I open the book on a random page and a mother calls me daughter. She calls me to sit with her and tells me on a day like this her mother called her too. They sat in the bed and she expected to be shown some jewel-studded heirloom. But my nani had nothing but scars to show, two marks to carry
The Women of South Asia Sing Their Defiance
In this weekend s Verse Affairs , an anthology of poems that embodies women s struggle to escape the maleness of language, and the world itself
A protest against violence on women, in the aftermath of Hathras. Photo: PTI
Women07/Mar/2021
In her poem ‘Tulips’, Sylvia Plath describes the emotional contours of a person recovering from an unknown operation in a sterile hospital room. Her husband, Ted Hughes, claimed she had written it while recovering from an appendectomy; other scholars have found the shadow of a previous miscarriage and hospitalisation in the poem. The invalid in the poem has received a bouquet of red tulips she doesn’t want â it prevents her from sinking into an anaesthetised oblivion, which is the only relief from physical and emotion pain for her. “I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself,” she writes. I was 16 years old when I first read this poem and immediately realised I could experience the t