Children of Srinagar, Kashmir
Children of Srinagar, Kashmir
Current issue
About TLM Contact Reprint Open space Advertise Back issues Bookshop
Subscribe Gift Feedback Submissions Site search Gallery Awards
  Girls at play
 

  Venus Envy
  Vol V : issue 1

  Cover page
  Kaushik Basu
  Radhika Coomaraswamy
  Taslima Nasreen
  N. S. Madhavan
  Zehra Nigah
  Only in Print

Subscribe to The Little Magazine
Order the print edition of this issue
Browse our bookstore
Browse back issues

   Mail this page link
   Enter recipient's e-mail:
 
 

 

Taslima Nasreen

Oil on canvas by DHARMENDRA RATHORE

The game that we girls would play — the reason why afternoon came down on earth

A game called circle and run.
There’d be tremendous excitement all across the field —

From that world of flawless joy

I’ve tumbled down, landed in the well-worn shade of grief, long since

Don’t remember which way the teams were supposed to run

And touching whom would bring perfect victory!

Do girls still play the game, circle and run, letting their hair fly in the air?

I feel like playing again

Even now, sometimes, my toes itch with desire

Secret heels want to dig deep into the dust

I wish we,

All the grown-up girls of this world could run right away from the circle.

Translated from the Bengali ‘Balikar gollachhut’ by Chitralekha Basu and TLM

p. 1p. 2

 
 
Taslima Nasreen, feminist writer and poet, is among the best-known and most controversial of literary figures of contemporary Bangladesh. She lives in exile in Europe and the USA