Poems – Deepa Vanjani

[This Haiku was inspired by looking at the wires criss-crossing the skies in the evening while walking with my pet, while the moon shone brilliant as ever. The price of urbanisation!!!]

 

 

Captive Moon

The urban moon

Enmeshed, encrypted

Daedalus in captivity.

Footnotes: In Greek mythology, Daedalus was a master artisan and craftsman who created the labyrinth on Crete, in which Minotaur [half man, half bull] was kept.

 

 

Elegy to My Baby:

(This poem is dedicated to the cause of prevention of female foeticide that remains an unresolved problem in many parts of India. It is an address of the mother to the baby she has terminated in her womb.)

 

 

 

The moment you were sown into my womb

you became a part of me.

You were the creation of a magical moment

A moment of blissful, complete love.

No one can understand that secret

No one can share it.

My body told me that you were in me

Even before the doctor could conform it.

The joy of listening to those words

‘You are going to be a mother’.

Me, a mother!

By what divine intervention had this happened?

I became your mother from that moment

I was one with your flesh

I was a manifestation of the creator himself

I was carrying a miracle profound within me.

 

In another situation I would have been pampered

‘Don’t do this, eat this’

The women of the house would have told me.

I would have thought of so many names for you everyday.

But in my situation I was damned and ridiculed

Mocked and shunned.

I was asked to do away with you

Quietly and quickly.

I fought for you, tried to take a stand

You know I must have tried hard,

Don’t you know your mother?

But you were a girl, only a girl.

I am sorry I let you down

I lost you, I terminated you.

Deepa Vanjani is the Head of the departmentDeepa Vanjani
of languages in a leading college in indore,
India and a visiting faculty with Educational
Media Research Centre, UTD and School of
Comparative Languages, Indore, Madhya
Pradesh, India.