drip, drop, drop
slowly
—like a lover’s trailing tongue
tracing the spine—
white sugar–juice
trickles
unlike blood flowing—
tall, green, stalks—crushed
between
squeaking wheels, machine
squirting frothing sugar–sap
red, from the womb, every month,
DROP, DRIP, DROP, flesh–y, thick,
so soft you can almost re-member
your home
like semen, whitish, sweet,
gently oozing out of their
erect penises, drop, drop, drip
one by one, they rob our wombs,
1…2…3…843, till we lose count,
each like a sheared chicken lies limp
on the sugarcane field, the stitched–skin
below our navel hardens
on our wrinkled, young,
sugar-shaped, jaggery–coloured
faces:
bootmarked, labelled,
each a number to our daddies,
s-u-g-a-r daddies, 1…2…3…843
un-womb-ed mothers mean:
1) no squatting on the fields to bleed,
2) no maternity leaves,
3) no monthly menstrual absentees,
…
103) increased productivity,
…
204) fuck ’em without condoms,
…
509) no blood stains on sugarcane stalks,
…
843) continuous seamless flow of harvest:
production→surplus→profits→saccharine dreams
does the sugar taste any different now?
In June 2025, a shocking report emerged that in Maharashtra’s Beed, “843 women had their uteruses surgically removed before departing for sugarcane harvesting work during the Diwali migration in 2024.” (Modi, Diksha. “Shocking Report: Wombs Of 843 Sugarcane Labourers Forcibly Removed In Maharashtra’s Beed.” News 18, 02 Jun. 2025, www.news18.com/shocking-report-wombs-of-843-sugarcane-labourers-forcibly-removed-in-maharashtras-beed.html.) How do you record such an atrocity? Speak about it? Remember it? This horrifying incident becomes the subject of the poem ‘843’. Using the images of ‘flowing’ liquids, sugar–juice, blood and semen, the poem tries to recount and remember the incident, thereby presenting a critique of the patriarchal and capitalist nexus that ensures the continuous ‘flow’ of profits by feeding on women’s bodies. Responding to the theme, Flow, of the present call, the poet interprets the concept of flow creatively, both in terms of its content and form.
Image credit: Aadrit Banerjee