by Sukrita Paul Kumar
Inspired by the writings of Simone de Beauvoir, Sukrita Paul Kumar writes a poem on gender equality and liberation from gender identities.
Many came,
Knocked and went away
But my friend, Simone de Beauvoir,
You didn’t
You haven’t left,
The Second Sex, Mandarines and all;
Pulling at the delicate membranes of my self
Disentangling ritual from emotion
on the cross roads of all my loves
you entered the doors of my inner scape
my guiding star, my lighthouse
My friend, you are my enemy
Throwing me far out into the sea
Amidst sharks and whales
You led me to sources of fire
Ismat, Annie Apa and Sylvia Plath too,
All men, my meditations
For the birth of a ball of light and flames
My icon of worship,
The Greek Androgyny swinging hand in hand
with Ardhanarishwar
Landing on this land,
Your land, Simone
I see it all,
The ashes of lava
Over your territory disperse
The fireballs of light blowing
between the East and West
Beyond gender,
beyond male and female
Born and brought up in Kenya, Sukrita Paul Kumar is a noted poet and critic, teaching literature in Delhi currently. Formerly, a Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, she is an Honorary Fellow of the International Writing Programme, University of Iowa (USA), as also of Hong Kong Baptist University and Cambridge Seminars. She is honorary faculty at the Durrell Centre at Corfu (Greece). At present she holds the Aruna Asaf Ali Chair at the University of Delhi. She has published several collections of poems and many critical books. While her latest co-edited volume is Speaking For Herself: An Anthology of Asian Women’s Writings (Penguin India), she has also recently published Poems Come Home (HarperCollins) & Rowing Together (Rajkamal), bilingual books of poems with Gulzar and a fellow Hindi poet, Savita Singh. She has been the Guest Editor of several journals in India and abroad, including Crossing Over (University of Hawaii), “Muse India” (Indian Literatures) and “Margaret Lawrence Review”.
