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.

16.12.2019

Published in Cafe Dissensus Everyday blog in April 2020

https://cafedissensusblog.com/2020/04/07/three-poems-by-pooja-ugrani/

Also published in The Kali Project: Invoking the Goddess Within / Indian Women’s Voices on 08/01/2021 by Indie Blu(e) publishers

On having entered a room

On most days I witness

seesaws of alternating identities 

as we hiccough through planned exchanges 

and spontaneous spurts

engaging in our own little play, 

trying to sit still, weightless in the centre, 

as if we do not matter

Today’s different, somehow

cracks laden with seeped pretension threaten collapse, 

realignments of agreed-upon definitions for this space,

as the sanctity of boundaries between relations 

that changed behind closed doors

is dragged into the public eye 

With blaring earphones and eyes shut

I no longer exist in this room

now I am a cat that waits 

to jump out of balance, to find myself 

to make me whole 

to become manifold, timeless

18.10.2019

Published in hākārā: a bilingual journal of creative expression, Turbulence, Issue 12 in September 2020 

https://www.hakara.in/pooja-ugrani/

I want to sing like you

To Vidhya Gopal
I want to sing like you

I sing like the
single running stitch
of an unoiled tailoring machine,
reaching, quite linearly
from one point to another,
amply wandering, uncontrolled
outside the edges of sur in the songs i sing

You sing like the
convoluted floral embroidery
of a kurta worn proudly
created by hands, weathered by riyaaz,
making listeners lose themselves to
the nuances your textured voice creates
in snippets caught on Insta and Facebook

The completion of your song
holds no relevance to me
as the safar has become
more khoobsoorat than the manzil
and i enjoy your rendering of individual words
as you nurture and embellish them
with seemingly effortless harqatein

Your singing comes from a place of truth without pretentions.
It has made me knock on the door
of that room within me.

15.05.2019

I have been following this girl for sometime now on Facebook and Instagram and my, how she inspires me! Total fan I have become!

Published in The Punch Magazine, the Byword on 14/12/2019

https://thepunchmagazine.com/the-byword/poetry/her-marred-maang-and-other-poems

The ride home

6.45 pm on a Saturday, two bodies try to catch up
with traffic swayings and omnipresent speedbreakers
Our Maruti Alto negotiates its presence and passage
with bikes, cows and vegetable carts

A third body inverts itself between the two seats
Legs up and hands groping air reaching towards a wheel that juts out of the car dikkie

10 minutes of flailing in limbo
My right shoulder bettered
by an afternoon session
at the physiotherapist groans

A moment before I falter and let her jump
for her prized wheel and crash,
You park the car and jump out
Plucking our bawling distraught child out of my arms

In the car now drenched by a wave of silence
Shuddering more out of exhaustion than anticipation
I look out to see a vision radiating happiness
Vismaya in her new red and black tricycle
a fair distance away from the park.

Published in The Punch Magazine, the Byword on 14/12/2019

https://thepunchmagazine.com/the-byword/poetry/her-marred-maang-and-other-poems