'A Scatological Love Poem' in Tiffinbox Review--- and a confession!

 

The Banshee spends so much of her time mourning and grieving, you see, so she's apt to forget certain other things. So 'A Scatological Love Poem' was very kindly published by Yashasvi Vachhani in Tiffinbox Review. Which the Banshee also read out after a Queer Pride March years ago to roaring applause. But... but... the mistake the Banshee made is that she realised much later that 9 years earlier, in 2016, this poem-- albeit in a different form as several edits and changes were made with Yashasvi-- was earlier published in this print journal SCRIPTS of the LGBTQ society Labia. And then crying crying whining wailing, the Banshee forgot all about it by 2025. So the Banshee's apologies are due as like this the Banshee is going to acquire a bad reputation and nobody is ever going to publish her again. This poem was not included in my poetry collection because the publishers flatly refused to publish a poem which has Scatological in its very title. The funny thing is that even 'Beds and Buttons' is a scatological poem, but just because it doesn't directly use the word in the title, it passed under their radar. Read the Weird. Weirder. Weirdest. issue here

 

A Scatological Love Poem

 

To lick salty sweat off your skin

to kiss your hot fevered body

to touch your menstrual blood.

To smell it. Hair too. Pubic hair too.

To caress your wounds and itches.

To clean vomit. To clean shit. And then again, to love every part of you.

To suck blood like a vampire or a suction pump.

Is that violent? I did not mean violence.

Is this poem violent? Is it blasphemous?

Is it grotesque? Does it talk about gross parts

of you, of me? But already,

it is becoming inseparable, you see.

You may feel repulsed by this poem. You may

want to eject it. Vomit it out. My animal hunger.

Like morning phlegm spat out with toothpaste,

(you wrote somewhere). Spat, that’s the end of that.

But all this is only fantasy. And I could make the climax

a little more gruesome, a little more profane.

It’s just a different way of me being inside you.

I could perhaps be inside you as food. Yes, you could kill me,

and eat me, if you prefer.

             

and if I am to your distaste, if you abhor

my diseased & wicked brain, you

could excrete me. Cut me, carve me

gash me, slash me. Devastate until

satiated. Expel me, eliminate me, evacuate me.

In skin vein and limb, dream and whim your illicit name

the obsessive compulsive desire of my tongue

Oh, to inhabit you as food, for an hour only.

'Jokhini and Bamboo Pukhuri' in Muse India- North-East Issue!

So, some of you might know that the Banshee lives half inside her head and half in NE India mostly because whoever and whatever you give your heart to starts to live rent-free inside your head. And this way this way, the Banshee has got to know loads of things about NE India and loads of people as well such as Prof Bibhash Choudhary from Gauhati University who edited this NE special issue of Muse India. So the story is here. The Banshee also got fan mail for this story which put a huge grin on her otherwise moaning wailing face, so that's here too.






Hello!


Just finished reading Jokhini and Bamboo Pukhuri. It's been a while since I've reading something so intently and, from Bamboo Pukhuri's emerging fear, so intensely.


The story has so much umpf factor, working on so many levels and that's before even considering the cultural level that I am not privy of: a story of obsessive love's roots, something about lingering feelings even after moving on? Getting inside the others head and thus healing through understanding? Love morphing us in ways, for Jokhini, reflecting her intensity as honey suckle and for Bamboo Pukhuri, her detachment from the forest.


Just so much to unpack in what? Like 1000 words! It was a great umpfatic read and I thought I'd write this to show my appreciation, also because I write in a similar fashion and it helped me reverberate how I'd wish mine to look like.












Jokhini sprawled herself on the branches of the forest trees. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Her life was all about waiting now. Interminable and incessant waiting. Waiting for a glimpse of Bamboo Pukhuri, whom she had not seen. She looked around herself, remembering the days of yore. She gazed up at the moon. It was a thin, silver sliver. As she stared at it, something strange seemed to happen. Streaks seemed to come out of the moon until they appeared to be a full assemblage of intersecting arcs. The silver sliver seemed to flash like a full moon, with arrows or swords flashing out from it in every direction. Perhaps it was an optical illusion. They said the moon was a boat that tipped dreams into one's sleep. Perhaps these arrows were darts of memory. Perhaps ghosts like herself came out of these arrows, queens and princesses of yore, she thought drowsily, looking at the moon. Perhaps it was this strange enchantment caused by the moon that triggered her to go down memory lane. How she had yearned to go boating in the lake in this silvery moonlight, and how Bamboo Pukhuri had thwarted her desires. She had always loved the moon. Bamboo Pukhuri did too. Ah! How it hurt!

The days when she herself had been Honeysuckle, the botany student. That was before she had killed herself, driven insane because of her maddening and unfulfilled desires, which had turned her into the ghost Jokhini. How she used to roam around this forest. How she had met the woman, Bamboo Pukhuri, here. Bamboo Pukhuri was wise in the lore of trees and birds and lakes and forests. Bamboo Pukhuri was this witchy woman who could tell you all about the insects, bees and butterflies. The caterpillars and moths. The soil for the crops. The soil for the flowers. The seasons. She spent a lot of time gardening. Although Bamboo Pukhuri had never formally studied botany, Honeysuckle had learnt more amazing things from her than anything she had learnt in her classroom. As per her name, Bamboo Pukhuri loved lakes. She had a lake and a garden in her house. When Honeysuckle visited her house, they would often go boating on the lake. Bamboo Pukhuri had a pet deer, and she named him Bambi. They would pluck berries, and Bamboo Pukhuri would sometimes cook lovely dishes. And Bamboo Pukhuri taught her everything there was to be learnt about the forest and the lake. Bamboo Pukhuri grew tall and straight as bamboos are wont to do. But Honeysuckle was a climber. And Honeysuckle was so fascinated, she wanted to climb on Bamboo Pukhuri. Once Bamboo Pukhuri realised how tenacious, how loyal, devotional, obsessive and unswerving Honeysuckle's autistic love was as she suckled next to her (she wanted Bamboo Pukhuri to suckle her, imagine!), Bamboo Pukhuri decided that Honeysuckle must be weaned off. She called Honeysuckle a parasite. An invader. When Honeysuckle suggested a midnight boat ride on the lake, Bamboo Pukhuri asked why. She said she did not teach in the dead of night. When Honeysuckle wrote little love notes to Bamboo Pukhuri on the leaves which they had collected, Bamboo Pukhuri icily replied that the leaves had better be preserved in Honeysuckle's notebooks, and the leaves of various species she had told Honeysuckle about were not meant for writing love notes.

Being thus spurned, Honeysuckle had put all the plant knowledge she had gained from Bamboo Pukhuri to some other use. She knew several plants were very poisonous; the wisteria and the oleander were among the more deadly ones. The oleander was more easily available in these parts and also ensured a speedy and successful death. One day, wandering around, pained and hurt at the responses she had received from Bamboo Pukhuri, Honeysuckle had come across a big oleander tree with pink flowers and spiky green leaves, spreading itself out against an old wall. In desperation, she had hastily devoured it and had turned into the ghost Jokhini. In Assamese folklore, women who died with unfulfilled desires turned into Jokhinis. They lived in trees and killed men with their eyes by looking at them. But this Jokhini did not kill, and she wasn't in love with a man at all.

In fact, Honeysuckle Jokhini wanted Bamboo Pukhuri to kill her. If only Bamboo Pukhuri would eat her, she would be inside Bamboo Pukhuri's body and be able to forge some kind of a connection with her. But she knew Bamboo Pukhuri didn't want to eat her. Moreover, wouldn't some of Honeysuckle's madness get transferred into Bamboo Pukhuri if she were to eat her? And now that Honeysuckle had become Jokhini, this amorphous, bodiless ghost, how would she eat her at all? If she could kiss Bamboo Pukhuri, she would blow a bit of her soul into her. But being a Jokhini, she couldn't kiss a mortal now. And, seeing how hard Bamboo Pukhuri tried to stay away from her, it was impossible to kiss her as she never saw her anyway. Day after day, Jokhini lay waiting in the trees, but never did she catch so much as a glimpse of Bamboo Pukhuri. In mourning, she howled and cried. She chanted Bamboo Pukhuri's name. She lit a sacrificial fire into which she put pieces of herself-- tears, blood, flesh, vomit, hair, nails.

Now, as she looked up at the moon and saw the swords of light flashing from it, a multitude of arcs which made the blade-moon seem like a full moon, her yearning for the midnight moon boatrides with Bamboo Pukhuri surging up again, she hit upon the idea of trying to get inside Bamboo Pukhuri's mind, invading her mind. Penetrating her dreams just as Bamboo Pukhuri herself appeared in Jokhini's dreams. Being a ghost, she had the powers to do that. As if the flash came to her from the sword-arcs of the moon. If the moon tipped dreams in one's sleep, so was Jokhini about to slip dreams into Bamboo Pukhuri's.

As Jokhini entered her dreams, Bamboo Pukhuri came to know that Honeysuckle had become a Jokhini because Bamboo Pukhuri had thwarted her. Bamboo Pukhuri was alarmed. She had, anyway, begun trying to avoid Honeysuckle. In particular, she couldn't bear looking or being looked at. Was she afraid of Honeysuckle's eyes? Yet now, when she heard that Honeysuckle had become a Jokhini, what did she do? Knowing that Jokhinis lived only on trees, Bamboo Pukhuri decided to live far away from trees. Her house had been at the edge of the forest, but she shifted that so Jokhini never saw her anymore. Bamboo Pukhuri went far away and made sure that there were no trees near her new house. Now, Bamboo Pukhuri loved trees. And birds. And insects. And the forest. And the pukhuri lake. Yet she did this, so scared was she of Honeysuckle/Jokhini. Scared of her eyes. Scared of her mind. Her tight embrace, whether she bound her tightly as the Honeysuckle creeper or the hold she was trying to get over Bamboo Pukhuri's mind as Jokhini. Bamboo Pukhuri now had only potted plants near her house. She had no trees for miles around. She pottered about with her plants alone. She dared not go into any forest or near any trees. She had, however, bought huge telescopes, binoculars and cameras through which she could look at the forest while keeping herself at a comfortably safe distance. Through these, she saw her beloved trees and birds. Only through these. And miracle of miracles, very, very rarely, Bamboo Pukhuri would even train her telescopes and binoculars in the direction of Jokhini. In this safe, controlled way, she would sometimes look at her. Imagine, Bamboo Pukhuri, who ran away as far as possible from seeing Honeysuckle / Jokhini and from being seen by her, actually voluntarily looked at her in this very controlled, laboratory-like environment.

As Honeysuckle/Jokhini got more hold over Bamboo Pukhuri's mind, she seemed to realise this. She could even faintly feel the telescopic eyes on her. Jokhini stirred restlessly. Her heart was a-flutter with mixed emotions. Multiple discoveries, realisations and epiphanies were responsible for this. To do her justice, she had never meant to harm Bamboo Pukhuri. It was just the obsessive intensity of her autistic passions and the effect of past childhood traumas, coupled, of course, with the fact that she was a climber and really didn't know how to stand straight and tall, so she always ended up falling over Bamboo Pukhuri. Bamboo Pukhuri to help her stand, Bamboo Pukhuri to regulate her emotions, Bamboo Pukhuri to please suckle her and become her mother? Jokhini was flabbergasted to realise that Bamboo Pukhuri was looking at her.

As Honeysuckle/ Jokhini penetrated more and more into Bamboo Pukhuri's mind, she began to realise that Bamboo Pukhuri herself was in some sort of traumatic state. It seemed as if Bamboo Pukhuri had some psychiatric issues herself. As Honeysuckle / Jokhini got increasing hold over Bamboo Pukhuri's mind and entered her dreams, it seemed as if Bamboo Pukhuri's state was worsening. It was this that led Honeysuckle / Jokhini into her epiphany. She had, till now, always seen herself as the victimised one, the rejected one. Bamboo Pukhuri had utterly rejected her unconditional love and adoration. Jokhini had always seen herself as the hurt one. After all, she had to die and kill herself because of Bamboo Pukhuri's rejection. With this epiphany, and having entered Bamboo Pukhuri's mind, and having seen Bamboo Pukhuri actually looking at her through her telescopes, binoculars, and cameras as if she were one of Bamboo Pukhuri's favourite birds, Honeysuckle / Jokhini felt that Bamboo Pukhuri's reigning emotion out here was not hate, but fear. Bamboo Pukhuri did not hate her; Bamboo Pukhuri was afraid. She began to realise why Bamboo Pukhuri was so scared of her. Although Honeysuckle / Jokhini could not suddenly change herself because of this epiphany, it gave her food for thought. She gradually stopped trying to enter Bamboo Pukhuri's mind. But it had its uses. For one thing, it was precisely the act of being able to see inside Bamboo Pukhuri's mind that had brought about the epiphany. For another, it helped Honeysuckle / Jokhini to know that Bamboo Pukhuri did not hate her. Fear, after all, was a different emotion. Was that the reason why Bamboo Pukhuri couldn't look at her? Ah, but you see, she did look at her, too. Sometimes. Honeysuckle / Jokhini could understand fear and trauma better than hate, as she experienced them herself. Ironically, it brought her closer to Bamboo Pukhuri, in some sense. If Bamboo Pukhuri struggled with psychiatric issues, she could possibly understand and empathise with that. It was a strange situation. She was afraid of Bamboo Pukhuri, and Bamboo Pukhuri was afraid of her. It was a deadlock. Was it at all possible to break this d(r)eadlock and make a move towards peace through some sort of understanding?

'Rags and Riches' in Teesta Review!

 

So, after my poetry collection A Witch Like You came out in April 2021, I remember I didn't write at all for a while after that, and perhaps the very first poem I wrote was at the fag end of 2021 when the pandemic wasjust opening up and I was returning to Delhi, 'Rags and Riches'. It took a long time to find a home... until it found one again in summer 2025, again in the issue of Teesta Review guest edited by Nishi Pulugurtha. So here you find that the Banshee has taken a break from wailing about love distress and other bruises, and is mourning rags and riches, hypercapitalism apathy and sheer indifference.You can read the poem here, or you could see it below. 

Rags and Riches

Child-eyes, hungry for love
A longing, A gazing
A mute face
eloquent in speechlessness

Adult-eyes, romantic eyes
Drowning in each other
Coattails, Cocktails
Food fills the belly with love.

Child-eyes fixated on the food
Child-eyes, hungry for love
Moneyed-eyes, lost in each other,
lost to the world, lost to the child-eyes
Rags and riches, by the streetside.

'Joblessness, Unemployment, Berozgaari' in Sing, Slivered Tongue

 

As you might have figured out, this banshee is quite jobless and has too much free time on her hands. 'Joblessness, Unemployment, Berozgaari' in Sing, Slivered Tongue edited by Lopa Banerjee and Feroza Jussawalla, an anthology on South Asian trauma. 

Pictures follow below but first, an inside joke. I had sent 3 poems. Do you know why they chose this one? Shhh. My own take entirely. Not their official version. The autism one showed me to be as traumatising as traumatised. The queer one ended with : "in the Middle East, I'd be dead / In the US, I'd be in jail / Lucky to be in South Asia" LOL!! You can see why someone may not want these poems for a South Asian Trauma anthology even if they were super great poems in every other way which they were probably not. Honesty Honesty, cluck cluck. 

Comeback Publication: Berserk Banshee story in Virasat anthology, summer 2025

 

Loooooooooooooooooooooooooong timeeee!! Hellooooooo!!!! Bansheeee wails!!!!! The banshee has just been writing about a werewolf and a Jokhini in her latest story. But that's for another day. The banshee has delayed because she suffered severe aches and pains in her head everyday and still continues to do so which left her mostly wailing moaning and whining, but the time has come to rectify this. And the banshee promises that all wailing and moaning shall be done here, on this blog, henceforth. 

Well, the first Comeback Publication which actually happened last year summer is a huge one. I can in fact be considered a classic publication because it's called Berserk Banshee. In the Virasat anthology of short stories (West Bengal), edited by Nishi Pulugurtha. This is a high and mighty print publication. I can try putting the story here but it's a bit long, almost 4000 words. Or if you all send out feelers and signals to the banshee-- heck, we have emails and messages now-- she'll respond with a mournful wail for sure. 

Berserk Banshee Oleander was what they called a mad woman. Stark, raving mad. She was to be found at the same spot, all day and every day, hell bent on digging a tunnel. They called her obsessed. Possessed. She constantly kept muttering to herself. Sometimes her anger would rise, and her swear words would rise to a crescendo, a scream. Her long black tresses going down till her knees were eternally open. She was forever naked. She had never worn clothes ever since the time she had gone mad. She could not remember to wear them. She could not remember to comb her hair. Oleander, like her name, was pretty and poisonous. She was poisonous to certain people. She could also be poisonous to herself. Her name signified desire, destiny, caution, and romantic love. She embodied all of these too. Every part of the oleander plant was poisonous. A single leaf was enough to kill. Oleander had ideated for so long about suicide by eating the oleander that her name suited her perfectly. Oleander was a banshee. Every night, she used to wail portending a death. Her own death. However, nobody knew that she was a banshee. Nobody knew where the wailing sound came from, or whose death it portended. Everyone thought Oleander was just a mad, senile, berserk woman. Nobody connected Oleander with the mysterious wailing sound that was heard every night. To be sure, there was a sinister chill about the shriek, where did it come from, whose death did it portend? She was digging the tunnel as a secret and surreptitious means to enter the palace. The huge palatial grounds where on the huge citadel lived the royal family, their extended family, courtiers and maid-in-waiting, the most prominent entrepreneurs and businessmen of the nation, and the most eminent writers, poets, artists, musicians, filmstars, sportsmen, and the finest gardeners, birders, potters, weavers, craftsmen, and the most accomplished people of every field. A separate colony for the best doctors, another one for the best teachers of the land. The rest of the ordinary populace lived outside this palatial citadel. However, many who worked there had passes to enter the citadel in the morning and exit by evening. The rest were allowed there only on very rare and special occasions like state festivals. Except one person. There was one person perpetually banned from entering the palatial citadel. This person was Oleander. All the gates with all the liveried guards, she dare not enter them. She dare not even come near them. This was because of her obsessive and intense passion for Orchid, a most beautiful and talented lady of the land, as colourful as all the colours you find Orchids in, who Oleander was smitten with ever since Orchid had shown her great kindness which Oleander had never been able to forget. Orchid was perfectly seductive and alluring. Orchids were also the national emblematic flower of the land. However, when Oleander's passion and obsession had not shown signs of waning, Orchid had simply spoken to the King who had discussed it with all his Lords, and they had banned Oleander from entering this palatial and beautiful citadel. They would not even employ her as a sweeper within the citadel. They would not allow her to enter, no matter how many precious stones and jewels she may bribe them with. Now Oleander, spurned and rejected, longed to enter this citadel with an obsessive passion. It burned within her like flame fire. It consumed her. It became her life's mission. She saw it as her destiny. Now, at the farthest edge at the back of the citadel, there were no gates. Here at the back were fields only used during exhibitions and festivals, and for the sportsmen to practice. The maids-in-waiting had their houses here, huddled to one side. Thus, it made sense for Oleander to try to dig the tunnel from the back. Moreover, immediately behind the citadel, there were no roads. The soil was softer here, there were a few trees, it was easier to dig. Now you see how Oleander perfectly embodied the symbolism of the Oleander-- desire, destiny, caution, and the passionate love of the red oleander. Oleander lived here. She slept inside the tunnel. She did nothing else and thought of nothing else either. Her single-minded life mission was this. She was poor and homeless. For food, she either begged for bread, or plucked fruits off trees. Lots of citadel trees had branches extending beyond the wall. You may ask what was Oleander's purpose behind her obsessive burning desire to enter the citadel. Nothing. This was the point. Oleander had no purpose but to find solace, to calm down her neurodivergent nerves, and to satisfy her neurodivergent sexuality. You see, Oleander was autistic. Before Oleander started digging the tunnel, she had gone entirely insane. She reached for train departures and weddings and parties and meetings and other events at the wrong day and at the wrong time. She got off buses randomly at places she wasn't supposed to get off at. She had no idea where she was going. In this state of lunacy of course, she could not reach anywhere she had to go. Thus she slipped from society. She would forget about wearing clothes and combing hair. Gradually, she made the tunnel her home. All she ever thought about was Orchid. All she ever dreamt of was entering the citadel. Her whole soul bent on her life's mission. As she dug the tunnel with her spades and shovels, constantly muttering to herself, one of her autistic quirks, sometimes her desperation raged and her anger seethed and her ignominy was utterly intolerable. Sometimes she screamed at the four walls of the tunnel. She screamed that she would tell Orchid exactly what she thought of her. She swore that she would go and kill herself at Orchid's doorstep. She vowed that she would become a suicide-writer like the suicide bombers and write all the abuses to all those hateful people and murder their reputations before she died. Because none of it would matter to her after death anyway. She dreamt of joining the political goons in the city and learning how to scale walls and throw bombs and start various kinds of fires from them. Autistically naive as she was, she had no idea how to do such things herself. With her strong autistic sense of justice, that she was planning to learn from the goons itself shows her intolerable condition of madness. And yet, at other times, she lay wretched, chanting Orchid's name as if it were god's. This was her autistic stim. Saying Orchid when she was scared tensed, in pain in shock, saying Orchid to deal with life. Orchid in the morning, Orchid in the evening, Orchid at night, Oleander breathed dreamt ate Orchid. Was Orchid? She prayed to Orchid, worshipped Orchid, was maddeningly in love with and obsessed with that pretty, talented, and tantalising woman called Orchid. Hers indeed was a pitiable condition. Being autistic, she had passions and frenzies she was unable to control or regulate. Her emotional swings had become roaring and routine like sea tides. Her obsessiveness too was very autistic. Also, she dreamed. She dreamed a lot. She dreamt of all the ways in which she could enter the citadel. She hadn't even finished the tunnel yet, but in her dreams, she had entered and sojourned the citadel through the tunnel so many, many times. Sometimes she managed to sneak in surreptitiously through the gates. Like, in a car. Curled up in the back of a car entering the citadel gates, who would see her? Or she dreamt of the time Orchid had given her that chocolate, had praised Oleander's poem, had compared Oleander to an eminent woman, and so many of Orchid's other daily solicitous kindnesses. As she dug the tunnel, some puwali bhoots, which means child ghost in assamese, came to trouble her. They created a lot of noise and ruckus on the roof of the tunnel. These little demons shrieked and banged pots and pans creating a din, and taunted this crazed old woman, wandering naked and constantly muttering to herself. Even screaming, at times. The ghost poltergeists flung coconuts on the roof, and drove poor Oleander even more insane if that was possible, with their maniacal laughter. They were terrible. They brought garbage from dustbins and overturned it on Oleander's tunnel. Then they salvaged whatever sweets they could find in the waste and ate them and danced in glee. Of course they never gave any to Oleander. These puwali bhoots have Oleander terrible migraines. Or maybe they were autistic psycho-somatic headaches. Autists can have psycho-somatic pain in various parts of their body due to sensory overload, emotional overwhelm, stress of unregulated emotions, and a host of factors due to their super-sensitivity and intensity. They just went on and on and on. They raged for as long as the puwali bhoots danced shrieked and jumped. They continued into the night long after the puwali bhoots had left. They ruined Oleander's life entirely and made her miserable. They just never let poor Oleander alone. They were a double nuisance on top of the puwali bhoots and their shrieking maniacal laughter and their stinking garbage. What if they threw one of their pots and pans and coconuts directly at Oleander's head? And this, of course, on top of all the rejection from Orchid, and all the people of the entire city and the citadel, and the liveried guards looking at her suspiciously if they ever saw her within sight of the citadel gates. They would also regularly patrol the back of the citadel. Oleander had to be very careful. She crouched inside the tunnel to hide and only came out when the coast was clear. She longed to be a part of all those people who could just enter the citadel normally. Ah, the beautiful tree lined paths and fountains of the citadel, and the magnificent buildings, all of them done in regal style and splendour that just went on and on. There were ancient style grand historical buildings there. Well laid out parks. Gardens. Libraries. Fun foods and festivals. The most revered people in the land. Oh, what wasn't there in the citadel! Oleander had cherished memories of frequenting the citadel in earlier times where she had been training to be a writer, with access to the best libraries, and the best writers and teachers. Orchid was one of the writers who would act as resource people for trainees such as Oleander. And of course she remembered the beautiful kindness shown to her by Orchid who had taken her within the comfort and snug fires of her own home when Oleander had felt bullied and misunderstood and entirely strange and different from others--- a complete misfit, not being able to wear what others wore, not being able to participate in the same activities as the others, hanging out at the movies or the dance parties. Being autistic Oleander was not able to wear tight-fitting jeans because of her supersensitivity to touch. She also had prosopagnosia which made it difficult to understand films. She was a highly naïve and emotionally sensitive creature whom others could easily take for a ride. She could not belong. Orchid had shown her beautiful kindness and had sort of cared for her, protected her-- until of course Orchid got scared of Oleander's ardent, burning passion. Oleander would slither down along the tunnel, rubbing her clitoris on the bed of the tunnel. She would shake her body vigorously from left to right. This was a kind of masochism. It was almost as if this was a kind of self-punishment. But it gave her a kind of pleasure too. It was a kind of penance. It was also a measure of self-control. Sometimes, after one of her fits of rage, she felt the need to do this. Sometimes, if she felt one of the guards had seen her, she felt the need to exercise a measure of self control. Sometimes, she got desperate and wanted to kill herself off. Sometimes, she got wild and crazy ideas about what she would do once she managed to gain entry into the citadel. She would burn down the citadel. She would lock Orchid tight in a death-embrace. She would hurl abuses like stones. Sometimes, she felt pangs of guilt as to what she had done to Orchid to make her so terribly afraid. How she had repaid Orchid for her kindness. She had to punish herself, control herself. And yet, it gave her a strange kind of weird pleasure too, it gave her a sense of balance and clarity to rub her clitoris against the rocky bed of the tunnel. Sometimes, it hurt her body physically to do this. At other times, she would clear the debris, and bring mounds of fresh soil she had just taken out back into the tunnel. When she made a mound or hill of that soil and rubbed her body over that, it was more pleasurable. It depended on her mood, her end goal from this act. Sometimes, when people of the town or the puwali bhoots taunted her beyond belief, she found solace in rubbing her body and her clitoris, there in the tunnel. She had to hide. She could not do this in front of anyone. After a vigorous round of this, she lay back, pleasured yet exhausted. Yes, it was exhausting to do this. Sometimes, when she got extremely agitated, she did something funny with her hands. Her hand would become stiff and rigid, her fingers a little wide apart. Her hands would shake. Her whole body would tremble in her agitation. It was instinctive, she could not help it. Her face, at such times, would be tense and stern, a little contorted. Once this frenzy ended, she would be back to normal. Or, as normal as Oleander ever was, in any case. In the middle of all this, Oleander was haunted by eyes. These eyes were perhaps the only kindness she had ever seen. Well, apart from Orchid's. And miraculously, lo and behold, these eyes belonged to Orchid's husband. Orchid's husband's eyes. It may seem inexplicable, but Oleander had only seen kindness from these eyes. Never once had he shown her taunt, disdain, hatred, torment, unlike all the people of the town, the liveried guards, and the puwali bhoots. His eyes had seemed more compassionate. They did not judge her. They only looked at her curiously, very curiously, as if wanting to penetrate the very depths of her and to truly see her. It was a piercing gaze as if he wanted to find out whether Oleander was as innocent and naive as she seemed, or was it with malicious intent that she had started taking her daily morning and evening walks near Orchid's house. Whether it was sheer love-lorndom, or whether Oleander was by design trying to stalk Oleander. Did she want to learn Orchid's routine and to accost her, assault her, or was she satisfied only to catch a glimpse of her? It was very strange but he did not seem to judge her. He merely wanted to know. Once, in fact, at the time when they had banned her from the citadel, his face was all red, full of shame. His body cowered. He side stepped. He could not look Oleander in the eyes. Neither of course, could Orchid, but Orchid was terrified and traumatised, which he was not. And yet, it was a curious thing. This was no love-triangle. No hate triangle. There was an absence of jealousy and hatred between him and Oleander, though no spoken words passed between them. In its own sense, it was magic, beyond the ordinary realms in which humans live. This remarkable space of everything that was non-normative. Oleander treasured it more than the most precious of stones. It became like a surviving and guiding light for her. These eyes haunted her. They multiplied. They constantly watched her in the tunnel, when she was at work, when she slithered and rubbed her clitoris, when the puwali bhoots taunted her. These eyes made Oleander survive. They enabled her to go on. These eyes were the last thing she thought of when she slept. These eyes, as also, the memory of Orchid's kindnesses. It was as if the tunnel was made up of eyes. It was a safe space, a place of refuge. Eventually, Oleander's digging was successful and she was able to tunnel through to the other side, right into the citadel. Now, she was finally there. She had shovelled through the last remaining bit of earth. But now that she was actually here, she was hushed, quiet. It was unbelievable. She was also scared. What if anyone saw her, anyone at all. They would immediately recognise her and throw her out. They might imprison her, punish her. She had no idea what they might do. She did not particularly desire to see Orchid though she would be delighted if she did. Being present in the same citadel, with Orchid, with all of them was enough for her. But she dare not even try to see Orchid. She remembered how Orchid had been trembling and shivering when she had seen Oleander from the windows of her house a few times. So Oleander just stayed put inside the tunnel. She was still in the tunnel, it was just that she was inside the citadel now. She had taken out the only piece of clothing she possessed, a shawl Orchid had given her long ago, and had draped it over herself. She did not wish to wander around naked in the important citadel. Moreover, she did not wish to attract so much attention to herself. However, Oleander put out her sign. Her sign was a huge silver orchid, dangling in the air. The orchid whose name she chanted every time she was in pain, in fear, hungry thirsty sleepy whatever... This sign loomed large over the town. A hushed gossiping and whispering started in the town. Was it for Orchid? Who had put it there? How did it come there? Or was the king planning to hold a special orchid festival or exhibition? The white shadowy ghostly silver orchid looming in the air was like a symbol of Oleander's love and faith, like the silver doe was the patronus for Severus Snape, spurned lover of Lily Potter. Oleander would come out of her tunnel very early in the morning, pick up some leftover foodstuff kept outside citadel shops, pluck some luscious fruits off trees and take water from one of the taps or the fountains. Of course, she could go back down the tunnel at any point, but now that she was finally in the citadel, she was transfixed here, she could not leave. On one of these trips, Orchid's husband, out on a morning walk, happened to see her. He kept an eye on Oleander, followed her back, and discovered the tunnel. The next morning, Oleander found a small note at the entrance to her tunnel. Orchid's husband had taken some pity on Oleander. The note read: "Oleander, Orchid does not hate you or wish ill for you. She is traumatised, she is terribly ill herself." Reading this, some sort of an epiphany began to dawn on Orchid. It began to clear some of the foggy perceptions in her brain. It made her start rethinking things in a different way. It seemed to be a message of peace and understanding. If Oleander thought of it this way, she could lose some of the bitterness and her suicidal bouts. She would also lose some of her angry fits as to what she would do after entering the citadel. In fact, the message left by Orchid's husband was vitally important for Oleander, and was necessary to salvage the situation as well. That morning, when Orchid's husband saw Oleander and the sign that Oleander had put up, he instinctively understood that Oleander was a banshee and that it was her wailing they heard each night. Now whose death did Oleander warn people about? Orchid's? Her own? This complicated matters infinitely. It was partly this which prompted him to leave the note for Oleander, trying to guess at her internal state, and hoping to prevent a death. What did Orchid feel when she saw the huge ghostly silver sign? What did Orchid feel when she thought of Oleander? Oleander could only imagine. Perhaps Orchid felt somewhat disturbed. Orchid knew that Oleander had never gotten over her passion. Although Oleander was forbidden to enter the citadel grounds and Orchid had managed to put sufficient distance between herself and Oleander, she may have had heard stories of Oleander wandering about naked, shrieking, crying. She had probably been told Oleander had gone completely mad and that she was at full risk of harming herself or someone else. Perhaps Orchid would shudder. She may have heard that Oleander was sometimes seen within eyesight of the citadel walls and had even been spotted gliding along them. It might disturb Orchid to be the object of such seething passion. What exactly did Oleander want from her? What did she want to do to her? Now, perturbed, watching the sign, might Orchid fall sick? Oleander imagined her getting chills and fevers. Her shivering and trembling did not stop. She became house-bound. She put up all the blinds and curtains. Although Oleander had never even touched her physically, Orchid was just shit-scared. Of her sight, her gaze. Of her passionate intensity. Of what this might lead her to do. Would it cross her mind whether Oleander would kill herself because of this rejection? Might she have an underlying sense of guilt? Oleander imagined Orchid sitting in bed, propped up between pillows, blankets, and hot water bottles. A psychiatrist may have been called to examine her. She might be following all the psychiatrist's instructions and prescriptions round the clock until the fear symptoms abated. That night, it rained. It rained and rained and rained as the heavens poured upon the earth. The rain brought some clarity, understanding and peace to Oleander. Of course, the note from Orchid's husband was responsible for it. A wave of relief washed over her to know that Orchid did not hate her and was not against her. Orchid was in pain, just as Oleander was, only her pain was different. Orchid was afraid, just as Oleander was, only her fear was different. It was mutually exclusive, but it was still pain and fear. It was still not nice, and it still hurt, but it was a little easier for Oleander to understand and accept. The rain made the message of the letter percolate in her mind. The rain brought peace and understanding. The rain also naturally made the tunnel disappear. Oleander would not try to dig a new tunnel for some time to come now. What would Oleander do next for her own survival and sanity? Would she try to connect with Orchid in some other way?  

Author-Interview in Parcham Magazine!

 The Berserk Banshee's wails are finally getting recognised and she was called to answer some questions about her lunatic life and bizarre writing, so her first-author interview ever features in Parcham Magazine here. 

The interview was immensely long and was later cut short at the discretion of the editor by removing some of the stuff, which is the prerogative of the editor. Still, it does convey the main essence! The banshee will keep wailing so that her cries are louder, and reach farther till hopefully her anguish reaches some empathetic ears. 

'Romancing the Oleander' in Panocha Zine and Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English

Well, so the banshee always keeps thinking of dying and when she does so, of course she will come back as a ghost to haunt the same people and the same places (the advantage being that ghosts are invisible, cannot be seen, and can even fly, move through air, do mischief without being caught and things like that). So the banshee's chosen method of dying is the oleander plant-- very pretty and very poisonous. And the banshee is such an incorrigible romantic at heart, that she began romancing with the oleander itself and courting death! 

'Romancing the Oleander' was first published in a rather obscure US print journal, Panocha zine, in its Yerba issue, Yerba basically meaning plants. The banshee's take on plants is rather macabre as you can see. This was furthermore accepted for the Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, and well, I leave you with the banshee and the oleander. 

Romancing the Oleander

I desired its pink flowers

and its spiky, lance-like leaves

I read one could get you poisoned

and twelve could leave you dead. 

The yellow flowers are the commonest

in India, but the red, being more poisonous

would suit my purpose better. The seeds

would do just as well. Anything, really. 

Any part of this pretty ornamental garden plant

which hid death in the whorls of its flowers. 

How harsh a death could such a pretty flower

bring, after all, and such a lilting flower name

though the leaves are bitter? The flowers too,

 I suppose. Imagine a pretty death

devoid of bitterness. They sell a plant for about 

three hundred rupees, on Amazon. I thought

I could keep a plant-pet, love it, grow it, 

 perhaps eat it. I could always garden, 

in case I didn't die. Thus I have a macabre romance

with the oleander. Either I grow the oleander, 

or the oleander kills me. 

'Could Watching Anais Nin Land Me in Jail?' in Qurbatein, Ashoka University

So the banshee, as I said, is writing love-letters, and these can be addressed to nymphs, angels, and even goddesses, just as much to ghosts, witches and other banshees. For writing these love-letters, the banshee first needs to research and get a lot of information about her beloveds because love-letters are, ultimately, intimate things, and require a very good knowledge of the addressee. So the banshee was trying to watch a film about the beautiful nymph, Anais Nin, and then this bizarre thing happened, yes, more berserk than the banshee herself: 

'Could Watching Anais Nin Land Me in Jail?' features in Qurbatein, issue 5, Digital Desires. Quarbatein is the journal of CSGS, Centre for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, Ashoka University. You can find it here. 

Could Watching Anais Nin Land Me in Jail? 

An orgy of four naked bodies –  

the beautiful pair of nude buttocks

belong to Maria de Madeiros: the charming 

actress who plays Anais Nin. 

The seductive way she pronounces Aa-na-iis. 

She is in bed 

with Henry – isn’t he June’s husband? 

Anais is jealous: He has someone 

who drives him to pain and chaos. 

Hold your horses: Hugo knows. So does June.

Women kissing men, 

women kissing women,

belles dancing, nude? 

Be careful Anais, says Eduardo. 

Abnormal pleasures take away 

the taste of normal ones. 

This is the film, Henry and June:

A slice of life from Anais Nin’s diary. 

Notice from National Cyber Crime Portal: 

Your computer is locked for watching porn: 

violence, paedophilia, homosexuality. 

Pay up Rs 32,500, or face 2 years in jail. 

All data from the device will be deleted 

unless the fine is paid. 

I panic. The National Cyber Crime Portal 

has done what you did not.

'Letter to Kamala Das' in Usawa Newsletter, March 2024

 Since the banshee spends half her life wailing and crying, she did not find the time or the energy to put this up earlier, but this is a letter from the Sapphic Epistles that the banshee is trying to write. So the banshee can fall in love with witches, wizards, mortals, ghosts, other banshees, anyone at all. And the banshee gets fascinated by whoever she can connect herself with, so the epistles are mostly to freakish people, and the banshee writes a lot about sexualities, disabilities, traumas and mental illnesses. The banshee also presented papers around similar themes on Robin Williams and Frida Kahlo, and the next one coming up is the banshee's favouritest poet, Emily Dickinson. 

So, this letter to Kamala Das, one of the shortest letters that the banshee has written, in fact, appeared in the Usawa Newsletter (the banshee not being high-brow enough for the main journal yet) in March 2024 here. 

My dearest Kamala, Amy, Madhavikutty, what should I call you?

I don't want to call you Das... although I fell in love with someone called Das, but no Kamala, why should I call you by the name of that man who never loved you? To whom you were just possession and property...

I’ll call you Amy-kutty. Or simply kutty. I can, after all, imagine that you are my younger sister. Though you are the amma of all of us women in India who write English poetry.

Your parents never loved each other Amy-kutty, neither did your husband. My parents didn't love each other either--- well, they did once-- but they fell out of love. And they divorced. And I? I never married, Amy. Not till now, in any case. Growing without love etched scars on our souls.
Your father made you only wear plain white frocks!! That reminds me of Anne... Anne Shirley... Marilla only dressed her in stiff browns and greys, though she yearned for "puffed sleeves"! I have always been in love with Anne, since age ten...

How desperately lonely you must’ve been... that man didn't even let you attend to your own kids! Your woman breasts felt so crushed and your sad woman heart must have felt so beaten... First father, then husband! Our lives as women hemmed in by these patriarchal figures of authority!

When we don't have love, we fall into illicit love. You fell in love with your art teacher, and your English teacher. How lovely. I fell in love with my teachers too-- my history and hindi teacher, and my English teacher. A school teacher and a college teacher. Both women. I wonder why female English teachers attract us, Amy... how did she look... how did she make you feel... and of course you were never allowed to pursue your loves, but were made to live a loveless life! Such catastrophe... I could never fulfil my loves either, Amy... they were my teachers, and they were married after all... I wonder if I will ever find love, Amy... it seems enormously difficult... I’ve asked several others too, both boys and girls but it never works out… but then I seek love in foremothers like you, who have gone before, who have written painted and sung all that was in their hearts...

What about that girl in the train whom you kissed, Amy? On her mouth? Wow. I never did kiss a girl... and that mysterious girl whom you lost after just one kiss---the eyes, the lips, the curves, and the soul... how tragic! Did she have long black hair? I love dense black curls... you dated many different men kutty, but your patriarchal husband must have been so jealous… I love those kind of poly- relationships, Amy, where there’s no jealousy… I’m not at all jealous of my teacher’s husband because he’s too good and kind and I don’t know how to be jealous of someone so good whom I respect… someone said I’m not jealous of him because she was already married to him when I got to know her, but that’s not true, Amy, I looked within myself and I know that’s not the reason. I could and indeed would’ve been jealous of a lesser man… but I read about Amrita Pritam, Amy, her delightful relationships with Sajjad Haider and Sahir and Imroz… and concept of the raqib in urdu poetry…

You wrote so honestly Amy... I do too... I don't know what will befall me for this courage of truth... you led a difficult life in your time, Amy... and me in mine... I speak and write publicly about everything—my queerness, autism, depression, childhood trauma—all the consequences and disciplinary action that befell me for being so intensely in love with my teacher... I try to hide it in the garb of fiction, but I’m afraid I’m too honest, perhaps my fiction fails to hide anything at all... because it’s truth... but it’s only my truth. It could be fiction, from the other's perspective. That's what Tracy Chapman says in her song, 'Telling Stories'.

You fell in depression. You had to, kutty, after the life you led. But why did you fall into depression after the birth of your children? I fell into depression after they forced me away from my teacher, took disciplinary action, and all... but it was one-sided love, it was illicit, Amy... it couldn’t last... but I write too honestly... one day retribution will befall me for this too, this act of expressing... they say I write like you, I think so too…

I’m so glad you did find love at last... in Carlo... d’you think I might too, Amy? I can't seem to love men's bodies somehow... especially not their penises... you changed your name... they say you found love in Allah... or perhaps in a Muslim man... whatever it be, I’m so glad you found love at last... you said you believed in Krishna too... my grandmother once compared me loving my teacher single-mindedly in absentia to Mirabai loving Krishna... but devotion is so beautiful, isn't it now, Amy-kutty?

 

 

My Artwork!

 

The depressed banshee has found out that art is a nice thing to do. Moreover, the banshee loves colours. All kinds of colours, all shades and hues of colours. The banshee's recent fascination is with soft pastels where the bright colours literally ooze out and stain her fingers. The banshee also loves flowers. She mostly wants to make all kinds of flowers with the soft pastels. If she is very ambitious and very successful, she might also try birds a little later. So these are the amateur banshee's very initial forays into the world of soft pastels: Aurora Borealis, and red flowers! The centre one was actually the first to be made and the flowers were the last. 

'Jokhini and the Princess' in The Bangalore Review

 And now the ghost gets real ghostly.  'Jokhini and the Princess' is the first story out of my speculative collection, Berserk Banshees, to be published. The title story, Berserk Banshee, should be finally out next month. 

Jokhini is an assamese female ghost who lives in trees. Women with unfulfilled desires become jokhinis when they die, so it's totally me. But my jokhini is very nice and doesn't kill anyone. So, I am honoured, flattered etc etc etc to actually have this in the Fiction Special of The Bangalore Review. The editor, Sucharita Dutta-Asane has truly taken a lot of pains with it. You can find it here. 

                                                      Jokhini and the Princess 

Jokhini the ghost was stark naked. She hid herself among the branches of the huge, sprawling tree on the left lawn of the castle. The vines of this crooked-branched tree that straddled the castle wall were known to bewitch people, like intoxicating wine. The tree was partly in the castle premises, partly out. Just like Jokhini. She couldn’t decide what she was, where she was. She had lived all her life in the castle until her banishment. She had another favourite tree in the castle grounds, a kachnar that scattered its pink and cream petals on the ground in hordes.  

Jokhini’s hair was an unruly, uncontrollable mass, like a million long curvy wires. Her kohled eyes were deep black. But Jokhini was not always called Jokhini. Before her death, she was called Ivy, the daughter of the gardener who tended the palace grounds. Ivy had been in deep, obsessive, lifelong love with Princess Wisteria. But her love found no response from the princess; her efforts were in vain. So, she consumed the poisonous Wisteria flowers and turned into a ghost. The walls on the right-hand side of the castle were covered in wisteria, in honour of the princess, of course. How could a castle where Princess Wisteria lived not have wisteria flowers? Ivy had found it very apt that the wisteria flowers had killed her. Had she not died for Princess Wisteria after all? 

The legend goes that women who die with unfulfilled desires turn into Jokhinis. They live in trees and can kill men with their eyes. But Jokhini loved women, not men. She was in love with the princess, had always been, but she did not want to kill her.

Ivy was autistic, her passions and emotions intense and obsessive. Her love for Wisteria continued to grow even when she had no direct contact with the princess. She had loved the princess for years and years and years. They played together as children, and later, when they grew up, she tried to be friends with the princess. She would give her little gifts and plan joyful surprises. Initially, Wisteria seemed to bask in the attention lavished on her. Occasionally, she would hand over a chocolate to the girl who doted on her. This was until the princess developed the consciousness that she was a princess, until she started having evening parties and young princes as visitors. She had her personal maid-in-waiting, and the gardener’s daughter was not offered this post. According to the princess, Ivy was too clingy, she overstepped her boundaries, and did not know her place. She complained to the king that Ivy was stalking her, and the king banished Ivy from the castle grounds.

Ivy was mortified. There was so much she wanted to talk to the princess about, so many carefully decorated bouquets that she wanted to give her. A rose of a different colour everyday of her life. But the princess had crushed and crumpled her as if she were a fallen petal.

Ivy and Princess Wisteria both had the enchanting powers of the vines of the villa. Ivy’s power was to cling and climb and she tried to attach herself to Wisteria by clinging to her. Wisteria had the power of royal purple beauty and her bountiful blossoms were quite irresistible. Ivy spread and covered the entire wall with her leaves in her efforts to gain entry into the Villa. Her heart-shaped leaves glowed with her love for the princess and her attachment to the castle. How they attempted to cling on to both for dear life! The Royal Purple Wisteria hung in wreaths, drooping under their own weight and falling to the ground. Some of Ivy’s leaves were purple too.

Ivy and Princess Wisteria both had the capacity to be poisonous. Indeed, they were poisonous to each other by turns.

Ivy yearned to make peace with the princess. She would wait outside the castle to see if the princess would come out. Did the princess like her a little bit, she wondered? But the princess came out rarely. When she did, she was accompanied by a retinue of courtiers and soldiers. She took it as further stalking by Ivy if she found the gardener’s daughter lying in wait for her outside the castle grounds and immediately complained to her father, again.  

Ivy had always lived in the castle. The castle seemed to send out little tendrils to bind Ivy to itself, tethering her to its wall. Now, deprived of her beloved castle, she missed her favourite, sprawling trees. Finding herself abandoned by the castle, unable to make peace with the princess, and consumed by her own intense passion, which grew despite being spurned, Ivy consumed the poisonous wisteria flowers and killed herself.

She returned as Jokhini.

As Jokhini too, she finds herself bound to the castle walls, the tendrils reaching out of the very wall to bind her to itself. As if in response, an umbilical cord jutting out of her stomach attached itself to the castle’s trees and wall. Now she stayed among the branches of her beloved trees, but she could not step onto the grounds of the castle. The king had ordered his wizards to place such a magic enchantment on the castle grounds that Jokhini could not set foot there, even after death. She could hide in the trees, but she was too scared to live in them.

So, Jokhini lived in a forest near the castle. It was easy to hide there. She only visited the castle trees sometimes. She had the ability to fly in short spurts, although she could not fly much. When she laughed, the trees would madly wave their leaves and branches and there were strong winds. When she sighed, it became rainy and stormy. The ability to control the weather helped her hide herself.

Jokhini’s umbilical cord, jutting out of her stomach, was the remnant of the clinging power she had had as Ivy, made of her own flesh. It connected her metaphorically to Princess Wisteria with whom she had an intense oedipal attachment. Part of the reason for Ivy’s intense attachment to Princess Wisteria was that she played too many roles for Ivy — a romantic role, a mother-role, perhaps even a goddess-role. Ivy seemed to worship Princess Wisteria and the very ground she walked on. If the Princess was averse to a romantic connection, Ivy didn’t mind being her sister either—they had grown up together after all. Anything to find a connection with the princess. Anyhow.

The umbilical cord helped her tie herself to the tree branches so she didn’t fall off. The very trees of the villa mothered her, the trees she had clung to and swung from ever since she was a little girl. Once she was secure with the cord, she could spend hours in the trees, cackling and laughing and moaning and changing the weather as she wished. She could watch people for hours. Sometimes, she would swoop down and take away their hats, or drop tree branches on their heads, or howl with heartbreak. Terrified, people would look here and there, upwards and villa-wards, then towards the villa gates, or blankly and vacantly at the huge grounds. Or in the forest, she would drop apples on their heads, or oranges, peaches, mangoes. An empty bird’s nest, if she wished. She could make hooting owl sounds or cackling witch sounds or buzzing sounds, or any other sound that she wished to make.

Lying there, she would dream. She would dream of somehow getting a chance to speak to the princess. Even if the princess spurned her, she would get a few beautiful moments. She dreamt of the days when she and the princess had been young and played together. In childhood, they had been friends, before the princess came of age and began to feel that the gardener’s daughter was crossing boundaries and not sticking to her rightful place. Ivy would design special bouquets for her every day and hide love notes in them. She would be the princess’s personal escort till the outhouse or the swimming pool, or like the maid-in-waiting, who would attend on her during her morning and evening walks. She would cling to the princess as only Ivy could. The fact was that Ivy didn’t always know where to set boundaries and draw the line. She was spontaneous and did as she pleased. But the princess was alarmed.

Jokhini dreamed of going inside the castle and sitting with the princess. She yearned for the princess to know that she was out there, hiding in the trees. She wished it hadn’t come to this, that she didn’t have to die for her passions. Sometimes she was tempted – should she serenade the princess under the window? Leave anonymous strings of bouquets? She was still as much in love as ever and secretly nursed hopes that sometimes the princess remembered and missed her too.

Now, when Jokhini would visit the villa, something strange would happen. The vines would clutch Jokhini and not let her go. Her umbilical cord would cling to the branches. But Jokhini dared visit the castle grounds only for short periods, or perhaps at night, or whenever she managed to kick up a storm. Leaving the castle was painful for her because inevitably she would find herself tied by the umbilical cord to the tree branches. She never tied it herself. She did not realise how it tied itself. As if she were a daughter of the trees, of the villa. Would that make her the princess’s sister? Leaving the castle meant cutting the cord, breaking it each time. It was incredibly painful.

Now, Jokhini was forever in restless search and longing because her dreams had remained unfulfilled, and so she decided that the only way to satisfy her desires was to become the princess, the only way she could stay connected with the princess, even if indirectly. For this, she needed to use the Doppelganger potion. The Doppelganger potion, something like the Polyjuice Potion, was made of snakeskins and lizard tails, some moonshine, and the nectar of a particular kind of blue flower. The potion required something else too – a part of the person you wanted to turn into. 

Now, this was really difficult. Jokhini collected all the ingredients and hid them away in the woods where she lived, where she had a large pot that served as a cauldron. Now Jokhini faced a seemingly insurmountable task: to find the princess. She kept creating stormy rains during nights in the hope of somehow trapping and waylaying the princess in order to snip off some of her hair.

***

A couple of years after Ivy’s banishment and subsequent suicide, the princess fell in love with a young prince of the neighbouring county. The prince was going away on a long journey and wanted to bid the princess goodbye. As he made his way to the castle on horseback, the weather suddenly turned stormy; there was little he could do about it.

Jokhini saw the princess walking underneath her tree. She followed the princess. She saw her walk down to a small side gate in the castle grounds. She was going to meet the prince, and she was doing this surreptitiously! The king must have told her not to go out in this stormy night. There were wild winds, thunder, and lightning. Branches from some of the trees on the grounds crashed down. But the princess hurried on. She had to meet the prince one last time before he left. He would be gone for ten months. She was going to give him a little souvenir to remember her by. She had to meet him in private; her father would be enraged that he had come in this weather. She had looked forward to a stroll with him in the castle grounds but that seemed difficult now.

The princess let the prince in and ushered him into a nearby pavilion. Jokhini watched from the branches of a nearby tree. She saw the prince unwrapping a small rainbow-coloured package. “Oh, darling,” the prince said, “I got these for you. One for every month I’ll be gone.” Ten rings – gold, platinum, silver rings studded with rubies, emeralds and diamonds. “This is an amazing gift,” she heard the princess say. “I shall wear all ten of them on my ten fingers at once.”

Then it was the princess ‘s turn. “I made these for you,” she smiled a little coyly. She had knitted and embroidered for him ten neckties and ten handkerchiefs. “Remember me when you use them,” she said.

Jokhini burned with jealousy. Suddenly, she spied something and the strangest expression of wonder mixed with hope spread across her face. She smiled, the smile widening until it creased her face. She tried to get as close as she could. The umbilical cord still tied her to the tree branches but she could try to stretch herself as much as possible without revealing herself. Lo and behold, out of all the handkerchiefs and neckties Princess Wisteria had embroidered for her beloved, one handkerchief and one necktie for the month of June were covered in ivy. June was Ivy’s birth month.

Ivy was stunned. She still burned with jealousy but her mouth was suddenly dry. Princess Wisteria remembered her after all? Princess Wisteria did not hate her?

Overwhelmed with emotion, she failed to notice when the prince had departed. Princess Wisteria was already on her way back to the castle. Now was Jokhini’s chance. Perhaps her only chance.

She leaped back to her original tree, a tad more lithely, blithely. When the princess passed underneath it, her long hair got entangled in the tree branches. The princess tugged, but she was unable to free her hair. The storm raged on. The princess was scared, her eyes filled with panic. “Someone save me!” she cried out, but nobody heard her in the dark and stormy night. Deftly, Jokhini tied the princess’s hair to the tree and cut off a length. That would be enough for the Doppelganger potion. She did not intend to harm the princess. Those wiry black curls, so like Jokhini’s own, were enough for a lifetime. A souvenir of the princess. Nimbly, she cut loose the princess’ hair from the branch.

Finding herself suddenly free, the princess was unable to understand the bewildering experience. What was she to tell the king? That she had gone out in the stormy night when he had told her not to and had her hair cut by some strange, unfathomable experience? The king was not likely to believe such a story.

Yet, the very next day, the king gave orders for the palace grounds, the air and all the trees to be searched for any kind of spirits. There was a spell by which the air could be protected from flying spirits, but it was a complicated spell. It could backfire, and if that happened, everything would be destroyed.

If there was any suspicion in the princess’s mind that Ivy might have returned as some kind of ghost or spirit, she said nothing about it to her father.

Meanwhile, what happened to Jokhini?

She ran back to the woods with her amassed wealth of hair. It would be a very long time before she decided to visit again, though she sometimes perched on her favourite tree that straddled the wall. Jokhini called it her Forever Home. From there, the possibility of seeing the princess always existed.

Who was to say whether she was inside the castle or outside, insider or outsider? The tree trunk was inside but its branches spread out wide. There, she proceeded to undergo a penance of sorts.

She had internalised the princess’s rejection of her and bitterly regretted the actions that had led to her banishment. She would slap herself, prick herself with tree thorns, force herself to drink bitter concoctions brewed from the leaves and flowers, burn herself with the flame lightning she herself created. Perhaps the greatest task of all was not to shriek out or cry while pricking or burning herself. She could not afford to make so much as a sound or a whimper while she was in the tree that straddled the castle wall. This was her penance. Partly her masochism. She would slither along the tree branches rubbing her clitoris along them. This was her measure of self-control. 

Back in her forest, she could howl and wail as much as she wished.

She set to work to make the Doppelganger potion which would turn her into the princess. Her thoughts and emotions, however, would still remain hers. She could look and dress like the princess and derive pleasure and peace from it. She had the wealth of the princess’s hair that she had carefully stored in a secret place. Tied to the princess and the villa through hair and umbilical cords and ivy vines, through her fantasies she tried to quench the intensity of her passions. She had managed it all quite successfully.

She shuddered to think of what might happen if the King and Princess Wisteria had any idea that Ivy had tried to enter the Villa. Innately honest, she had to practise this deception for now. She wondered if she could ever reveal to the princess that she had entered the castle and that she had cut her hair and had seen the ivy-embroidered handkerchief and tie. Could she ever risk that? Did Princess Wisteria have any inkling of what had just happened? That Ivy had just taken away her hair as well as the knowledge of a precious secret? Would she ever know what Ivy intended to do with the hair? What would happen if she and Princess Wisteria came face-to-face, whether by accident or design?