Rasheeda Didi points to me
and asks her mother with a wicked smile
“Didn’t I tell you she’s cute?”
She looks back at me and says
“Are you looking for a boy? I have some
great candidates for you here in Bastar, just say the word”.
Rasheeda didi works 12 hours a day
to keep her business
afloat in an ocean replete with competitors
trying to rip apart her sails
and bureaucrats refusing to let her pass
into uncharted waters.
Her shop is bursting at the seams
with the triumph and toil and laughter
of girls whose branches are burgeoning exponentially faster
than the soil ever thought it would allow
Her shop is bursting at the seams
because it is too small
to contain the rainforests that are blooming within its walls
“Come over home anytime.” She tells me
her girls echo her words
“We will find you some friends in our city”

 Liya Maami is embarrassed
she does not have biscuits ready to serve with the chai
her daughter is sent scampering away
to scourge for some.
She is only able to spend her time with me
because she can no longer spend it on fending for her family
she has endless time to spend
and nothing but time left to to spend
The processing centre she heads has been
shut down without notice
the fates of 13 women are knotted into hers
trailing behind every step she takes
a tangle of deflated kites
unable to free themselves,
unable to take flight
every step she takes twisting them tighter.
She holds her head high in asking for help
for her family.
“Come over home anytime,
my 13 daughters and I will show you what we are fighting for.”

Jamuna’s food is far better
than anything I can ever dream of cooking
and I tell her that.
It tastes of the forests that engulf her husbands fingertips
and the rivers that flowed through her mothers locks
and “I can teach you” she says
“I hope you like hing in your food”
Jamuna has grown up amongst several flailing limbs
of borrowed modernity
from across the globe,
stampeding across the land her ancestors knew
only as impenetrable wilderness.
Where bread and butter
was as alien as rice and daal
and now both run amok
hand in hand, fingers interlocked.
And then she fell in love.
She caught it, held on tight, followed it close
followed it as it led her back into
the wilderness that she only knew in her ancestors dreams.
She is unlearning.
The forests are no longer a fantasy,
a memory, a creature of the past –
it is a living, breathing beast
inhaling every step of hers
exhaling her every beat
The forests have wriggled their toes into her home,
her wealth, and her subsistence –
she is unlearning
that to move forward is to move away.
“Come over home anytime.
I’ve just begun to build mine here”

My first glimpse of Urmila is amidst a cascading ocean
of textbooks and loose sheets.
“I am about to finish my Master’s in History”
she tells me, with anger seeping through the cracks
where I had expected to find only pride.
“What is the point of an education
when work remains in the hands of men
who cannot even sign their own names?”
She does not fight because it is not her job
it is the job of the panchayat
and the state
and the researchers that come every year to enquire about the state of women in the village
and every other man in a position of power
who can only see ‘gender equality’ as merely
fourteen letters on a dusty piece of paper
rather than a formidable warrior who is out
on the battlefield every hour of every day –
it is not her job to breathe life and vigour
and provide a terrestrial body for this warrior
it is not her job.
Instead she nurses her anger quietly,
gently, cradling it like a mother to her womb –
and tells me “Come over home anytime.
It’s not like I’ll be going anywhere else.”

I could not believe I was meeting Bharti ji
real and in the flesh there was so much
I wanted to ask her about the justice system indian penitentiaries fake encounters state repression state sponsored violence state surveillance
she states, softly, with a conspiratorial smile
“when the thugs were trying to break into my home
I told them I had 7 dogs guarding me
but what I didn’t mention
was that 6 of them were puppies”
An anathema to the Indian state
a hero to our tribal communities
an open book to media houses across the country
sharing an anecdote about attempted murder
and puppies.
She tells me about her partner, her favourite food,
the prisoners she has acquitted and the rapists she has failed to convict.
Her voice is so soft it slips off her chin
and nuzzles the edges of mine
yet it reverberates across the hinges
of every court and cabinet in the nation.
And still she finds the time to tell me
“Come over home anytime.
Next time I’ll make you a meal to go along with that chai.”