‘I am dancing. Because Ma couldn’t’: Poems that recount a daughter’s experience of emotional abuse

Dancing Lessons With Ma

I am dancing. Because Ma couldn’t. I wake up in a yellow room. The right bed. I scream Ma. My ankles are bruised. The room is beating. I sweat. The tiny hills on my body glaze pink. I scream Ma, she doesn’t turn over. Maybe I am dead, I am in the wrong bed. She flags her hands to call me. There is no music. Her hands in pataka mudra. A wall of light falls between us, there is music. I can’t hear the music. There is no room. My soles are charcoal-printed with the floor’s mosaic. This is Bharatanatyam. We are waiting. For Babul to drive us home. He thinks women who dance are prostitutes. The floor drums with the tut-tut of the nattuvangam. He insists it isn’t an instrument. I am dancing. The cymbals clamp and shimmer. The room chimes. My teacher says your pajama is torn. The dance was reformed for respectable women. But my clothes are torn. My ankles swell with bells. I am calling Ma. Repeat after me: Bha for Bhava, Ra for Raga, Ta for Taal. Everything moves, then echoes. The ankle bells ring. There is blood. The bells are red, they scatter like sunlight. Pa calls...

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