i did not set out to write a poem on the widows. i was wanting to write about domesticity and gender. i almost accidentally bumped into the widow figure when my friend Dena, a fiction writer herself, suggested that i explore more the dangers of a domestic world. as we were sipping on our lattes at JP Java's at Austin, Dena told me, with her characteristic deadpan expression, "The domestic space is not safe at all. Push that sense of danger more."
i began to think about what exactly are the ghosts that reside inside a Bengali middle-class home. yes, I was also reading Avery Gordon's Ghostly Matters during that summer. and, i was toying with the idea of going back to some of the classic Bengali ghost stories. and, i thought about the figure of the widow-- the way it has played such a central role in Bengali Hindu modernity. i also happened to read a couple of poems on widows by modern Bengali poets during that precise time, and ended up writing two poems that obliquely refer to the widows.
as i continued to work on the chapbook manuscript, and i gave it to an editor friend of mine to read, she could not at all understand why i had the widow-ghost there to begin with. she was, after all, an american poet, who did not have any reasons to be particularly familiar with bengali/indian/south asian women's histories. during the time when we were chatting back and forth about what could be done, and i said, i am really really reluctant to add a scholarly cultural note about the role the widows play in bengali modernity and literary history, her suggestion was to write a poem called "The Widow Ghost Speaks."
i liked that! not that i thought it would solve the problem of most american writers not knowing much about the history i am writing from, but because of the sheer challenges of it. yet, i could not write an unmediated persona poem. the widow ghost, is, after all, dead. what i wanted to find out was, what does this figure represent to me -- a contemporary bengali woman. in the poem i was planning to write, i wanted to retain that sense of contemporaneity. and i had certain images in mind-- the fishbone, eating, reading, literacy. basically, things and objects of desire that the widows were prohibited from. i also had a transcription of a dream, an image of seven child-brides which has been repeated throughout the poem. through that image, i sort of wanted to introduce a certain kind of ghostliness into the body of the poem, a kind of defamiliarization of the hindu bengali wedding ritual itself.
and, i wanted to make the poem about writing. so much has been written about the widow's sexuality in bengali literature. not a whole lot has been written about how a widow might be looking into everyday details of her life--the mundane things. neither has a whole lot of attention been paid on the widow's intellectual life. yet, the widow figure cannot be read or written about through a complete disregard of the question of sexuality. hence what holds together the poem is the persistent question :
how do you write your body?
persistent and repeated. a body is obviously sexual, but it's also a lot more. body is life itself, the vassal through which we human beings become ourselves. and, there are obviously questions of gendering and writing that are immediately invoked by this referencing of body. at least, in my own mind.
i was hoping, this repetition would give the poem a sense of a chant too. indeed, the poem depends a lot on repetitions. the image of the child-bride, too, keeps coming back. almost as a chorus.
the rest of the poem, was written slowly, over several days. couple of lines at a time. and, this is the first stanza of the poem:
in some ways, this poem is collective work. it grew out of my conversations with Dena and Sara. i did not write a scholarly cultural note. but, i did depend on a quote from Dipesh Chakraborty to do some theoretical work for me. hopefully, that epigram would also reveal this bigger conversation that i am desiring between academic scholarship and creative work. a conversation that is much more common within South Asian literary circles than within American ones. but, what i learnt is that, a poem finds its communities in strange ways. and that work of finding a community can be a lot more complicated and non-linear than one can perceive of. the important thing is to remain open.
i began to think about what exactly are the ghosts that reside inside a Bengali middle-class home. yes, I was also reading Avery Gordon's Ghostly Matters during that summer. and, i was toying with the idea of going back to some of the classic Bengali ghost stories. and, i thought about the figure of the widow-- the way it has played such a central role in Bengali Hindu modernity. i also happened to read a couple of poems on widows by modern Bengali poets during that precise time, and ended up writing two poems that obliquely refer to the widows.
as i continued to work on the chapbook manuscript, and i gave it to an editor friend of mine to read, she could not at all understand why i had the widow-ghost there to begin with. she was, after all, an american poet, who did not have any reasons to be particularly familiar with bengali/indian/south asian women's histories. during the time when we were chatting back and forth about what could be done, and i said, i am really really reluctant to add a scholarly cultural note about the role the widows play in bengali modernity and literary history, her suggestion was to write a poem called "The Widow Ghost Speaks."
i liked that! not that i thought it would solve the problem of most american writers not knowing much about the history i am writing from, but because of the sheer challenges of it. yet, i could not write an unmediated persona poem. the widow ghost, is, after all, dead. what i wanted to find out was, what does this figure represent to me -- a contemporary bengali woman. in the poem i was planning to write, i wanted to retain that sense of contemporaneity. and i had certain images in mind-- the fishbone, eating, reading, literacy. basically, things and objects of desire that the widows were prohibited from. i also had a transcription of a dream, an image of seven child-brides which has been repeated throughout the poem. through that image, i sort of wanted to introduce a certain kind of ghostliness into the body of the poem, a kind of defamiliarization of the hindu bengali wedding ritual itself.
and, i wanted to make the poem about writing. so much has been written about the widow's sexuality in bengali literature. not a whole lot has been written about how a widow might be looking into everyday details of her life--the mundane things. neither has a whole lot of attention been paid on the widow's intellectual life. yet, the widow figure cannot be read or written about through a complete disregard of the question of sexuality. hence what holds together the poem is the persistent question :
how do you write your body?
persistent and repeated. a body is obviously sexual, but it's also a lot more. body is life itself, the vassal through which we human beings become ourselves. and, there are obviously questions of gendering and writing that are immediately invoked by this referencing of body. at least, in my own mind.
i was hoping, this repetition would give the poem a sense of a chant too. indeed, the poem depends a lot on repetitions. the image of the child-bride, too, keeps coming back. almost as a chorus.
the rest of the poem, was written slowly, over several days. couple of lines at a time. and, this is the first stanza of the poem:
How do you write your body?
Where the barbed-wire sets freeour land to theirs, I – three days old--spit out our grandmother's dream:a chewed fish-bone. I keep itin a thumb-sized sandalwood box--its sharp edges would allowme to cleave apart our past.Our grandmother, reluctant to letthe dream wither, plants itinside my sisters' stomach: an armcrook for them to rest in. Forever--even in death:seven child brides, hibiscus-shadesilk saris, diyas balanced on the tipsof their tongues, round and round the fire--seven times, needles stuck in their eyes.
in some ways, this poem is collective work. it grew out of my conversations with Dena and Sara. i did not write a scholarly cultural note. but, i did depend on a quote from Dipesh Chakraborty to do some theoretical work for me. hopefully, that epigram would also reveal this bigger conversation that i am desiring between academic scholarship and creative work. a conversation that is much more common within South Asian literary circles than within American ones. but, what i learnt is that, a poem finds its communities in strange ways. and that work of finding a community can be a lot more complicated and non-linear than one can perceive of. the important thing is to remain open.
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