SAVITA SINGH (India)
Savita Singh is a leading young poet of India who writes both in Hindi and English. She has two collections of poetry published in Hindi Apne Jaisa Jeevan and Neend Thee Aur Raat Thee; one in English Translation : Rowing Together, and one in French translation : le sui maison des etoiles. She also writes fiction. She is recipient of several awards, Savita Singh is a Professor and Director in the School of Gender and Development Studies, IGNOU, Delhi.

Consent

All tyranny goes on cheerfully
People are offering their heads happily

Now there’s one’s own butcher
As is one’s own barber
Lawyer doctor as also
A tailor one’s own
Just as each one has her own buyer
The one who buys everything all of body all brains
All of it till our conscience
All consent

How light one feels on selling it
How gratifying being bought
Only the market knows this
Or the things that get sold

Life of Such as Us

For some days now
A poem lay within me
I told her
Wait as yet
Still there is a haze
Leave me as yet in the fog
Let me love
Let me be even more sad
Let me understand why
Truth likes to be clad in lies
Why is life for such as us
So troubled
So difficult

The Way a Woman Knows

Body is the river of comfort
This is known for centuries
That it is the ruins of sorrow
Is also known for the same time
Only now has it become a plastic coin
Who can get to know the body
As a woman would
Who can know which boat she can make with it
Which river she can cross

That it is only she who can free
The body from the body
Lift the last veil spread over life