Mandakini Patil: A Young Prostitute: My Intended Collage

 Original Text of Poem

Mandakini Patil: A Young Prostitute: My Intended Collage

- By Namdeo Dhasal

On a barren blue canvas

Her clothes riped off, her thigh blasted open,

A sixteen year old girl surrendering herself to pain

And a pig it's snout full of blood. 

The face that seems attractive is not actually a face

Behind it lies the bitter realty of a skull, the ordinary truth

When someone’s flesh is ripped out

To what terminal do the parts of the the skeleton leads you?

In the backyard of love, all you find is fruits of fear and disgust 

An infinite and sovereign nothingness stalks us all

People whom we regard as our own are mere heaps of dust or smoke

Alif is for anar

Be is for bandar

Pe is for pankha

Te is for talwar

Te is for tattoo

Se is for Samar 

So is the worship of the geographic contours of the man 

And the romance of arse- fucking

Manda your mind is neither of ash nor of marble

I feel your hairs, your clothes, your nails, your breasts

As though they were mine own: they reveal to me, within myself

colonies of the dead; hunchbacks left to die in the streets;

Sandwiches; streets; milk of she dog thats just given birth to her litter; 

They don't let me reach up to you; to your lips; up to your eyes

Until now. You and I were unrelated to each other

And there were no calls to each other burrowing holes in us . 

This period is as long as ten miles; as close a ten seconds;

And in its aria

You: me: seeds: a splinter of glass nibbling us;

And a thousand states of being.

Never before has I seen a face so devoid of light 

As was yours; and of a thousand other females like you

Flashing out from so many countries, and so many cages;

And bearing so many different names

Now I've developed a taste for a withered tree; as well as it's dried up bark

I've been dazzled by your worn- down and lackluster face.

From that lackluster look you descend into me and own me 

You make anguish scream inside me; and stream inside me; and appropriate me.

Is that the scream of an ending, or is the end itself a scream beginning?

The end is a scream; an unregretted event;

An amended constitution; and it's pretence of reform;

People stunned by darkness; themselves turn into darkness.

Sparrows come out of Darkness, flying and then they drop dead.

Their wings grow enormous; and put a world war to shame .

From the imagination,

From the reality,

From the law,

From the waterfall,

From the tree

From the shadows:

I see the light within you, stroming and grinding the grain

Grief is mentioned; and grief walks towards the grave

The beloved is only a sanctified form of a whore ; 

The lover is just a glorified pimp

Women are merely printed whores of men

Men are just pimps of women

The relationship of men and women is just like - 

Take a few whores; take a few pimps; take a few chewing sticks to clean the teeth;

And throw them away after use; and then gargle with

The holy water of the river.

Manda 

My peahen

Look out the window and a new world is born

Embrace, skin deep love 

A whirlpool of illusion, that's spellbinding all the same ;

That's not a whirlpool but mere silt; and it's just a salve to wounds.

Cut off the legs of an ant with an axe;

It will crawl till it collides with the end. 

And after that - flesh, shit , hair won't mean a thing

The air in their movement cuts foetuses.

Isn't what you gave to one man, and what took from him, enough for you?

You hallucinate that darkness is a tree, the sky, a sea, a flower, a bed: 

Hallucinations cheats; and leads to the grave

The old Madam who keeps you caged , she’s known to people as Destiny.

She seizes a beast and turns it to dust 

People who eat her up and survive, defy death , and lead what's life .

Now I see the furniture in the cafe dancing;

Chairs-tables- glasses -waiters -customers -Bread -cashier -butter

Deep in a lukewarm silence,

You sit crouched;

Looking at the luminosity

In the glass and in the cat's eyes; 

Delving into the green waves with your hands

Instead of extracting minerals from the surface

recovering compassion from it

That which really grows scales isn't really a surface

Flames refuse to look at the scales;

Only ashe stares at them; and sneezes and continues to live

People who are merely involved in living are actually dead 

And gone cold 

They fall in love and into a tangle of love and mind

Your eyes are flames; and your touch sparkes a revolution;

You are a sandlewood; and you are the healing bark of a Babul tree ;

You are a sword; and the blood dripping from the neck;

You are the living lighting, and you are the water in the bones 

Touch the animate and the inanimate

With your dry moist fingers 

And then see; how the magic in your lustreless existence works.

Just the touch of a finger

Will turn the stone

Into platinum;

And you will forget

Your ultimately

Slaughter.

On a barren blue canvas

Her clothes riped off, her thigh blasted open,

A sixteen year old girl surrendering herself to pain

And a pig it's snout full of blood.