Poem - FIRE

              It is now over a decade

              Since that day in October Nineteen eighty seven                      

When  they bade Roop Kanwar to Heaven

To serve her “Patidev” up above there

They’d made her also ascend the pyre.

“SATI MATA KI JAI”

“SATI MATA  KEE JAAY”

And they built a temple in her name.

While the nation bowed to her in humble shame.

Now, I reflect and it dawns on me

Why they wanted her

On her husband’s pyre.

Why call it a dowry killing

Why scowl and growl and kick the ceiling.

    They did it because she was willing

    They did it because she had a feeling

    To become a great immortal “Mata”

    To become a “SATI”, a Devatha.

                     And science tells us

                     That fire needs fuel to burn

                     So, to save the husband’s corpse

                     From being half-burnt, 

                     [as had been his life- half-baked]

                     They let her accompany him

                     For, had they not around the Fire

                     Walked seven steps

                     With Fire as their witness

                     Had they not, their marriage vows

Made, before the Fire ?

And then, a man’s body,

Shrivelled with pain, disease and impotency

Cannot have that fat

Needed to burn.

So, to earn that

From whom, but his better half ?

So, they sent for her, to send him off !

Had not Hitler’s men

There in Auschwitz told (the world)

That woman’s fat burns

Fine in the cold ?

The cold waves that swept

Rajasthan that day

As men slept

And fires  in the hearths

Too had freezed

Fierce fires in the onlookers

Had gone with the breeze

Fire in the fiery

Had burnt out

And Fire alone engulfed

Them both, wife and the husband

                                      The lout:

Roop ascended the throne

Say not, that she’d been thrown (into the pyre)

For had we not known

She wanted to hear them cry

“SATI MATA KI JAI, SATI MATA KI JAI”

She had gone there of her own

And her father-in-law

With law on his side

Had said :

“SATI  MATA KEE JAAY”

 When the flames had consumed

Roop, her desires, the fire in her

Let us, not now exhume her

For, in the flame did you not see

She’d purified her husband

Her in-laws and the rout

And to this day we remember not them , but her ?

Roop lives on

There, in mine neighbour’s house

Here, beaten by her spouse

The Fire in her dies out

While Fire on her lives

And Roop still cries out

In these voices :

“SATI MATA KI JAI, SATI MATA KI JAI”

The wife is the Supreme Goddess

And she shall be treated no less.

The Fire is dead

{the fire that begot cold impotent ash}

But the flame burns on.

- Dr. Suchetha Pai