Hey, can I call you D? Divita is too hard to pronounce.
रिय (Dear) every uneducated Tom, Dick, and Harry｜
Had I been crafted
a little more perfect
you all would have stood witness to goddess शक्ति (Shakthi) herself
delivering you to the afterlife and back
with just one smile｜
Every utterance of my name
carries blessings of Hindu ancients
that flow out of each sacred syllable
to enlighten some consciousness
within you;
A true स्री (woman) commands your presence｜
Mispronouncing my name
is the very sin that leads you in your
ignorance and erasure
of my being
my people
my ताक़त (strength)｜
Do you know what is hard, Tom?
Listening to my parents lament over loved ones
lost during terrorist attacks
spearheaded by the very Anglo-Saxon culture
my family is forced to assimilate to｜
Do you know what is hard, Harry?
Being part of a population
branded as beastly
because of media broadcasting bullshit where
the brown narrative is always labeled as backwards｜
Do you know what is hard, Dick?
Watching my people
being recounted as uncultured savages
“second rate persons who needed colonization to survive”
in my high school history class
when the real history is that:
Indians were the first warriors, emperors, scholars, artists in the entire world,
even prior to some irrelevant white man’s manifest destiny｜
Do you know what’s not hard, Tom, Dick, and Harry?
Pronouncing my accented name｜
My identity is absolute and forever
and you,
you uncultured *भेनचोद
with your stubborn tongue/mind that
try their hardest in
gentrifying my name/being
even you
will never be capable of extinguishing my ढिविता (divine light/Divita)｜
*if you'd like to see more of my work, check my insta out: @divigence!
Author's Notes:
*भेनचोद (this is a bad word in Hindi so I’m not going to translate it...fill it in with your own bad word if you would like to!)
*ढिविता (This is how my name is properly written in Hindi and it translates to divine light; hehehe look at that word play I did ;P). You pronounce my name as Dih-vih-tha)