Girlhood in Delhi—Three Poems by Pratyan Chakraborty

Delhi is a city that wears its hunger well—
a neon beast swallowing bodies whole.
I walk through its streets,
hips choreographed to shrink,
voice rehearsed into a lower register,
practicing the art of passing,
as if my body were a faulty translation
in a language I did not choose.

Delhi is a city that loves its own reflection.
It does not stop to look at girls like me—
girls with borrowed voices and cautious lips,
girls who walk like they are both the prayer and the sin.

Delhi does not ask where I come from.
It does not care about
who once prayed for softer shoulders,
a different voice,
a body that didn’t feel like an apology.
It only asks if I can survive.
if I can wear my face like a war cry.

Some days, I surrender inside myself,
folding my shoulders inward,
as if I could disappear into the shape
they always wanted me to be.

My mother does not say my name,
but sometimes, in the quiet,
she calls me shona
There are nights I trace my own name in the dark,
as if speaking it softly will make it real.
There are mornings I look in the mirror
and do not flinch.
and take up space like I have a right to.

Maybe love is not a man’s voice in the dark,
not a reflection that always agrees with me.
Maybe love is the act of staying—
inside this body, inside this name, inside this life
I built with my own hands.
There are days I walk into love like I belong there.
Like I belong in the sun.
And maybe, just maybe,
That is enough for now.

I am tired of crossing roads
And hurried metaphors
It was never needing and rather wanting
A dangerous craving,
I let them visit me at night,
Later get a tarot reading
To calculate my future,
But often for bodies like mine,
Desires are non consequential
It’s almost like becoming the leftover meal
You have kept in the fridge
And been wanting to eat.
I ride on a horseback from my room to the kitchen,
And I become the horse on my way back
No one sees,
Another failed attempt to fight the loneliness
That grows like tulips on my back.
I drain out blood and put my skin to dry
And think of gruesome stories
Only to Confuse them with rom coms
Then call myself a poet
No one laughs,
I feel the weight of loneliness growing
As my body shrinks
I have learned the process of anaesthesia
And to say yes at a young age
Because desires have so much to do with our identity
And identity is just the weight of miscalculations
And wrong statistics we eat as children,
But some bodies are just underfed.
So I let them visit me at night
And pretend to be consequential
By being on the internet 24/7

We are writing a sitcom
About fratricidal poems
Sitting side by side on a round table
In the middle of bermuda triangle
It is not a crime if you commit in poetry,
I put a sticky note over my head
To remind myself to stay alive.
Alienation comes in different shapes & sizes
You call it evil because it’s easier
When you can make villains
out of Gods and normal people.
I wanted something to belong to me,
Then I wanted to belong to something
But wanting is not enough.
I have wrecked houses and ships before,
And I am doing it again,
Last year we were dancing around the house
But this year I am laying on the sink,
Like used utensils
Waiting for someone to notice me,
Yearning to be cleaned,
To be touched,
To be reborn.
Staying alive becomes a house chores
When death waits outside your door.