Editor’s Note
What do we find when we go searching for ourselves in society’s reflections—its screens, rituals, and mythologies—only to discover silence where recognition should be? Across these poems by Khushi Bajaj, the self is not granted visibility via culture or institution; the self must be carved out from language. These poems remind me of Claudia Rankine’s exploration of what she calls to “rescue the first person”, which, in the case of Bajaj’s poems, could also be transferred onto the self-referential ‘you’. Rankine has suggested that if the ‘I’ could acknowledge its limitations “and still position itself in a place that was personal…then perhaps the ‘I’ would open out into a ‘we’”, in other words, a shared platform for connection and vulnerability. Bajaj’s work feels to me like an enactment of that widening.
The opening poem catalogs the speaker’s absence from the many narratives that shaped her—soap opera arcs, billboards, news. Yet, this litany of exclusions forms an unexpected self-portrait: the poem itself becomes the first space where the speaker sees her likeness. In theme with omission, the final poem transitions into a world built with symbols and subtractions. The body, then, becomes a site of calculation and decay. Here, another system materialises—cold, clinical and unwilling to name her suffering—one that “will soon turn your brown, queer body into a math problem”. Still, these poems remarkably refuse that erasure. In doing so, they offer us a record of selfhood by documenting the speaker’s quiet insistence on survival, at times joy, when the world withholds it.
—Vasvi Kejriwal
The Bombay Literary Magazine
i was not in the seventy-episode arc/ focusing on the bride’s sister taking the pheras/ in the daily soap that my grandmother would watch/ every night as we ate dinner/ and there is no way you could have/ spotted me amongst the billboards featuring/ the promise of fairness that i passed/ on my way to school/ no matter what they did/ my curiosities would have been unsuccessful in pointing out my likeness/ amongst the classics on the library shelves/ and my ears often realized that i was/ strangely absent from the super-hit tunes coming out of/ the old radio in our run-down indica car/ which was later stolen on the night India won the world cup/ which by the way is another thing/ i wasn’t present in/ cricket/ neither on the team/ nor in the commentator’s box/ or the cheering routine/ that frankly looked like it would have been/ fun to be a part of/ and no matter how hard i squinted/ none of the newspapers that magically/ flew into our driveway/ would feature any words/ referring to me in black and white/ and when I tried to look for myself/ in the tales of colourful mythology retold by adults/ no amount of sifting through their words/ could conjure up even a blurry picture of me/ but once in a while when i would/ pause my scribbling and wipe my forehead/ to look down at my notebook/ i would find a poem/ and there i was
before our last guest
has even made it to the car
the diyas we lit
for the occasion flicker
into mood lighting
slurping the last sips of oil
as if starved
for the love that we had poured
into them the food has all
been eaten but there is still a bit
of imli ki chutney on your fingers
which the festive spirit is urging me to lick
specks of my golden eyeshadow
make galaxies on your neck
that my lips use as guiding stars
to trace their path towards your collarbones
suddenly we are breathing the same air
and it smells a lot
like the mehendi whose cone
we struggled with while trying
to apply it on each other’s hands
undress me you whisper
as you lie down on your side of our bed
with your banarasi lehenga spread
like the waves of an ocean
that are glistening with moonlight
and beckoning our bodies to sway in its currents
to build a new song together
in its folds that keeps us away
from dry land
i bend down to raise the embroidered border
that has teased me all night
and undo the clasp of your rajasthani payal
without using my hands
your gorgeous yellow crop top and black low-high skirt are laid out on your bed. you saved for two months to afford this outfit. you are laid out on the floor.
you are about to spend your 25th birthday getting a blood transfusion.
a dizziness will make its way from your head to body before you will make your way out of this bedroom.
when the emergency room nurse will put an IV in your arm, your mom will be sitting on the bed pretending to not freak out. your gen-z humour will have made you put on a nadja t-shirt before leaving the house. you will wink at her, encouraging her to (+) the images and participate in your vampire-themed birthday party.
you remember entering your kitchen last year in the middle of a suicidal ideation episode and seeing your flatmate. she said that she was seeing you smile after a long time. you had just finished a session with your therapist who had laughed at every single sentence that left your mouth. in other ways you cannot function when you are having a breakdown, but when you are at your lowest, your punchlines (*) like it is showtime at the apollo.
your mom will offer to buy the hospital staff samosas. this will be an attempt to make your day celebratory. but the canteen cook will not be working till later. your family will tell you a story about how surviving is the best way to spend your 25th. you are having a (¼) life health crisis and are tired of surviving it.
newly out of resilience, your brain will now stop running a (x:y::a:b) before welcoming an anxiety attack. you will visit so many hospital rooms in the next month that you will start wanting to (-) the white walls from your memory before you even enter them.
your mom will want to treat you to fancy lunches on your drives home but you will say no each time, convinced that the only thing that will nourish you is your own bed. when this started you thought you had a medical issue but they will soon turn your brown, queer body into a math problem:
if your period lasts for more than 43 days and they can give you one unit of blood or iron a week, then why the fuck are doctors still refusing to give (u) a diagnosis? (show your work)
Acknowledgements
Image credits: Annie Duncan. Material Girl (2023). Ceramic Sculpture Installation, 84” x 66” x 33”. All images © Annie Duncan. For more of Annie’s work, check out her Insta.
Author | Khushi Bajaj
Khushi Bajaj (she/her) is a multilingual poet and writer from Lucknow, India who currently lives and creates in London. Her work has previously been published by Penguin Random House, fourteen poems, Feminism in India, Film Companion, Gaysi Family, and more. She has won the international Briefly Write Poetry Prize, and been highly commended for the Disabled Poets Prize and the erbacce-prize. She is passionate about intersectional feminist politics, supporting local communities, and radical kindness. [Text source: Khushi Bajaj ]
