Before I delved deeply into Devi Bhagavata, Chandi Path, and the powerful voices of ancient goddesses, my writing often explored the silent wars of love, longing, and emotional entanglement. This poem, “Watch Your Steps, My Love,” is a quiet echo from those years, an intimate offering from a time when my pen was more attuned to the tender politics of the human heart than the epic battles of mythological Hindu stories.
Even as a writer now recognized among female Indian writers bringing forth tales from the Devi Bhagwat Puran in English, my earlier pieces remind me of the invisible threads that connect mythology to modern emotion. You’ll find no goddesses or battles here, yet the emotional undercurrent in this poem feels no less ancient, no less sacred.
This too is a story, not of Durga or Kali, but of human fragility, and the silent threads we share. It is proof that storytelling, whether it emerges from Indian mythological stories or from the bruises of everyday life, remains my constant truth. While many would now like to find me through lists of famous female Indian writers or seek the best Indian mythological novels, I hold space for these quieter pieces too, where mythology hasn’t yet entered, but emotion reigns just the same.
WATCH YOUR STEPS, MY LOVE
Watch your steps, my love
When you left here it was too cloudy
With the smoke of opinions between us
That you missed to see the fine thread
Rising from you, latched onto me
Sometimes you step on it mistakenly,
Giving me a nick through my back, my love
And when you go about trying the world,
I get tugged along, dragged
And slowly discolored i get
When I move within my radius
I feel not much, my love
But the instant I travel away, the thread yanks me
And the snatch gives me the sting, and
Sometimes the soreness remains for days
At times when you walk my side or I walk yours
The thread gets windswept and ruffled
And then when you walk back to your side,
Behind your back, I walk back to my side
Wearily struggling to open the tangles
The thread is resilient yet svelte like nylon
It takes me weeks to work on the tangles
At times it slashes my skin & it prickles
But I can’t help my love, that this back & forth
Has left several knots on the thread
It is time that I told you, my love
So you look for your end of the thread
And discover which part of you it comes from
See if that part is still tender and throbbing
and you too have felt the tug
You may wish to detangle the thread
Or simply amputate the appendix
Whatever it is,
Oh my dear dear love
Please watch your steps
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