The Surat Woman (A Poem) - (SANSKRITI v4 n1 5 of 8)

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SANSKRITI
a bimonthly publication of students
at the University of Pittsburgh

Vol. 4: # 1 -- a special issue on communalism - 2 -- April 25 1993
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The Surat Woman

Surat, December 21, 1992: A 19-year old girl who was gang-raped and
tonsured is convalescing in the Surat civil hospital. She is one of
the victims who was pulled out from the ill-fated Bhusaval-bound
train on December 10. Her brother who was accompanying her to
Dhulia was stabbed and burnt alive in front of her... (The Times of
India)

parting the horizon for a slow egress
the raped woman takes with her
a necessary dream.
hundreds would attend her wedding.

a stark memory of milk boiling over and
burnt by the flame and the smell
curdling in her nostrils.
her vision was an eyeball cast in a red
patchwork of train lines and cattle entrails.

last summer on the train to Bhusaval
we had got a berth.
bhaijaan had run in vain,
they were many and faster.
when she stubbornly ran the track
it was to survive only.

they had waited so long for the land
seven more years and it will be ours.
then the dam would bring electric lines
and water and the slow churning of the soil.
she took a fistful of grain
and fed the ants. they would survive the cold.

the earth was not protected by the naked
woman's garment; sintered, bald and cracked
she was now covered by the dried, brittle,
faded leaves of many trees and many lives.

if you don't eat, ma, you will remain thin
you have to grow, no, grow. be fertile.

the man talked of a wondrous country
new, parted and thriving.

he was not lying
he only wanted things and would take them.
lazy men go to the city and work
he would taunt. money, jobs.

somewhere she knew silences were enforced
only quiet talk remained of the drying waters
when they came on the wings of the predators
her people seemed silent; screams, shouts
the sound of pain, death and torture all doused
by the laws of the land.

she would run, run as if a blinding energy
was drawing her towards a memory of life.
wasn't it mangoes she loved at the peak
of summer. or was it her fading, smudged
notebooks from class six.

the video camera saw through its electronic eyes
and wrote history on its ferromagnetic grains
her panting, her screams.

when they caught up and tripped her
she handed them her memories and was free
of its shackles.

the camera wrote about their religious fervor
as they trampled and brutalized her. it
did not seek footnotes explaining her screams
and of course
it missed mentioning that she was still
dreaming, disbelieving.

-- Rahul De'

This issue was put together by Rahul De', Sangeeta Kamat, Biju Mathew,
Ranadhir Mitra, Phil Mabry, Vinod Pavarala, Madhava Prasad, and Aparna
Rayaprol. Address all correspondence to: Sanskriti, c/o R.De', 282 MR,
Univ of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh PA 15260 or by email to
ra...@vm2.cis.pitt.edu. This publication is partially funded by
readers like you. No copyright restrictions apply. However, CopyLeft
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