Shrenik Mutha

Ugly Histories

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a surveyor/accountant/writer/rewriter/listener/observer  of ugly histories-a poem as an act of writing a past story, not a (his)tory

 

“our families have ugly histories”, a friend tells me

when i tell her of my father’s pride over having slapped

his wife. he advocates to newly wedded husbands

the need to slap their wives, if the wife hasn’t informed

of her whereabouts to them when they are out of the house at 10 pm.

 

my father’s masculinity is so fragile,

his anger so volatile

that he sees his lack of information

about an evening of my mother’s whereabouts close to 10.00 pm

as reason enough for him to slap her.

 

he is slapping the anger he inherited

from his father.

 

“our families have ugly histories”, she tells me

when i tell her of my father’s pride over having

slapped his wife. my mother’s love is so blind

that she sees her lack of having informed him

as reason enough to be slapped by him.

 

my family has ugly histories.

my grandfather beat my grandmother multiple times.

my family has ugly histories.

my father beat my mother, once.

my family has ugly histories.

my father banged my head against my brother’s.

my family has ugly histories.

my father beat my childhood into adulthood.

my family has ugly histories.

 

love-

this word-misused, reused, abused,

and i ask my mother if she would be okay

with my brother beating his wife tomorrow,

if i beat my wife tomorrow. i ask only her because

my father presumably will. how can he oppose an act he has committed. she does not answer.

 

childhood, this lost experience in the face of abuse.

parenting, this broken experience in the face of punishment.

love, this performed experience in the face of power.

duty, this reminded experience in the face of compulsion.

sex, this dominated experience in the face of marriage.

done.

i am done

building ivory idols out of my father’s reputation

which is lost to him being his version of manhood.

of his honour so scathing it only leaks into my wrongs.

he slapped her.

i was away.

he slapped her.

i was away.

they hid it.

i was away

 

my family has ugly histories

and i was conceived with the weight of violence

weighing down my mother’s shoulders,

her breasts sagging with the weight of histories

as she fed me,

disjointed experiences of a taught love

which has shaped my actions of violence.

 

how can i ever forgive

the inheritance of their love

which i find in me.

 

i am the result of the mistakes

they have committed, the saved experience

of the ones i have not yet committed.

i hope i can save myself from myself,

or maybe, i need to be protected

from myself.

i see me becoming him

and i wonder with the innocence left in me

of how violent this love is.

 

in my family,

they don’t tell stories.

because when stories are told,

histories are written.

 

their histories are

shameful. i will write them

even if they don’t tell me, even if i don’t know them,

i will write them

by listening closely to the silences in people’s voices.

Image courtesy: Shrenik Mutha

Shrenik Mutha is a Pune based poet. He studies Law.

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