TO INSANITY
“This visual poem is based on the almost Sisyphian circularity that one experiences as a woman in our society – washing the same dishes over and over again, folding the same clothes, and so on – as well as how women experience time (which is often heavily influenced by the menstrual cycle).”
Away from home and faced with several challenges to her mental well-being, Dhruvi was frantically searching for self-acceptance when she found a sari that belonged to her grandmother. The poem – taking the literal form of its subject/object – revolves around the experience of wearing the sari in that moment, and being washed over by a feeling of connectedness to a lineage of women that strove hard to assert and accept themselves. It is an attempt to reconcile the urge to furiously cry out while holding on to gentleness and curiosity; a celebration of the rage, the insanity, and the contradictions of her experience.
"This poem is an attempt to celebrate that rage and insanity, to welcome those contradictions,
and slowly inch towards self-acceptance."
Dhruvi Modi, 22
Dhruvi Modi (she/her) is an avid reader and writer currently pursuing MA in English Literature at The English and Foreign Languages University in Hyderabad. She is deeply interested in poetry, performativity, technology criticism, the phenomenon of synchronicity, and Korean dramas, among other things.
