Module 4
Perspectives
Embedded Files
EnglishSkillsOne by Dr Premanand M E
- Body without the “d” BY JUSTICE AMEER (Xe, Xem, Xir)
the bo’y wakes up
the bo’y looks at itself
the bo’y notices something missing
there is both too much and not enough flesh on the bo’y
the bo’y is covered in hair
what a hairy bo’y
some makes it look more like a bo’y
some makes it look more like a monster
the bo’y did not learn to shave from its father
so it taught itself how to graze its skin and cut things off
the bo’y cuts itself by accident
the blood reminds the bo’y it is a bo’y
reminds the bo’y how a bo’y bleeds
reminds the bo’y that not every bo’y bleeds
the bo’y talks to a girl about bleeding
she explains how this bo’y works
this bo’y is different from hers
bo’y has too much and not enough flesh to be her
the biology of a bo’y is just
bo’y will only ever be a bo’y
the bo’y is Black
so the bo’y is and will only ever be a bo’y
the bo’y couldn’t be a man if it tried
the bo’y tried
the bo’y feels empty
the bo’y feels like it will only ever be empty
the bo’y feels that it will never hold the weight of another bo’y inside of it
no matter how many ds fit inside the bo’y
the bo’y is a hollow facade
it attempts a convincing veneer
bo’y dresses — what hips on the bo’y
bo’y paints its face — what lips on the bo’y
bo’y adorns itself with labels written for lovelier frames
what a beautiful bo’y
still a bo’y
but a fierce bo’y now
a royal bo’y now
a bo’y worthy of being called queen
what a dazzling ruse
to turn a bo’y into a lie everyone loves to look at
the bo’y looks at itself
the bo’y sees all the gawking at its gloss
the bo’y hears all the masses asking for its missing
the bo’y offers all of its letters
— ‘ b ’ for the birth
— ‘ o ’ for the operation
— ‘ y ’ for the lack left in its genes
what this bo’y would abandon
for the risk of being real
the bo’y is real
enough and too much
existing as its own erasure
— what an elusive d —
evading removal
avoiding recognition
leaving just a bo’y
that is never lost
but can’t be found
Source: Poetry (November 2018)
What is Xe, Xem, Xir?
What is Xe, Xem, Xir?
Xe / Xem / Xir is a set of gender neutral pronouns that some people and/or organisations have adopted. For example, you would say “Xe is hungry” instead of “He/She is hungry”, “Please tell xem that lunch is ready” instead of “Please tell him/her that lunch is ready”, and “This sandwich is xirs” instead of “This sandwich is his/hers”.
However, it is relatively rare to come across this set of pronouns, because of a lack of awareness, fragmentation of proposed pronouns, and the difficulty in understanding how to pronounce some of the pronouns. On the flip side, the use of the singular “they / them / theirs” as gender neutral pronouns is gaining adoption.
2. The Sleeping Fool by Suniti Namjoshi
2. The Sleeping Fool by Suniti Namjoshi
The dreamer absconds with his dream,
props his stone bride beside a stream,
where he washes, bathes, and gathers daisies.
These she refuses. He cannot please.
He runs, scampers, leaps and weeps,
He recites his verses; she keeps
her pure silence, her chaste repose. “What
do you want ?” he screams. “That
which you will not grant: to be, not seem
to be, to be the dreamer, not the dream.”
© 1982, Suniti Namjoshi
From: The Authentic Lie
Publisher: Fiddlehead, Frederection
About the Poet
About the Poet
Born in Mumbai in 1941, Suniti Namjoshi is an important writer in contemporary Indian literature in English. She has several books of verse and fable to her credit. She worked in the Indian Administrative Service and in academic posts in India before moving to Montreal. She earned a PhD from McGill University (with a thesis on Ezra Pound), worked at the University of Toronto and later at the Centre for Women’s Studies at Exeter University, UK. She now lives in the UK where she works as a full-time writer. Her poetry, fables, articles and reviews have been featured in various anthologies and journals in India, Canada, the US, Australia and Britain. A deep engagement with issues of gender, sexual orientation, cultural identity and human rights infuses her work.
Namjoshi says she got politicized during her sabbatical from the University of Toronto which she spent in England in 1978 – 79. “A major influence,” she writes in an email exchange, “was my friend, Hilary Clare (alias Christine Donald). She had more brains than me, she could out-argue me and she had a literary mind. What’s more I could see that she was fighting my battles for me, while I stood aside and did nothing; and that shamed me. She was active in both Women’s Liberation and Gay Liberation. Up till then I thought that politics was something unpleasant that vaguely unpleasant people indulged in. I hadn’t realized that it had something to do with ethics. I had also assumed that literature had nothing to do with power. It was books like Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics and the work of writers like Virginia Woolf and Adrienne Rich that made me understand the extent to which sheer brutal power in the form of wealth and social ascendancy intersected with the literary enterprise and determined not just who could write what, but who could write at all and what constituted the literary canon.
Namjoshi’s work demolishes several stereotypes in one swift stroke: “She is a fabulist who is never preachy. A feminist who is never humourless. A poet who is never arcane. An intellectual who is never pedantic . . . Her work points to a deeply internalized radicalism, one that has as much depth as it has edge. Quirky, funny, intellectually agile, capable of making connections between the mundane and the metaphysical, adept at sniffing out the archetypal in the culturally particular, they point to a mind that is as engaged as it is engaging.”
© Arundhathi Subramaniam
3. The Cockroach - Luis Fernando Verissimo
3. The Cockroach - Luis Fernando Verissimo
In this political satire, an innocent meal becomes a bureaucratic nightmare.
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