In 1947

By Masha Hassan

It is the beginning of a saffron day.
She tinges her white salwar with colour.
The walls are thin and we listen,
Offered prayers to Sikh Saints,
Inside a room of crippled faith.
We wait,
We wait for the devotion to finish,
For her to step out,
To tsk at our negligence,
To sigh at us heretics…
Chiffon is what covers her head,
Falls over so elegantly onto her shoulders,
Only to be quickly put back to its position.
She bends over in much pain.
‘Nanak’ she says is the medicine --
Handing out the sacred sweet.
We roll our eyes but stretch our hands,
Whilst scuffling her salwar,
Remembering the sun of 1947
She’d narrate,
 
In silent murmurs and naked
Soles,
 
She had covered miles to feel
Uninhabited,
 
She remembered intervals
On makeshift mornings,
 
Toppling over bodies with
No sound,
 
On footpaths familiar she remembered
Runnels painted with blood,
 
Leaving behind dupattas* and flags,
Flying spirits in the sky,
 
She was certain she’d return,
To unlocked doors,
 
To obscure meanderings
 
To Bitter-sweet memories
Of abandoned and burnt
Homes,
 
Rest assured,
She never did
 
She found refuge in language. 

*Veils or Scarves that are almost the size of stoles

Masha Hassan is a PhD student at the University of Bologna, Italy. Her research entails identity constructions at the margins, the ‘liminal identities’, focusing on the South Asian diaspora.  You would occasionally find her wandering in Kebab shops in Italy talking in Urdu, Hindi or Punjabi with the shop owners, listening to their journeys. Her articles have been published in The Speaking Tree, Times of India, Jamhoor Magazine, and online Italian magazines such as OgZero and connessioneprecarie. Her first poem, ‘Main, Junaid’, (dedicated to Hafiz Junaid who was lynched on a moving train on the suspicion of carrying beef) was published on the cover of a local Marathi magazine called Purogrami Jangarjana, Mumbai, India in June 2017.

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