(After Meena Kandasamy)
Tomorrow someone will rape you
And no one will care
And they will give justifications-
You are Dalit, so impure
Who will rape you, huh!
Tomorrow someone will rape you
And it won’t be even considered rape-
They will have their explanation:
You are beef eating woman
Who will rape you in this country!
The great sons are all vegans!
Prove your rape!
And you will be dead before proving it.
Tomorrow someone will rape you
And you will be told –
You live in forests and
You are Maoists
So you are terrorists.
And they will show you the
Special power act for
Tearing apart your yoni.
For them yoni is the most
dangerous threat to the nation!
Tomorrow someone will rape you
And you won’t even know
It’s rape.
Because they have taught you
A husband has rights on you
Just as a driver has rights on the bus.*
Or as the religious Gurus preach in Jalsas-
As a woman, you are a field*
And your husband is the plough
He can plough you in his wish!
(how many times and how many ways
He has the right to decide)
Tomorrow someone will rape you
And you will be blamed.
It’s your dress,
It’s your thighs
It’s your breasts.
It’s your neck
It’s your smile
It’s your waist.
It’s your hands
It’s your legs.
It can be anything like your shoes
How can the great men control themselves
When they are made of flesh and blood
And have an all-powerful Phallus!
*Driver bus theory- it’s a common dialogue in my community that woman is the bus and the husband is the driver; he will drive at his will.
*In Islamic religious jalsas(religious congregation which is very much common in the villages and the speakers are all male,) it’s often preached that : তোমাদের স্ত্রীরা তোমাদের জন্য একটি শস্যক্ষেত্র, তাই তোমরা তোমাদের শস্যক্ষেত্রে যাও, which if roughly translates means- your wife is a field for you and you go to till the field)
Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. Her poetry collection, The Musings of the Dark was published in 2020. The book has about a hundred poems written in protest against the humanitarian crisis from the abrogation of article 370, the Delhi riots, and the Shaheen Bagh movement to the unbearable sufferings of the migrant labourers due to the unplanned COVID-induced lockdown. Her second poetry collection, Poems At Daybreak has been published by Red River Publications. The Telugu translations of her poems have been published in a collection titled, Poems That Should Not Be Written.