A Sonnet: To a Husband from a Wife

By Ms. Srishti Mudaliar

01/07/2012

Every night you drive my carriage somewhere, nowhere,                                    

Amidst the chasing sprites and the winds ever famished,                         

You then hand me out on a road pitch black, unblemished,                                

And we follow the glowworms to tap round the flowers bare.                

The bright moon-beams upon a clear stream alongside glisten,               

And the stars sparkle in the calm, clear, merry, navy blue sky,                

Between them is our shikara and are candles and is music shy,              

And only you and I to this unsung merry note can sing and listen.                        

Since the day you stole me from my home and myself and brought me,   

To this unknown not so suffocating city, called my new home,                

In this little house and its little room fixed not so commodiously,             

Every morning when I wake up for a day ahead, not so wholesome,                  

This dream of mine breaks up into fragments and then again it I see,       

Reunites besides me, on you and I live it again, not so vicariously.      
               

The Wailing Fair of Jalliyanwallah Baag

By Mohit Sharma

Translated by: Srishti Mudaliar

Thy deep, dark, black abyss,

That devoured our mother’s kiss,

Selfish, wretch, appareled in red walls,

Jalliyanwallah, thy tyranny with weight upon us falls!!

The chaotic streets of the kids are now vacant,

Blackened the doorsteps the white skinned tyrant.

The patient, nimble morning ears that heeded to thy voice,

In the evening were silenced and turned cold as ice.

For the freedom to be born their hopes waited for years and more,

To see it alive none succeeded to flee from thy captivity’s door.

A revolt so peaceful, the devil would melt,

The white queen let it honored with the cannon balls pelt.

Seas of the emotions could flood enough with the pain,

In vain were those heavy showers of trickles of rain.

The sleepless insomniac nights restless,

Long and long of nightmares endless.

Under the siege of the curfew the trampled crowd,

Vultures covered their fallen kins before the shroud.

Those waiting to reach the Baisakhi’s tavern,

To their destination would never reach and return.

The woman you jilted was our mother,

Her truth you concealed under thy tanned leather,

Wait for a while if you dare to bother, look how those holes the little hearts smother!!