Process of creation.
Pritam, Amrita
Sometimes the poem looks at the sheet of paper and averts her face as
if the paper were a strange man
But sometimes as when a gift fasts faithfully on karva chauth and
that night she has what seems to be a dream suddenly a man touches her
body and even in the dream her body shudders
But sometimes licking fire she starts wakes up touches her limbs ripe
with womanhood undoes the buttons of her blouse splashes handfuls of
moonlight on her body and the hand that wrings her body dry seems to
tremble
Her body's darkness spreads like a mat she lies face down on it
breaks off pieces of its straw and every part of her catches fire and
she feels that her body's darkness wants to break in someone's
strong arms
Suddenly a sheet of paper moves forward and touches her trembling
hands one part burns one part melts and she smells an unfamiliar
fragrance and her hand stares at the lines that have inscribed her body
Her hand goes to sleep her body shakes and something like sweat
breaks out on her brow a long line breaks and her breath soaks in the
double fragrance of life and death
All these thin black lines as though they were pieces of a single
line she stands wrung out silent and astonished looking thinking
This is a miscarriage of justice a part of her is dead maybe this is
exactly how a young woman miscarries her child
AMRITA PRITAM (b. 1919) has emerged as the single most important
modern writer in Punjabi, having published more than seventy books in
the past fifty years, including twenty-eight novels, eighteen
collections of poetry, and five volumes of short stories. She was the
first woman writer to win the annual award given by the Sahitya Akademi,
India's national academy of letters, receiving the prize for poetry
in 1956. Her subsequent honors include the Government of India's
Padma Shri award in 1969 and the Bharatiya Jnanapith Award, India's
highest literary honor, in 1981. She has also served in the Rajya Sabha,
the upper house of the Indian Parliament. Among her works available in
English translation are Selected Poems (1982); Revenue Stamp (1976), her
autobiography; and Black Rose (1968), a novel. In her prose as well as
verse, Pritam is frequently concerned with women's experiences and
situations in Indian society. "Street Dog" and "Process
of Creation" are poems written in the 1970s, both translated here
from Punjabi by Vinay Dharwadker.
