“When I was 12, my bra straps were sexualised, yet, I am not given damn sexual rights.” These are lines from Aranya Johar’s poem A Brown Girl’s Guide to Gender — a piece the spoken word poet performed at a session of UnErase Poetry, a new poetry collective in the city which seeks to both give a boost to the spoken word poetry scene in the city and create conversations about socially relevant issues. Aranya’s poem has reached over 40 million views online from across the globe. Though she related the poem to Indian women, responses have been as far flung as Canada, Germany and France. UnErase poetry has been picking up relevant topics like marital rape, LBGT issues, suicide and violence against women, which, they feel, should be spoken about.
Simar Singh, who founded the collective ,never expected the overwhelming response that he has received. “I was in the spoken word poetry scene about a year ago, then I switched to stand-up comedy for a while before switching back to poetry. One thing I noticed when I compared the two scenes is that a stand-up comic can have a legitimate career in this country but spoken-word poets are yet to have that kind of platform. We thought that social media would be a great platform to propagate poetry, with a few gigs in between. When we uploaded Aranya’s video, however, the responses came pouring in; we had over two million views in two days,” gushes Simar, who performed a stirring piece on marital rape from the point of view of the woman.
“Women have gone through this since time immemorial. So, I tried to place myself in a woman’s shoes to show her experiences,” he adds.
For Aranya, UnErase had been a platform to speak up about every anomaly in society that went against her principles. “I knew that as long as I held the mic, people would not look at my dress, or my age or how I look — they would listen to what I had to say. So, instead of focusing on one topic, I decided to make it a broader view of everything that women go through in society that they should not have to,” she elaborates.
The Nirbhaya case, or more precisely, the fact that the noise around the case died down after the first six months, disturbed the poet. “I think what affected me more than the fact that it happened is how fast it was forgotten. There have also been subsequent instances, one of which I spoke about — an acid attack on a woman named Lakshmi, who has now founded a supportive group for women who have faced an acid attack. Women all over the world bond over the sexual abuse that they have faced and that’s just sad,” laments Aranya.
A positive result of the poem can be found in the comments section of the video where women from all over the world united on the digital space to speak about their experiences. “These are usually things that people keep quiet about, so for them to use my poem as a launch pad to speak about these things is unexpected and amazing,” adds Aranya.
However, not all responses to the UnErase poets has been positive. Sudeep Pagedar performed a poem that came as a response, of sorts, to Aranya’s piece, titled The Privileges of a Pe**s. “It’s easy to say ‘it’s only a joke, but it’s a great deal easier when the joker’s a bloke” goes one of the verses in the poem, which talks about the patriarchy and misogyny that is prevalent not just in society, but also in every individual. However, along with positive responses, Sudeep faced quite a bit of flak from more conservative audiences. “I got my fair share of hatred. There were statements like ‘this guy should be slaughtered alive’. But then there were also those for whom the poem hit home,” says Sudeep.
This, ultimately, is the goal that the poets are trying to achieve with their poetry, although Simar admits that the idea of using socially relevant topics came as a happy accident. “I personally knew all the poets and asked them to perform the pieces that I thought were their strongest and resonated with me. It’s a happy accident, since these are things that need to be spoken about and I’m glad that we have been able to garner the kind of response we have,” he says.
The UnErase poetry slam will take place on May 8, 7.30 pm onwards, at the Tuning Fork, Khar (W)
