Life Penalties ?

The human body never differentiates between nurturing a male and female foetus.

Post birth, for some, the cry at the entry into what is considered a wonderful world, is sometimes, never completed.

 And we never learn, even from animals. Who pour out their traumatic and poignant anguish in their own world.

If we only heard and learned.

 My friend Uma Shankar Pandey, posted an amazing poem called The Mourning Cat. Read it. Again and again.....

The anger didnt subside. It inspired this .

Uterine twists
in utter agony,
squeezing dry
with amniotic tears,
but so many happy wails….

For some,
it was
the last time
they were happy.

Life is a game,
only some get to play.

For others,
it is all about
being sent
in penalty kicks
into the trash.

The Ump watches it all,
wondering
if these days the game is fixed…

A Bozoical rap on the knuckles

He's back ! Bozo, Mumbai's only dog-with-his-own-blog returns again, this time to comment on what a Dog's Life is. 

Summer is often a season for holding interesting series of free public talks and stuff, in more enterprising places like Pune, where they are currently hosting something called "Vasant Vyakhyanmala", initiated in 1875, by none other than Justice Mahadev Govind Ranade, the same person, who is seen defying society and encouraging women's education and sensible integration into daily life in the currently very popular Marathi TV serial  " Unch Majha Jhoka !" (Literally, "I fly high").   The serial  is based on the then prevalent custom of child marriage.

I think Bozo has been watching this serial.  He understands it. And he has something to say.......Naturally , his mentor , Magiceye,  immediately captured that ....

Seriously, no.

I did not pose for this photo;
(and some say
I look like a statesman
in this )
But I do
spend a lot of time
just thinking about things
as a senior..

Where I come from,
the kids,
girls and boys alike
don't hang on to their mother's tail,
and
are on their own
almost from day 5,
and somewhere in my
wild early youth,
my Amembal family
took me
to their homes and heart
as their very own.

I am sure,
my sister,
like my friend Luci,
in Thiruvananthapuram,
was similarly lucky too.

I often sit at Deepak's feet
and
watch TV along with him,
and am aghast
to see that
folks who should
have better sense,
don't like girl babies,
sometimes don't allow them to be born,
sometimes kill them at birth,
and should they even live,
then they
humiliate,
attack
and
destroy their lives
for ego and money
when they are older.

We dogs are not like this,
although
it's fashionable
for some folks
to shake their coiffeured heads
in air conditioned splendour
and say
"It's a Dog's life ! "......


Like I was telling Luci
who shook her head
and said ,
"It's a Lady Human life.....
I want no part of it..."
......

Look into my eyes , folks!
And listen !
I'll tell you what a
Proud Dog's life is....

Primigravida Musings....

My FB friend Vanita Kumta participates and manages a group called Health and Fitness on FB. She recently posted about Cashews . Both the Nut and the Fruit.

And what we see here, is actually  a bunch of "pregnant" cashew fruits , ripe with health, with a  cashew nut,  encased in a green-grey leathery pouch growing outside  their bodies.  Sometimes there is a planned harvest, sometimes "acts of nature" where wild animals and others break and separate the fruit and the nut(seed). At all times, nature provides an amazing protection for the nut encased in a leathery pouch containing the vilest of fluids that can burn your skin.

"Post term" , the fruit is processed  as a vegetable, and sometimes made into the popular Goan drink, Feni.  The nuts go through fire and brimstone, to emerge as the cashews we so casually enjoy.

Just some thoughts on births in our part of the world ....

Bursting with good health
these two
gonadal ovarian types,
in advanced stages of pregnancy,
bodies
redolent with nutrients,
hang out together
in the tree,
wondering about
varieties of
conception and birth
in the world.

Child bearing
outside themselves,
in a mean looking
grey acidy sac;
sometimes
a separation
from the child at birth,
and they go on
to a Feni celebration,
leaving the child to rough it out
through a
fire and roasting
it never forgets
and  then learns
to go out into the world,
girls and boys alike.

Yet those,
who grow,
sometimes unwanted,
hidden well inside
a mother's sac
way inside her body,
designed for a safe and wonderful birth,
sometimes get separated
just like the cashew.
soon after birth.

The Cashew doesn't understand
what it is to be a girl,
and why
in a world of sensible,
so called cultured,
cerebral cortex-enabled types,
such girls
are destroyed.

And so the two
yellow garbed primigravidas,
troubled,
move a bit closer together
in the breeze ,
and thank God,
that they are Cashews....