Chaitali Sengupta
From the womb of blazing sacrificial fire,
She is born.
A woman devoid of childhood,
a feminine pawn.
Split among five men
She is yagnaseni, the daughter of fire.
And forever she burns,
in the patriarchal flame of hatred, greed, lust and ambition
like an earth on fire.
Helpless, bleeding, wrapped in one cloth,
she stands helpless,
on the streets of history,
bereft of honor,
covering herself in shame.
Her flowing mane,
untamed, blood-red,
twisted in the hands of tyranny
causing a thousand pain.
Her pain is the pain
of each disrobed woman,
her torment, a legacy,
stitched to our soul.
Her honor, still a question mark,
a movable property,
on the shrine of Dharma.
Through the raging river of time,
the stripping continues,
through cultures,
through societies,
the same draupadis,
gambled and given away,
at the hands of patriarchy.
Draupadi: She is the tragic heroine, one of the central characters and the common wife of the Pandavas in the Indian epic, Mahabharata.
Yagnaseni: is another name for Draupadi in the epic Mahabharat.
Dharma: The concept of Dharma is pan-indian. It means broadly the path of righteousness
Chaitali Sengupta is a writer, translator and journalist from the Netherlands. Her published works include two translations from Bengali to English: “Quiet whispers of our heart” and “A thousands words of heart”. Recently her first prose poem collection Cross- Stitched words was published from the USA. Her poems have also been anthologized in many international collections and she writes for many print and online journals. You can find her at: https://senguptac.wixsite.com/my-works
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