In Ngariyan Maring, you
are flesh, spiked with bamboos.
Riddled with holes even before the fun ends.
Exhibit number one to nine nine. Traitor.
‘Rebel pussy’ shot with mainland guns.
But, you are safe in the city.
In Gajapati, you
are flesh, pounded into the black
soil by booted pricks with brass buckles.
Exhibit numbers one not not to nine nine nine
‘Rogue tribal cunts’ scooped out with
the state’s excavators.
But, you are safe in the city.
In Khairlanji, you
are torn flesh, stripped meat on cart wheels,
skewered genitals, broken legs, Exhibit number one
not not not to one million. ‘Lowly mouse holes’
pried open with upper caste crowbars.
But, you are safe in the city.
You run the country from the city.
You have nothing to fear.
You have brains. You have malls.
You have the Metro and Parliament.
Exhibit number one million one.
The blood is not the thing.
Nor the searing wolf bites.
Nor the ripped intestines.
It is the gloat in the eyes
that bore into the flesh
that day, this day, every damn day.
Exhibit on a table, a spread sheet,
an autopsy chart, a mortician’s design,
an architecture of flesh built around a void,
a hollow, a frozen core.
(Written in the wake of the rape of a girl in a running bus in Delhi.)
