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Teji Grover is a Hindi Poet and translator . she received
Bharati Bhushan Agrawal award for poetry. she lives in
Chandigarh.
Thinking of Sakhis
To collect the ashes of the real
the Sons have arrived at the burning ghat
Mother
our good mother
we’re unhappy that love inhabits the earth.
On that wall of Dasasvamedha’
do you see that eye of Shankar’s snake-garland?
Right up to it, clouds had lifted the river.
It was during those floods, we had seen the weavers
put off their weaving to think of god.2
We are unhappy, mother
that we can’t put off our weaving
to think of our sakhis3
We’ve chosen such colours
the looms have gone crazy
dreaming their costumes.
Look, here come the sakhis
feigning blindness
Look—how their limbs are beyond loving
Here the loom vibrates
with the raga of longing
In their hair, the flower-like fragrance of indifference.
In which air did our lifebreath get caught
What is this, mother, Bodiless,4
in the midst of colour
So mother, are these colours
running out then?
1Name of a ghat; ten-horse sacrifice.
2Alludes to the saint.poet Kabir, a weaver by profession
3Girlfriend, beloved (f.)
4Bodiless (ananga [bodiless]; the bodiless god of love, Kamadeva)
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