Jyoti Nair
Ahalya palpitates under their boorish-brawny lunges,
Their cudgeling moans, her capitulating sighs,
The mattress bears the brunt of those contrapuntal whipping!
"Your outrageously shimmering gown, blinded us!"
If the couch in the drawing room had eardrums, they would have been slit by now...
Crimsoned, lacerated, the couch sat, alongside Ahalya!
Beneath her ruminative tears, did she yearn to be a stone?
She's ‘the Ahalya’, who is eulogized
For smashing glass ceilings,
For walking on shard-strewn paths with peony- panache!
Whether Delhi's pummeling alley-stories, impassively flips women’s self esteem
Or in Hollywood's champagne-charade, a few are flayed, others concealed!
Ahalya trudges through existential dichotomy...
I saw her gather a fistful of pebbles again,
She puts those in the bedside table drawer!
Did I hear her say?
"If I could escape as a pebble for some days
To be savored by smoldering sandy-arms,
If I am scalded, I could be caressed by scampering spoondrifts!
I am bone-weary now, of this ostentatious life,
Of garnering plaudits, smearing these prosthetic rigmaroles!
As if to ransack through those minutes of turbulent trepidation,
I google the picture of Gautama Maharishi.
By then Ahalya had disintegrated, the phlegmatic fir surrendered as withered wisdom.
The knelling of that agonizing evening,
Plausibly, still jabs the precarious-minaret adjoining her soul.
In Hinduism, Ahalya is the wife of the sage Gautama Maharishi. Many Hindu scriptures say that she was seduced by Indra (the king of gods), cursed by her husband for infidelity, and liberated from the curse by Rama (an avatar of the god Vishnu).
Jyoti Nair is quintessentially a project management professional, she cherishes solitary mode of writing. Numerous articles and poems penned by her, have been published in leading Indian tabloids, digital news media and global anthologies. She has won several accolades for her literary pursuits, which includes the certificate for excellence in English Literature by English Poets. Way forward, she aims to harness the power of her pen, championing to eradicate inflammable social issues such as child abuse, mental health awareness, and heinous crimes against women.
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