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In quarantine

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A word pops out of childhood

Enid Blyton, wears a disguise.

Quarantine.

In the times of COVID-19.

A hostel room in my mother’s school

Is a Malory Towers sanatorium

My kid sister compares me to Rapunzel

Locked alone in her tower.

I am reminded of menstrual ritual

Of pollution and seclusion

Of your Assamese girlhood.

Touch is forbidden. Caste-laws

Hover on the edges.

Separate utensils. Separate everything.

No hugs. No love. No touch.

Perhaps it is ironic, or merely coincidental

That while in quarantine, I also

Menstruate.

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Shruti Sareen, (found on FB as Shruti Krishna Sareen) was born and brought up in Varanasi, and studied at Rajghat Besant School, KFI. Graduating in English from Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi, she later earned a PhD from the same university, titled “Indian Feminisms in the 21st Century: Women’s Poetry in English” which is now forthcoming from Routledge (UK) as two monographs in 2022.  She is currently seeking publishers for her novel, The Yellow Wall, and is working on an epistolary manuscript on themes of queerness and mental health. Having had over a hundred poems published already, her debut poetry Collection, A Witch Like You, (2021) was published by Girls on Key Poetry (Australia). She was an invited poet at global poetry festival, hosted by Russia, Poeisia-21.  She teaches college and university students in New Delhi.

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