5.46, Andheri Local

In the women’s compartment
of a Bombay local
we search
for no personal epiphanies.
Like metal licked by relentless acetylene
we are welded –
dreams, disasters,
germs, destinies,
flesh and organza,
odours and ovaries.

A thousand-limbed
million-tongued, multi-spoused
Kali on wheels.

When I descend
I could choose
to dice carrots
or dice a lover.

I postpone the latter.

Arundhati Subramaniam

Arundhathi Subramaniam has worked over the years as poetry editor, curator, and journalist on literature, classical dance, theatre, and spirituality. She divides her time between Bombay and a yoga centre in Coimbatore. She is the author of four books of poetry including When God Is a Traveller and Where I Live: New & Selected Poems. Her prose works include the bestselling biography Sadhguru: More Than a Life and the Book of Buddha. She has edited or co-edited three anthologies, Pilgrim’s India; the Sahitya Akademi anthology of post-independence Indian poetry in English, Another Country; and Confronting Love.

Note: This is a classic, much-reproduced feminist poem that unites a group of unrelated women traveling in the compartment of an evening train in Mumbai.