Rights?

Published in Countercurrent

Do these women have rights?

These women who break rocks
These women who carry bricks
These women who in Temples please Gods

What Gods?

Devdasis?

Can they Me Too?

Farmers’ wives, sweepers,
Women who clean dirt
From homes and yet
Live in dirt themselves.
Women who could not go to school

Can they Me Too?

Women who remain
Unlettered, Unfed, Unclothed
Women whose children die before birth
from malnutrition
Women whose malnourished children stare bare-backed
and Beg at traffic junctions
Migrant labour — Women, Men, Children

Which of them have rights?

Poverty denies
Defies Pollution
Defies Education
Defies Wealth

Poverty has Beliefs, Rituals —

— Nebulous Gods and Goddesses—

 

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