Poetic plea for social change

‘I trace my skin through rivers and glass./I’m the goddess who earned her stripes.’ These are the concluding lines of the poem that give this collection its title. Often powerful, sometimes lyrical, sometimes banal, and sometimes resembling spoken poetry, these 30-odd poems by Vaishnavi S Kabadi are a sincere though idealistic attempt to nudge and shake a distracted, indifferent society out of its daily stupor.

Here are poems that tackle everything from sexual abuse to consent among couples to women unable to reclaim public spaces and female sexual pleasure. Sample this poem titled ‘Tinted Windows’: ‘I’ve lived through a generation/That had to cancel tinted windows on cars/Instead of teaching their men they shouldn’t abuse.’ Ah, well.

Free-flowing in their form and metre, the poems are an exasperated cry — this is the poet pulling the reader by her hand into the murky ugliness of our society and telling her to open her eyes, see, experience, linger; for only then can she strive for change.