
when the mighty brahmaputra stands guard, ma insists.
when the lawn furniture is swept away overnight,
she is baffled. when the crops swelter year-long
when they wilt wistful, in want of water
the man-river musters a feeble monsoon in reply,
and jostles the house in rage, all winter.
the rhinos in kaziranga national park are parched.
the thrushes and babblers sing songs of deprivation.
the grandchildren starve, and my mother, she despairs,
they’re willing to brawl with the men too?
the old world is melting ma, we say.
melting like wax, its soggy carbon residue curdling,
into malformed patches of poverty and sickly heat.
and the men won’t protect us, we say.
the men have skipped town, ma, for the city.
they’ve left us to fight the floods alone.
when the tides come to sweep you away,
don’t ma, don’t look for their calloused hands
to pull you ashore. the old world is gone.
Reflection
I come from the Axomiya community, in Assam, India, sustained by the Brahmaputra - known as the only "male" river in the gendered Axomiya language. My family migrated from village, to town, to city in search of a better life. In this time, we witnessed many comforts of the "old world" wither: income from agriculture plummeted, the Kaziranga Forest suffered, rivers flooded worse each year, and the monsoon began to waver. In the past two years that I’ve worked in literacy within low-income households, I’ve observed a collective realisation in the downtrodden: the world has changed more in these last ten years than in the past 50. Moreover, many have begun to realise that the institutions supposed to have been looking out for us - the government, international bodies, media - have failed us miserably. In this poem, I call these institutions "the men" and represent the downtrodden through the Axomiya women. I wrote this in the style of a box poem - 8 lines per stanza, 8 words per line. I tried to paint an accurate topographical picture of the "female" rivers (the Kaveri’s mineral deposits; the agricultural communities served by the Beas, Chenab, Jhelum and Ravi; the Indus Valley Civilisation made famous by its mighty kings). I highlight the destruction of the Ganges (polluted by the dumping of industrial wastes, purification and funerary rituals), and the downslide of the Brahmaputra - taking with it, all of Assam. Here, I hope to capture the disarray of many, like "Ma," watching the world they once knew and trusted, collapse.