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The Poetry Issue 2022: A Different Kind of Arithmetic and other poems

The Poetry Issue 2022: A Different Kind of Arithmetic and other poems

Poetry as a Bridge Between the Present and Past


I’ve always believed in poetry as a form of activism, where the role of the poet goes beyond the realm of personal experience, where the poet is a documenter and interlocutor of the times. As poet and activist Audre Lorde says, “Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence.” In the same spirit as poets and activists Adrienne Rich, June Jordan, and Audre Lorde, I feel that the act of women writing poetry is a radical one. I also believe that poetry — especially in the context of gender, race and cultural identity — is one of witness, documenting what is said in the margins, or what might be hidden, waiting to be unearthed. Such poetry often acts as a catalyst for raising awareness and becomes a bridge between the present and past. This is probably why I found myself so drawn to historical persona poetry, where stories of the past are explored poetically in the voice of historical figures. Works like Olio by Tyehimba Jess and Anarcha Speaks: A History in Poems by Dominique Christina dazzled me in their ability to give voice to people whose extraordinary stories had never been heard. 

In 2017, I was researching South Asian history, particularly about the first Indian woman to have come to the United States. When we think of South Asian American history in context of India, we’re given the narrative of engineers and doctors that immigrated to the United States in the 1960s and 70s or of Sikh farmers from Punjab that settled in central California in the late 1800s/early 1900s. But I knew there was more. This inadvertently led me to a sepia-tinted photograph of three female medical students from India, Japan and Syria in their native dress, who all converged in Philadelphia in 1885 and I was blown away by what I found. While this photograph echoed exoticism, orientalism and the West’s fetishization of the East, I was drawn to the elegant Indian woman seated in a saree, her Mona Lisa-like glance following me, her lips curled up in a half-smile. Her image radiated such fierce determination that I had to know more. Who was Anandi Gopal Joshee and how did she become India’s first female medical doctor? How did she make her way from India to Philadelphia all alone in the 19th century, breaking from tradition and crossing black waters considered taboo? I was shocked to discover that many of her experiences echoed my own, even though we were separated by more than a century and it was through poetry that I found myself exploring our shared connection of finding one’s own voice and belonging to more than one place. Until very recently, Anandibai’s story has been told through the lens of her husband being her saviour and inspiration. By telling Anandibai’s story through poems in her own voice, my hope is to not only restore Anandibai’s agency and give her story back to her, but to also highlight her sharp intellect, fierce determination, and empathy. 


A Different Kind of Arithmetic


Before I could count properly on my fingers
Ek don teen char, I learned division

              the haveli halved into two sections
              the mardana and zenana

a different kind of arithmetic —
the louder the men spoke
 
                the softer the women 
                never in the same room
 
next to each other
unless an auspicious occasion
 
               children were the exception
               of which I was one
 
running freely between both 
a threat to no one
 
                like a son I consumed rice 
                with extra ghee, tumbling 
 
with my brothers who teasingly
called me malla after I defeated them 
 
                repeatedly, I was strong and proud 
                like our fabled ancestors who served 
 
in courts and wars, whose accounts 
lay preserved in scrolls, one whom I met 
 
                 in a dream, a valiant soldier  
                 who promised great things
 
were sure to come
Aai tried to beat it out of me 
 
                 this unladylikeness, this streak of obstinacy
                 but Babasaheb treated me as one of the boys 
 
indulging my dreams and foibles
his eyes crinkling when I ran to him 
 
                 each evening under the shade of a giant   
                 Peepal tree, sitting on his lap unloading 
 
the day’s thoughts — my fears 
and world queries 
 
                  asking him the difference between 
                   my dolls and idols of Gods
 
why both lay mute in one’s hands 
at the mercy of others’ inclinations


Lagnaachi Bedi (A Suitable Match)

‘We marry before we know what it is for.”
   —Anandibai Joshee, in a letter to Mrs. Theodocia Carpenter, 1874


Bhatji, the priest, shows up 
with scrolls in his satchel 
patrikas of prospective grooms
I am never in the room 
when they do the gunamilan 
and how powerful the moon
that determines our alliance
ashtakoot — eight aspects
to see if we match or cross

The stars align —
you are twenty-six and I, not quite nine
no misfortune upon you, though you are widowed
never stripped of color nor sequestered to a harsh life
for it is your good fortune to be born a man
my saubhagya to be a postmaster’s second wife
moving place-to-place like a mailed letter
gathering the stamp of bhinnshahere
and how lucky I am you have no demands 
no money, no gold, only the promise 
to teach me, to make me wise 
and when we first meet, you ask my name 
Tujhe nav kahe? To gauge my ability 
hear my voice, as I stare at my toes 
a downward gaze passed 
through centuries
when suddenly I lift my head 
peer straight into your eyes
and reply, Majhe nav
Yamuna Ganpatrao Joshee aahe

Bhinnshahere (Marathi): Different cities
Tujhe nav kahe (Marathi): What is your name?
Majhe nav Yamuna Gunpatrao Joshee aahe (Marathi): My name is Yamuna Gunpatrao Joshee


Loss: An Invocation

1877

On the 11th day we were to name you
with careful consideration —
moon sign, birth month, family deity
touching your tongue with honey 
that you should speak sweet 
a black thread tied around your wrist
to ward off unfriendly glances
but the only ceremony left is mourning 
ten days you suckled then went still 
and my breasts that leaked every two hours  
in memoriam grow hard and cold

This humility that keeps us indoors 
is what killed you, my son, what kills our own
shying from a doctor’s touch, another man’s
we grieve under the shade of our sarees
as men go about their daily business 
and through your loss I find purpose
my son with no name birthing a dream 
and I volunteer myself to my countrywomen
as I take the oath of Hippocrates
to help and heal, to do no harm, to don 
the white coat only men have worn

A Plea to Make Her Story


A found poem culled from a letter written by Anandibai Joshee to Alfred Jones on June 18, 1883, requesting admission in the Woman's Medical College of Pennsylvania.


Dear Sir, 

I beg to be allowed to enter the Women’s Medical College of PA
upon any terms pecuniarily consistent with my means 
please trust that my case is exceptional and peculiar 
I am pushing forward as fast as I can
I have learned to read and speak in seven languages
Marathi (my own) Sanscrit, Bengali, Gujarathi, Ganari, Hindoostani, and English
I have read the histories of England, Rome, Greece, and India 
I have been through English Grammar and studied through Arithmetic 
&though I may not meet in all points the requirements for entering college, 
this determination which has brung me to your country against opposition 
of my friends & caste, ought to go a long way.


Dissection, A Pantoum

Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1884

 
Were it not an infant, how much easier it would be
only two of us in the room, the others having turned away
that hours ago, he might have suckled at her breast
how still the dissection table under our studious gaze

Only two of us in the room, the others having turned away
a pale boy with wisps of blond hair, curled fists, blue lips  
how still the dissection table under our studious gaze
aborted or succumbed to illness, is what we must ascertain 

A pale boy with wisps of blond hair, curled fists, blue lips  
unlike my own, dark with a thick shock of hair
aborted or succumbed to illness, is what we must ascertain 
I am surprised when my hand glides, how it doesn’t shake

Unlike my own, dark with a thick shock of hair 
his loss accepted without inquiry or investigation
I am surprised when my hand glides, how it doesn’t shake
making a vertical incision from the skin before backward 

His loss accepted without inquiry or investigation
I have not traveled this far to let history repeat itself
making a vertical incision from the skin before backward 
I search for the answers I myself did not get 

I have not traveled this far to let history repeat itself
were it not an infant, how much easier it would be
I search for the answers I myself did not get 
that hours ago, he might have suckled at her breast

The essay and the poems are part of our Poetry Special Issue (January 2022), curated by Shireen Quadri. © The Punch Magazine. No part of this essay or the poems exclusively featured here should be reproduced anywhere without the prior permission of The Punch Magazine.   

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