Meeting The Society Poem by Indira Renganathan

Tradition has fallen
Meeting me with horning meat
Prime in the witchy dawn
Outside the porch on my kolam-space

Disgusting me much
to consider my kolam, address elsewhere
Hoping to be peaceful

While my heart still likes to stay
To watch a man every morning
Singing softly to his soul
An idealistic song of M.G.R

An apotheosis of heroism
But with holy-ash conspicuously on forehead
With a sequel of two lady-walkers

Crooning 'Shashtikavacham'
Blissful yet blissful not
As once the Lord at Swamimalai

When blessed me
Amid a thronging wedding crowd
Which blessedly spat betel-red

In the precincts of the temple
While the children wetted and fretted
over there to my increased agony

Which has not calmed down yet
As the flower-girl is still illoyal
Rating high for every flower-count

To the Goddess in the nearby temple
Where the auto-rickshaw drops me
Intending to hurt me much

Not taking me back home
Unexpectedly fleeing and not waiting
Very often to unlock my home
In sunless, powerless night

Fearing to be stabbed, strangled
Chain-snatched, robbed
To be bundled in cold-sweat

Followed by
Others' frequent sickening advice
'Don't look down low on '
Or 'don't step out old lady'