The Other Revolutionary


by Shreema Ningombam

She took up Irabot’s sickle
To chop off the overgrown beard
On her mother’s chin
She too is a revolutionary
The wicked wind licks lecherously
Her thighs along which the phanek slithers
Yielding to the wanton wind
The phanek prostrate on the wayside cried
‘Hey lady! you have dropped me’
She knowingly did not look back
She too is a revolutionary

The evening prayer to Sanamahi was offered
Forgetting her crimson lunar cycle
Only to remember when her man tucked her phanek
From her waist in that drunken night
As the faint scent of haeme whiffs along
She too is a revolutionary

She rode away in the air
Screamed with the muffled mouth
Forgot when ought to remember
Swam in the cloud
She too thinks a thought
She too is a revolutionary
That night in that bloody war
A seed of revolution was sown In her ravaged womb
Against law against time; against all dimensions of life
A revolution grows in her belly
She is a revolutionary through the ages

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