Confluences is a collection of poetry that you want to like because it attempts to tell the truth about the lives of Indian women, lives based on their archetypes— primarily the Hindu goddesses. There are a couple of references to believers in Islam and to devotees of Jesus.

But is it possible for a universal sisterhood to relate to growing up under the influence of Sita’s self-effacement, for example, or Uma’s obsessive denial of pleasure? I wonder.

Even Nishi Chawla who has spent the last 20 years living in the suburbs of Washington, DC— where she teaches Literature at Maryland University College— does not persuade the reader that she is clear about her own beliefs.
Is incest okay, or is it a crime? Is it karma? She is on the fence about it. The following excerpts from one of the representative poems in Confluences show her confusion:

‘Repressions and Confessions’
-It happened a long, long time ago,
a time when she was nine; he only sixty winters more.
The naked nymph came silently to the old shepherd.
She thought he toyed with her pyjama strings,
opened them, a fruit in its prime, reaping time’s profits,
while she looked aside...
-She ponders on its merit. A middle-aged woman’s fancy,
if it was indeed incest, that dirty word mourned, across
cultural categories, culture’s wasted words, printed books,
civilisation’s balm, or just a subtle trick.
As if eating chicken is not the same thing…
-And when she bled, along with her reddened feces,
her mother smacked her, called her a hussy,
for she had found out.

Personally, I would have preferred healthier role models than the ones Chawla depicts. I wanted goddesses with power, women who are determined to change the status quo, women who refuse to keep on telling lies, women who have flushed the idea of caste, creed and colour down the toilet, or at least thrown it out with the rubbish. But, sadly, her assessment remains true— especially in an India where we are still watching commercials selling us face-whitening cream.

Nevertheless, Nishi Chawla has spotted a wave that has been rolling for decades and she’s finally climbed aboard with her made-in-the-USA surfboard determined to expose the oppression of Indian mothers, daughters, and their goddesses to the world.

Unfortunately, though, the book is probably destined for a small audience of female scholars who delight in searching for secret meanings shrouded in metaphor.

Perhaps only they will find it says in poetry, what’s already been said, more powerfully in prose.
Terry Reis Kennedy

Terry Reis Kennedy is a poet and journalist. Her most recent book of poetry, Bangalore Blue, is available from Split Shift Press, Los Angeles.

Confluences: Indian Women, Indian Goddesses, Nishi Chawla, New Delhi, Indialog Publications Pvt. Ltd. pp.109, Rs. 195