By Kala Ramesh
Chennai/Pune, India
Chennai/Pune, India
the red dot
on my forehead
binds me
to a man
who’s in his own orbit
parading
the so-called equality
with iron bars concealed …
this urban woman lives
in her dreams
on my forehead
binds me
to a man
who’s in his own orbit
parading
the so-called equality
with iron bars concealed …
this urban woman lives
in her dreams
—tanka doha (tanka couplet)
Kabir, a 15th-century Indian mystic-poet-saint, is famous for his doha. We have longer tanka sequences, but there is something special about a twin tanka which says so much in a short span of 10 lines.