Malashri Lal
1.
Sita’s Rasoi
Maternity calls
for justice,
No favourite child.
Sita’s rasoi, a stone slab on which
warmed single mounds
of flour rest.
Rotis dance into a shape,
flat, brown edged, uneven rounds.
Take one each
Little Bakha, you too.
Be sure it’s an equal share,
not a morsel must
exceed anyone’s due.
What did you say--
The rotis are not exact rounds so
What is equal share?
That puzzles a mathematical man
Who may know enough to solve this query.
Uneven jagged edges, uncertainties they might mull over
As Father, Priest, Teacher.
I have decreed as Mother bountiful
You my foster child, elsewhere born,
Look to the old texts how to divide equally these uneven pieces,
No bias
No trespass
No waste.
Food it is that holds us humans together.
The poem was composed during the early months of the pandemic in India when thousands of migrants were walking back ‘home’ to their villages and people volunteered to feed them meals. The rasoi or kitchen is a cultural symbol of solidarity that crosses the boundaries of caste and class. ‘Sita’s Rasoi’ in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, is supposedly the kitchen used when Sita came as the royal bride and cooked a symbolic first meal for her kingly family. I shift the scene to the final chapters of the Ramayana, to a rasoi in sage Valmiki’s hermitage where Sita is living in utter simplicity. According to the Ramayana, Sita, abandoned by Rama, delivered her twin sons, Luv and Kush, at Valmiki’s ashram. The boys grew up in the company of ‘lesser’ born children. I imagine Sita’s maternal love for Bakha, an orphan child and the playmate of her royal sons, eating together at Sita’s kitchen. Bakha is also the name of the protagonist in Mulk Raj Anand’s novel, The Untouchable.
2.
Rani Padmini today
On golden sands a beauteous queen
Did bring the covetous gaze
Of a conqueror vain and quite supreme
Who longed for her with craze.
The Chittor king did vow in vain
To protect his hapless queen
But finally he was made to yield
To a plan quite wise though lean.
Alauddin saw the beauteous queen
Tranquil among her maids
Her image mirrored on the wall
The real woman he craved.
The manly man was set afire
His appetite was cheated
He swore he’d kill to everyman
Till the beauteous lady yielded.
Mounting an army strong in arms
Alauddin plotted destruction
The Chittor king, he knew the enemy
Had plans for an abduction.
Padmini prayed and implored her maids
To light a pyre of chandan wood
The Bards tell of a myriad women
Who self- immolated for the good.
Today Padmini’s sacrifice
Is frowned upon as wrong
I ask you if you can rewrite
Values the past held strong?
The story belongs to 13th -14th century Rajasthan. Padmini, the beautiful queen of Rana Ratan Sen of Chittor was coveted by the Alauddin Khilji, the Sultan of Delhi, especially after he saw her reflection in a mirror. He laid a siege on Chittor, and Padmini chose the custom of Jauhar, or mass self- immolation with her maids, rather than yield to Alauddin’s power. This story was adapted in 2018 to make a popular and controversial Hindi film, Padmaavat, directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali.
Malashri Lal, Professor in the English Department (retd), University of Delhi, has authored and edited sixteen books including the most recent, co-authored with Namita Gokhale, Betrayed by Hope: A Play on the Life of Michael Madhusudan Dutt (2020) . She continues to serve on juries for book awards. Malashri Lal is currently Member, English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi. Her poems and stories have been published by Indian Literature, Confluence and in anthologies. Her specialization is in literature, women and gender studies.
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