THE FIDEL WIFE

For her separate never went
Fidelity and fate;
On the vocation of the occult
Was she forever bent.

Her chanting was a missive god
Would dare not to ignore;
Pleas and prayers out she spew
To make marriage secure.

On her rituals she brought the earth
The whole of the heaven;
And made the home the hell clogg'd with
Smokes,cinders, and refrain.

Her 'godown' grew with pujawares
And likes of feng shui things -
All fetishes, mascots, charms, and
Sundry abstract trappings.

In all the straps she saved the thread
Of hard-earn'd chastity;
And held her man tamed under
Abnormal vanity.

Perform'd she puja round the clock
With odd hours for the household;
Food, sleep and all in tatters she
Did live the life e'er untold.

She'd smear her husband's body with
Hing, haldi to ash paste
To protect him from the influence 
Of any evil wight.

In no terms she would compromise
Ever on her sindoor;
And spared no one who tried to pull
A thread out of her rule.

So fatalistc she would work
With no wisdom or fact;
And for damages would accuse
Any one of witchcraft.

Hers were vagaries where she found 
Bliss and existence in;
And lived in thrills of fatal myths
With no other routine.

Her mind was idle, devils would play
Berserk, even so in sleep;
Money'd as she was chanced from fisc,
So freakish, base, and deep :

Meam, cynical, autonomous,
Rude, boastful, ill-behaved -
Tyrannical on her tyranny
Being her castle and 'the kept'.

She'd store the fresh, devour the waste
Greedily with a grin;
And in trash of extravagance
Rejoiced day out day in.

Possessive so as death over
The dead, of her own worth
That she would be subject to none,
And force or aid she'd 'loath'.

Demand would she odd love with
Hate for bearing any child;
And castigate if reason'd with
Her man modest and mild.

Like tempest in the pot she'd get
Incensed on the trivial;
But was complacent even the days
Were robbing the essential.

So she lived, so she loved - so vague
And ghoulish that was rare;
Yet self-secured, unperturb'd perch'd
She beneath the bizzaire.

How she came? How she grew? And how
Misplaced no body knew?
Yet how she found 'the system' as
Pantheon would her rescue?

A gravely faulty mistress of
A gentleman was the dame
Who err'd the more, the more he stood
To elude the public shame.

The learned, suave, good-humour'd man
Could feel the life and line;
And lived in the connubial make
Though painful and malign.

He knew social basics, he knew
Feminine piety;
And silently with plaints he quell'd 
Selfish primality.

And he, no help, no hope, would 'wait
What God was to destine,
And bore each cost for calm and peace,
For soul is soul yours or mine.

So they together lived with their
disguised ignominy;
And they respectively wish'd for
Their common destiny...

Yet one day on a tiff the man
Lost cool to slang her 'Whore',
His head she hit on with a stone
And He like a razed tower
Collapsed at her feet dead...

A chaste woman was she alive
Her husband on her side,
And safe within her ring, and now
She saw her fate betide.

One look at the potraits and wares,
One at her wealths, one lost
On her husband's body, fell dead
With her head on his bust...

So lone was she. So lone was he.
Their woes none were to share;
No friends, no kins, no soul to see,
They grew lone and died bare.

                         --- N P Samal