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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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a space for youth writing on mental health & identity
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![]() [Trigger warning: sexual harassment] i wear the apple foam wrapper around my fleshless wrist; because my mother jumped into the village well with the family chandi bangles after she could not release herself from her benadryl addiction; or the role of a mother. she said ghosts haunted her. she slaughtered me everyday before i learnt the role of a silent daughter. i cut holes in used amul kool cans and stick the circles to my earlobes with sap of a decomposing banyan tree leaf unchosen to be devoured by an army of fire ants. i let termites scavenge my body; my body is not my body but their nutrition. i want to be a rajkumari but my mother’s reputation eclipses my dreams and desires. so i collect bakul flowers and bury them in my mouth. i gaze at sun like my brother did before he died from tuberculosis. he loved paper boats and yellow taxis and gully cricket and kala-khatta golas. he hated my mother with every last, sacred breath of his. i trace my fingertips onto the red paan spat on rock outcrops by rikshawalas who call me suwar ki aulad kamini kali kutti; because i stood in the middle of traffic unmoving like a gazelle in the mouth of a gir lion that did not have any fight left in her brittle bones. i accept death. i celebrate it. offer it my head as a peace offering. i sacrifice i. i never capitalize i for i do not deserve any ounce of respect. i colour my forehead red to form a misshapen bindi; i stuff cigarette butts, trampled in sand, in my brassiere stitched out of amritsari dupattas i stole from dhobi ghat months ago; and let the barely surviving butts burn holes into the partition of my chest. i watch the dancing monkey show on juhu beach performed for the middle class families where the monkey acts a puppet on command; i watch intently to relish for two seconds before stepping on a desi daru bottle to punish myself for straying too long into my distracting desires. i murder my dreams with lethal stones. when the sun is crushed under the ocean, i run back to the jam-packed juhu circle and beg alongside sari-enveloped hijras who raised me after my mother died. they taught me marathi. and how to string mogras into my hair. and apply lipstick as rigid as a blackboard chalk. and how to survive. but all i get from begging is a b r o k e n packet of parle g biscuits, a plastic bag of rotten apples, ugly looks from housewives on mopeds that emit carbon monoxide into my nostrils; the smoky tendrils erode the nasal cartilage. if i am lucky, i pocket twenty rupias and a cold vada pav in a week old newspaper that reports world disasters and stock market crises in advanced telugu. the scar of my belly snakes towards my throat and grips it chokes it. a story for another day. flute-sellers and bhutta stall owners glare at the shape of my body underneath the unwashed thickets of hair, calculating ways in which i could be completely destroyed by their guns. a parade of viscon temple preachers marches near the shore curvature. the young protégé beats the dhols as the eldest chants a mantra, counting rudrakash using his tilak-coloured thumb — and i, i cover my face, using a pinwheel that stands stoically in the freezing, abrasive ocean of sand. i hid from brahmins and my god; for i am cursed by kaala jaadu. my mother said that when she breastfed me milk that bore opium. i am a panauti. a kali billi scratching its nails on pavements — devoid of carvings of hopscotch and tic-tac-toe. a kali billi to be killed by a hungry coyote. i don’t utter music; music is for deity worshippers; my touch is dark art of poison. and misfortune. i remove the fruit wrappers wipe the bindi threaten to trespass into the chemist store to steal soframycin to for the wounds i will own eventually; for i eat lizards for lunch and beg on streets i belong to stripping my bones of any dignity and worth and respect and letting old, robust men look at me with rousing flames of sexual violence to earn das rupia that i smuggle in the holes of my chest. my nails loiter around my chin, scraping at the scab i procured when i bumped into a electric pole running away from hormonally charged boys who needed to tear my clothes and corrupt my body. the rattlesnakes of loose wires had stung my abdomen and gave me a scar. a small price i had to pay. i collect seashells medical prescriptions frangipani flowers bottle caps a rabbit a broken cpu parts of a motor vehicle carcass coconut husks garlands of marigold; are the only items i can provide for my dowry. i am only thirteen. i am only a girl with a prosthetic heart mold growing on my lower calf clavicle with an undiagnosed infection. vomit-coloured teeth. fever bursting behind the walls of my temple of my head. yet i dare to dream of becoming a divine princess. as beautiful as aishwarya rai. however, i plunge into a narrow pothole and let the dirty water scald my hairy skin — the only touch i deserve: for the only light i am allowed to watch is of bruised tail lights of broken cars. my dreams will never condense as dancing odissi to nagaland folk music is impossible. as is growing chameli from the womb of a darling hibiscus. as is looting a beggar. yet i continue to disappoint myself and wander into a hopeless, scantily-coloured dream forcefully stepping on the same daru bottle to reinforce that i am and will always be a tarnished panauti. undiscovered and unyielded is the force of my body. i am discarded carelessly like apple foam wrappers that once carefully held a precious fruit. Arush Desai is an eighteen year old writer, student and debater from Mumbai, India. He is the author of 'Mercury Poisoning' and 'Mercury Poisoning'. He has recited spokeword poetry at TEDxYouth@PPSIJC 2022, the opening ceremony of MISA Research Paper competition and, JNAA Cascade where he stood in the first position nationally. Desai also was a guest speaker at Rotaract Club of Sion, Mumbai where he gave a speech on 'How to Publish a Poetry Book?' He finds inspiration in everything: his city, Mumbai, quantum physics, flowers, and his favourite musician, Lana Del Rey.
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May 2023
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