MOTHER WRITES TO INDIRA GANDHI
Dear Madam
Just wondering, what’s transpiring?
Why does India despair of your Emergency?
Media are saying: Our star is fading
While you’re busy sexing a swami.
A pilot wants to bucklemeup in his sexjet.
He’s pompous. Frequency has amplified.
Madam G, hear my plea. Empty the sky.
Show your ire. Command him, Cease-Fire.
A woman’s mind is no man’s land.
I dry my vaginarags out on a string.
They flutter like pale buntings
In Kashmir’s pine-scented air.
My husband remarried. She’s young.
She waddles, yawns, burps, and farts.
Her two readymade kids call me, Dear
Sweet Big Mom, Pyaari Badi Ami Jan.
My husband says she will
take good care of me.
It’s tearing me apart, Indira,
And I’m again losing my mind.
By Rafiq Kathwari, Winner, The Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award 2013.