She passed away. Suka-maa
Suka’s mother. Suka’s, Sakunta’s,
Shakuntala’s mother.
She was the mother earth,
the virtual mother of us six sisters.
In our love, perhaps she couldn’t love enough her
Suka, Shaila and Koili, her own daughters.
One day, we flew the nest
making her flounder
and forever brood.
Today, Sukamaa
(had she any other name? ) died.
When a poor taps my car window
at the red lights of Connaught Place
I have a shudder of relief that
I am not on the opposite side.
The leitmotif of time -- has it
made me such esoteric?
Then who reminds me time and again
of Sukamaa, our childhood
domestic-help, our foster-mother,
the rural poor tribal
the Kondh woman
unschooled, deprived, subjugated
subaltern
one among the crores
that constitute real India?
Sukamaa, the real homemaker
in our suburban household,
she would fight with our
school-teacher-disciplinarian-mother
for being strict with us, would
not mind if my younger sisters
relieved themselves on her lap.
Shy about the criss-cross tattoos
on her rather pretty face (which,
her husband had etched to
make her less-beautiful, thus, less-desirable!)
she would swear about tales from
her youth, when many a men
were engrossed to have
just a glance of her!
We were the foil set against her
to depict her ugliness
her tattooed face.
We felt so purified after
we had disbursed our dirt on her.
We felt so pretty when
we hoisted straight across her ugliness.
Her ease adorned her.
Her culpability consecrated us.
Her feebleness made us glimmer with health
her inelegance made us
reason, we had wisdom.
Her inarticulateness made us trust
we were persuasive.
Her poverty kept us lavish.
We sharpened our personality on her,
propelled our charms
with her fragility.
And nodded in the imaginary world
of our power.
Today
we are sophisticated, articulate.
We confront life with ease
like we did for years
without knowing that it was she
in her ugly, sordid, squalid
haunt, who prayed for us
day and night.
Today we pretend
with decent planning for intelligence.
Reschedule deceptions
and call them a point.
We are coping with the tough
business called life, facing the
predicament of survival
tearing apart the tie
between her and us.
Villages have given way to cities
we have moved
from innocence to experience.
Her story is an incredible mosaic
about a generation, our generation
of the metropolis, the NRIs--
embarrassed of Sukamaa’s poverty amid
our chaotic urbanization.
Forgetting,
Sukamaa had created that symphony
of time and place us.
Eating a proper meal was an indulgence
not meant for her, she sensed.
Interposed
between two worlds – her poor
thatched house and our luxurious
apartment – contradicting,
empathizing, appalling, opposing each other.
Her dedication had no master plan
her dream was only to watch
us rising stars in
a galaxy where the privileged
disdain the sprawling slum.
Sukamaa’s silent death inquests.
Would human goodness
silently triumph someday?
Would we ever get over the fascination
to our feigning melancholy and
be like her?
Isn’t it the conscientiousness of
an unwitting bystander like me
to tell her untold tale amid
all these sagas of quick-fix
T.V channels on yoga, beauty care,
weight loss and wealth-gain?
Isn’t it my moral obligation
to an unmindful posterity
to tell Sukamaa’s slum-dog tale?
Prof. Nandini Sahu, Vice Chancellor, Hindi University, West Bengal,India, Amazon’s Best-selling Author, Professor of English and Former Director, School of Foreign Languages, IGNOU, New Delhi, is an established Indian English poet, creative writer and folklorist. She is the author/editor of twenty-three books. Apart from being a double Gold-Medalist during her Graduation and Post-Graduation, Sahu is the recipient of Gold Medal from the Hon’ble Vice President of India for her contribution to English Studies, the Michael Madhusudan Academy Award-2024, Lifetime Achievement Award-2024, Tagore Samman-2025 and Honorary-Fellowship-2025 by International Academy of Ethics, India. Her research interests cover New Literatures, Critical Theory, Folklore and Culture Studies, Distance Education Theory, Hindu Studies, Indian Knowledge Systems, Comparative World Literatures, Children’s Literature and American Literature.
Dusk it was.
A serene, nerve settling lull.
The sky was flaming in a shade of tangerine.
A blush-pink feathered Robin
lay dead on the porch.
The wind was out of breath.
Her throat a cracking scorch.
She felt raw, standing naked in disgust
inches away from the bird.
She heard his footsteps
Her face camouflaged itself in a crooked smile.
He overlooked the brass monkey weather
behind her countenance.
The sky was a blazing lilac now.
He lifted her face,
steering his eyes over the livid, contused flesh
that marked a testimony to the affair
that altered her life.
He elucidated it, his compassion.
He called it endearment.
A common household blunder.
He promised her, protection.
Vowed to love her.
The sky was a hovering dark silver.
She looked and looked at this mortal
bestowing a seething rage. Her face now spilled a bare wasteland consumed in vivacious fire.
She elucidated it, her rage.
She called it assault.
A vexing craze of a predator.
She promised Lilith’s wrath on him.
Vowed to ravage down his entire existence
painted in her black fury.
The sky was smudged with silhouette of ghosts gurgling moonbeams on their faces.
The trigger was pulled.
The sound echoed into an inky smile.
He fell. Fell hard.
She stepped over her wrecker’s body
turned into a Phoenix in flames.
The sky was now a grave tragedy of bland folly.
Apoorva Raman is an independent scholar and was a postgraduate student at the University of Lucknow. Her musings have been published in Rhetorica: A Literary Journal of Arts, Daath Voyage: An International Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in English, and the International Journal of English and Studies. She is currently exploring her academic interests at the intersection of literature and education. She prefers collecting bookmarks, fallen flowers and dreams.
Why are we concerned about margins? Marginality? And perhaps marginalisation? Perhaps because some of us are more privileged than others on the axes of gender, race, ethnicity, minority status, rurality, class, language, age, social identity and physical ability. Advantaged or disadvantaged positions influence access to resources and opportunities, blocking or enabling the propensity to improve choices, opportunities and rights. This unequal access creates vulnerability and renders individuals and groups weak and without protection. Persons with disabilities (PWDs), especially children, for instance, are disadvantaged, excluded, discriminated against and marginalised. Being unequal, due to denial of access, status, opportunity; and unjust distribution of resources and services, locates them at the margins- for no fault of theirs.The concepts of margins, marginality, and marginalisation explain how individuals and groups are pushed to the fringes of society. Margin signifies a limit, establishing its perimeter. In a social context, it refers to areas or factions situated on the periphery of dominant dialogue, where perspectives, issues, and life sufferings may go unnoticed or belittled. Therefore, the margin offers a framework to analyse metaphorical, cultural, and spatial aspects of exclusion in each social context. Marginality, the outcome, surpasses geographical boundaries to represent a condition of being situated on the edge, characterised by susceptibility, vulnerability and restricted access to resources, particularly due to social and physical disabilities. At the margins, an individual or group is excluded from mainstream access to resources and dominant power centres. Therefore, its multidimensional nature is not limited to economics. It extends to social, political, cultural, and ecological dimensions. Groups experiencing marginality often lack access to capital, education, health services, and political representation, leading to relative deprivation. The realm of multidimensionality makes marginality systemic in nature, allowing the privileged dominant groups to preserve their power structures. Marginality, therefore, results from a multifaceted interaction of elements contributing to the continued marginalisation of specific individuals or groups, thereby sustaining a recurring pattern of exclusion. As an active process, marginalisation deepens the consequences and further worsens exclusion- of all kinds- social, cultural, spatial, and physical. Deliberate or systemic acts of exclusion marginalise individuals or groups, as evidenced by institutional practices and societal norms. Marginalisation alludes to power dynamics causing docility on the part of the marginalised, and dominance among the privileged and dominant forces (such as discriminatory institutions, social structures, or state policies) that cause the displacementThus, margin, marginality, and marginalisation shape socio-cultural, economic, and political dynamics of human societies. Understanding these ideas is vital for analysing inequality and structural exclusion. These concepts capture the complex dynamics between exclusion and inclusion, providing valuable insights into the hardships that marginalised communities and individuals encounter. To understand and comprehend the problematic aspects of margin and marginality, it is crucial to critically examine their conceptual foundations and investigate their profound consequences on individuals and groups located on the periphery- the margin.This issue explores the situation, process and outcome of the margin through the contributions received from various quarters. Inviting you to peruse and ponder…
Sanghamitra Acharya
Chairperson
Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health
School of Social Sciences
JNU, New Delhi