Family Gup-Shup (Chit Chat). {Poem}

By Prerna Bakshi

Tea will be ordered.

Plates of biscuits will be offered.
Coffee table will be filled
with samosas, kachauris, namkeen.
Then, they’d all sit down
to an abundant meal prepared by her
(most likely that took hours in the making).
If feeling generous,
they’d pay her some compliments.
Finishing the meal,
family gossip and

conversations will follow in the lounge room.

See, he doesn’t take me out anywhere.
As the room will break out in laughter
Please, say something!
As everyone will continue to giggle
He’d listen to you, if you say,
she will say with a glimmer of hope
as chuckles will fill the room.
They’d then look at their watch,
say they’d better leave.
Another day,
another family union,
repeat.

There is something deeply sinister about
our society that finds humor in
women’s sheer lack of autonomy,
forced domesticity.

Originally published in Indiana Voice Journal

Prerna Bakshi is a sociolinguist, writer and interpreter of Indian origin, presently based in Macao. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee. Her work has been published widely, most recently in Red Wedge Magazine, Off the Coast, Yellow Chair Review, Wilderness House Literary Review, Kabul Press, Peril magazine: Asian-Australian Arts & Culture and Wordgathering: A Journal of Disability Poetry and Literature, as well as anthologized in several collections. Her full-length poetry collection, Burnt Rotis, With Love, which was recently long-listed for the Erbacce-Press Poetry Award in the UK, is forthcoming from Les Éditions du Zaporogue (Denmark) later this year. She can be found on Twitter.