SANJUKTA DASGUPTA - Featured Poet

Lakshmi Unbound: A Soliloquy

“ Killing the Angel in the House was part of the occupation of a woman writer”

                                                                       Virginia Woolf

“With downcast eyes and veiled head

I have spent twenty-two years in your house

That’s why both at home and without

Everyone says I am Lakshmi, Sati

An extremely good woman!”

                                             Freedom ( Mukti  Rabindranath Tagore)

Don’t, don’t, call me Lakshmi

I can’t ever be Lakshmi

I want to fly kites

I want to climb trees

I want to read and write

I want to sing and dance

I want to climb mountains

I want to swim in the seas

I want to do what I like

Whenever I like

I want to be mad

I want to be bad

I can’t be in corners of four walled spaces

I can’t be in eddies

I want to flow in the mainstream

I want to be in whirlpools

I want to roam and run

I want to eat fruits from trees

I want to drink to the last drop

The juice of grapes

I want to cook for myself

I want to dream

I want to pace the rainbow arch

In a spectacular hallucination

I can’t be Lakshmi

I will ever fail this endurance test

I have to speak

I have to cry

I have to scream

I have to laugh

I have to swim in rivers

I cannot swim in pools

I want to fly like an eagle

I want to glide like a feather

 I will forever fail this endurance test

I have flung off the Sellotape on my lips

I will sing the freedom song

I may not be Lakshmi

But I am

I just can’t be Lakshmi

I have to break the silence

My wealth is not jewels

My wealth is my gipsy spirit

I can’t be Lakshmi

I can’t be good, sane, silent Lakshmi

I can’t be the Angel in someone’s house

I don’t want to be a disembodied spirit

I don’t want to be Lakshmi

I am Alakshmi

Trap me if you can!

(c) Sanjukta Dasgupta (This poem is taken from her latest book of poems titled Lakshmi Unbound)

Bio:

Dr.Sanjukta Dasgupta, Professor and Former Head, Dept of English and Former Dean, Faculty of Arts, Calcutta University is a poet, critic and translator.  She is the recipient of numerous national and international grants and fellowships and has given poetry readings in India, Europe and the USA.

Apart from her books on literary studies, media and gender studies, translations and Tagore studies, her articles, poems, short stories and translations have been published in journals of distinction in India and abroad. 

Her published volumes of poems are Snapshots( Writers Workshop)  Dilemma (Anustup) First Language (Dasgupta Book Company), More Light ( Dasgupta Book Company) and Lakshmi Unbound ( Chirangi 2017)