Cracked
Haldwani, India
2021, Senior, Poetry & Spoken Word
A woman bends over me,
staring at the cracked mirror of my waters.
Letting her dark hair into my reserved body—
I lie astonished, rippling as she washes her
hair in me. The frosty winds of November sweep
through the delicate curves of her ashen face.
I observe her tattered sari, her weak arms and chapped lips.
I hear the muffled sounds of her anklets
as she dips her cracked heels into my healing waters.
I accept all her pains and all her dirt alike
for water never complains.
And when she dares deep into my soul
I hold her like a mother does her child,
blanketing her in my soothing arms.
She looks at me through the dark veil of her damp hair.
Her eyes betray her pain,
but her lips stand still in secrecy.
Swiftly, she emerges out of my waters
as if reminded of her thirsty children.
She bends over me once again
and silently fills her pots—
earthen pots patched with moss.
Once, then twice, and thrice… filling her empty
pots with my water and her empty eyes with tears.
And once the water overflows,
she turns away into the depths of Thakur’s Garden.
Her anklets echo in the silence of the night.
A sound so sweet it looks out of place
in the terrible shadow of the
Thakur’s mansion.
I lie touched by the untouchable,
bluer and somehow stale.
For all water is not equal in
the eyes of the Thakur.
But all thirst is equal
in a cracked world where people
are denied fundamental rights.
I ripple in distress, cracked still,
waiting for the woman with her cracked pots
and for the Thakur with his cracked heart.
Maybe someday our cracks
Will fit in:
And the woman will venture deeper into my waters.
And her anklets will sing without fear.
Her pots will no longer bear moss
And the Thakur’s Garden will come alive with the
sound of her children.
And I?
I will no longer be cracked;
divided between the pure and the untouchables.
I will just be water.
Water that never complains.
Reflection
I still remember the day when I read ‘The Thakur’s Well’ in grade six. Our teacher decided to take up the question mentioned in the ‘Before you read’ section of the book: Do you think all water is equal? The question was very confusing to me at first. How can water be different? It is the same tasteless, odorless, colorless fluid that comes out of taps and filters or falls as rain. It did not occur to me back then that water could be divided along caste and class lines. Many years have passed since that English class. What started as an attempt to answer a mere question led me to a journey where I discovered how social evils manifest themselves in many forms, often appearing unrelated at first glance. This poem is based on villages where most wells and ponds are reserved for the ‘high castes,’ and the ponds meant for the Dalit people or untouchables often dry up during the summers or suffer from neglect. The word Dalit means broken or cracked, which is a theme repeated throughout the poem. The color blue represents Dalit Resistance and the open skies, under which every person stands equal. I read about the practice of Joothan, where Dalit people are given stale food, crumbs, and stagnant water to consume. This gave me the idea of describing the water as stale, a metaphor for the age-old practice of Joothan. Through this poem, I have tried to present this cracked society by personifying water as the narrator. The poem’s structure, scattered words, and lines represent the broken state of Indian society. Using metaphors and adjectives, I have tried to paint the image of casteism and its impact on the lives of the Dalit people as I see it.