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

Come now

come
let's look out
the same window

see
differently
together

lift tinted panes
make real
our lives

don't pay heed
to frequent reflections
come now.


let's find
a window

that cajoles
to re arrange
our insides

as it shows
the changing
outside

so we have
only each other
as constant

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

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

Architecture and motherhood

You feel like a design problem

I am working on, 

whose submission date 

is not yet fixed, 

by indecisive studio professors 

who want us students 

to work, just a tad bit more.

On nights before a pre-final,

like a tracing full of ideas

yet to be finalised, 

you have the power 

of lingering in my subconscious,

making me jump out 

of intermittent sleep

Each night, to engage with you.

No paper to draw on,

you draw from me what is yours now.

No name plate either;

for your loved ones 

use sounds and words

borrowed from seven languages

whose alphabets cannot be lettered.

I wipe your eye secretions, 

tears and milk stains after a feed,

and your face becomes

a completed cartridge sheet;

smudge free with a few guide lines.

Your few hair strands I comb 

so they settle paralelly

like meticulous 

brick and stone hatches 

drafted within walls.

Every once in a while 

I stick my ear to the floor 

to watch an exactly angled ray 

of sunlight works its magic 

on a sleeping you.

A roughly 1:3 scaled model 

of who you may be 

in 20 years, 

stares back at me;

your myriad expressions 

changing by the millisecond.

Surprised, I have 

an obscenely satisfying thought 

that crosses my mind;

did I just happen to create you?

**Sleeplessness invokes poetry. Written for Chundo :)

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

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

Marred maang

Two flailing oiled chotis
slap me out of stupor.
The Goddess arches out
hinged at the pole,
her saucer hands clasped
below mine.

A hooting call answered
with crystal stare
from wideapart eyes
that grazes my shoulder,
wounding me. Incoherent slang
shot through with a nasal twang.

A crisp line scarred
by ghosts of stitches drawn
on scalp with the edge of a comb
down, down the valley
of her marred maang.

The milkmaid, having borne
the consequences
of an agitated udder,
the warrior princess
sporting the memento
of unanticipated victory.

An ecstatic partner
with clammy palms, thrown
off a phugdi rotation,
Devdas marks Paro
with expressions of love
garnished with glass shards.

*** This happened one morning as I shared the foot board of a Mumbai local train with a most astonishing girl, standing in front of me. 

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

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