And one unfortunate night,

A storm occurred in that village,

The storm was a storm in the virtue of life

And not a natural calamity!

The storm took away her everything-

The storm came as a bane into her life,

Causing a curse on her,

Tormenting all the happiness written in her fate!

Alas the poor girl!

Who got wedded in the early years of her teenage,

Caught trapped in the bond of sacred fire,

With a man lying on the death pyre!

And in a week or so,

The newlywed young girl

Was compelled to meet a weird tradition

About which she was unknown!

At a very young age how could she even know

That her ill fate was near

And that she has to terminate her life

On the rules laid by the society?

The priests, the death flames on pyre, and the drums

And the fanatic crowd, all awaited her-

As she was accompanied by the ladies,

The screaming of ‘Sati Mata Ki Jai’ intensified!

The symbolism of the religion made her sit on the flames

Alongside the pyre of her dead-aged husband,

Unknown with the wrath of time,

Innocently she sat on the pyre alongside!

Secretly the priests lit the pyre

Befitting the concept of oblation and sacrifice in her

Soon the surrounding filled with her screams,

But no one to hear the screams!

The drums being played all louder

The skins of the young soul melting like wax,

The tender soul crying and screaming constantly,

Without being helped by anyone!

Oh curse on this land by those innocents souls,

Whose lives were seized away by the condemnable tradition,

Oh how ruthless could a local could be

That a scream of a young soul didn’t break their spines?

~Debyani Mukherjee

New Delhi, India