Three Poems by Pooja Ugrani
Painting: Otto Laske
By Pooja Ugrani
Palimpsest
I witnessed a child, wronged
inside a temple and vowed
I wouldn’t enter one
its sanctity, polluted for me
to a point of no return
the horror that child
must have gone through
contained there
conflicted hard and battered
my image of a temple
of stone walls dimly lit,
of facing light, bowing down
eyes shut, to keep in and not keep out
silences where voices are heard
assuring you that you are safe
I shut down, impotent, helpless
hugged my young child
and cried each night
I cursed myself
for having brought her
into this messy coccoon,
laced with pervading, engulfing
nightmarish possibilities
I lived and quietened a million what ifs
I wanted to forget that face
I wanted to unsee and unremember everything
Recently I took my child
with her grandparents
to a temple
It didn’t feel traumatic,
enough time had passed,
enough for a mute observer
on Facebook pages
not having to clean up and deal
with the mess later
not getting daily reminders
of horrors from the past
A new patch stitched over old clothes
as fresh memories cover older ones
into gentle oblivion
accepting
not negating, not normalising
only, very selfishly
finding my peace.
***
To the boomer who called my baby a burden
A throwaway remark
dished out at lunch,
oozing slyly
at the colleague/husband
by someone who has
never provided for me,
and never will.
You have no idea,
how and why we choose
to live with each other,
nursing our soreness,
standing up to face the world,
while a little being observes us
closely, intently.
As I step out to earn
he steps in to rear
I let her fall, dust her wounds,
needing her to be tough
he dresses her up,
makes her look into the mirror
to feel beautiful
I teach her to live
with what we have
he allows her to indulge
every once in a while
There is no space in our lives
for unmeasured judgements
or unimaginative minds
weighed down
by the beliefs of yesteryears
You cannot begin to fathom
this magnanimously beautiful chaos
we have painstakingly worked on.
We sit
on each other’s shoulders
we are our own giants,
learning, dancing, fighting, fluid,
filling each other’s voids
with everything
that is anything but a burden.
***
C
I can draw a C on your bum
when you stand sideways.
It was after you said this
that I started using
three limp layers
to drown a C of flesh.
Extending below the waistline
slits on sides of a straight cut,
aiding locomotion,
accommodating the C.
To inspire flight,
one would need
to cut, rotate and hinge
these fluttering flaps
along a perpendicular axis.
Now they instigate
many agonizing, culture-driven,
guilt-ridden, cover-ups
of the already covered,
as with Anarkalis,
their spacious insides expand auras,
promise more fun, billowing,
cajoling to spin, mirroring aunts
blown up by Harry Potter.
An accessible grab
in the washroom,
a swift pull ensuring
friction between cloth, skin and hair —
fabric finds function
by sucking moisture.
I savour un-dampened bliss.
I step out with wet patches
that I move consciously
to improbable locations,
hoping that they dry off unnoticed
for basic social acceptance.
Bio:
Pooja Ugrani is an architect by education, a teacher by profession, a poet by whim and an artist by choice. She graduated from Sir J.J. College of Architecture, Mumbai and holds a PG diploma in Indian Aesthetics. Her poetry has been published in various online forums and in an anthology of Bangalore poets named Po’try in 2017. She considers the cities of Mumbai and Bangalore her twin homes and currently spends time jumping between them, writing about the small everyday things in life that intrigue and engage her.
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One Response to “Three Poems by Pooja Ugrani”
Your first two poems have such life by the sheer simplicity of wording and truth conveyed.