Silver Years - Edited by Sanjukta Dasgupta, Malashri Lal and Anita Nahal

Silver Years: Senior Contemporary Indian Women’s Poetry has 163 poems by 50 Indian women poets aged sixty and above, from India and the diaspora, revealing how aging sparks a creative renaissance rather than decline. Fridaywall is delighted to feature Silver Years: Senior Contemporary Indian Women’s Poetry, Edited by Sanjukta Dasgupta, Malashri Lal and Anita Nahal, Sahitya Akademi, 2025 – Jhilam Chattaraj

“Aging is not ‘lost youth’ but a new stage of opportunity and strength – Introduction, Silver Years: Senior Contemporary Indian Women’s Poetry

We live in an age where ‘durability’ gets traded for ‘disposability,’ where we sprint from ‘what we have’ to ‘what’s next’ like it’s a race with no finish line. Beneath the flashy tech and the chase for grand social change, cutting through the rush and the noise, rises a chorus of women — an anthem of existence, refusing to be drowned out by the roar of cultural amnesia.

Silver Years: Senior Contemporary Indian Women’s Poetry has 163 poems by 50 Indian women poets aged sixty and above, from India and the diaspora, revealing how aging sparks a creative renaissance rather than decline. Yet, do the voices of the selected poets receive the recognition they deserve, or are they still side-lined by a society fixated on youth?

Writing predominantly in English—a language once a symbol of colonial power—the feisty poets navigate a “double bind” of marginalisation by gender and language. Does English liberate their expression or complicate their cultural identity?

Moreover, the poems disrupt stereotypes by showing that creativity not only persists but often flourishes with age, offering fresh perspectives that enrich the broader literary landscape (Tandfonline, 2024; JSTOR). Thus, an anthology of poetry by women over sixty serves as a powerful testament to the ongoing vitality and artistic relevance of elder women’s voices in poetry.

Their work stands on the shoulders of pioneers like Sarojini Naidu, Kamala Das, and Toru Dutt, who challenged social norms and colonial legacies. Today’s poets blend ethnic specificity with global perspectives, transforming English into a tool for nuanced storytelling. But can this linguistic flexibility fully capture the complexities of Indian womanhood, or does it risk erasing subtleties?

Themes of aging, identity, mythology, and social justice intertwine with humour and compassion, challenging ageism and patriarchal stereotypes. The figure of Dhumvati, a powerful yet feared goddess, symbolizes the ambivalence surrounding older women. Born amid India’s freedom struggles, these women’s voices mix personal experience with political insight, raising questions about how lived history shapes contemporary poetry. Originating from a 2023 online reading, this collection fills a gap by spotlighting senior women’s poetic contributions, proving that creativity thrives well beyond youth.

Silver Years invites readers to rethink aging as a time of strength and self-definition. What lessons might younger generations learn from these poets’ resilience? How can society better honour the creative power of its elders? The anthology is not just a collection but a celebration of life’s later stages, urging us to cherish every moment of our “one wild and precious life.”

Here are few of the poems that the editors have selected, highlighting ideas of courage, resilience, beauty and love.

Poems

Anita Nahal, What’s Wrong With Us Kali Women?
Anamika, Thanks for Choosing My Womb
Basabi Fraser, I Did Not Recognize You
Lakshmi Kannan, Swivel Stool
Malashri Lal, Krishna’s Flute
Meena Chopra, Me and My Dusking Body
Pramila Venkateswaran, The Grammar of Control
Radha Chakravarty, Designs in Kantha
Rugmani Prabhakar, Train of Pain

ANAMIKA
New Delhi, India
THANKS FOR CHOOSING MY WOMB
I
I have left you
Three hours and a million centuries ahead
In the cradle of mighty sea waves (seven seas away?)
Hoping, my child,
That you would rise to the occasion
Like all those legendary babes (Karna? Hercules?)
When you open your eyes
To the world.
Leaving you alone on a big campus,
I am back home,
Not knowing where to go,
What to do,
In an eternal jetlag
I swim all about in the air— A
hand here and a leg there. As
I close my eyes,
You fill the void
With twinkling waves,
A million yous,
A trillion y o u s
U u and u
One flowing into the other
Playing “Ring-a-ring of roses
A pocket full of posies”
All those y o u s sing in unison
The sky hangs loose
On the peg

Like your baby coat Hiding behind
My old housecoat
(Playing hide and seek?)
It’s pocket deep enough
To hold a baby kangaroo.
U uu
Your little shoes are there in my locker,
Wrapped up in your old sweater, the first that I knitted for
you.
I hold them in my palm,
Your shoes singing mud
And dancing mud.
O this sleep—sipping thirst.
Where is water?
O my baby cloud,
Come back to me,
Come back and rain cats and dogs in my womb,
I wish to deliver you again.
Did I ever get a chance to tell you
How I felt when you entered my being?
You chose my womb
And beautiful things started happening
The grass smelt sweet
And rivers came flowing by,
O my little Siddhartha
With you in me,
My whole being
Flowered like the
Forest of Lumbini.
II
This was the day when you knocked softly
At the gate of my Universe
Thirty and more centuries ago
When the grass was green still
And the sky blue
With eyes moist with moonlight and tears
I saw you

Your delicate feet, Your shoulders.
Feet I saw
wishing all pointed pebbles and horny thorns away,
Shoulders I felt against my breasts
Wishing them breadth and sinewy strength
To bear it all with grace.
Since then, my eyes have been
The tender drop of liquid in your little lens box,
With your shiny eyes I have looked at the world
And somehow, I have never looked away.
And I have seen you, son, in all kinds of moods,
In tears and in cheers,
In love and out there
Walking alone.
I have seen you
As desolate as the Christ in
The painting of Michel Angelo,
So lonely
That your body did hardly appear like a body
But like the patch of light
In the corner of the bed where you slept:
Five books open all about you like “Clara,
the Kitten and Her Four Siblings” Your
first story book.
Khil-khil-khil, laughed you When
I read aloud drowsily “The wolf
invited Clara to dinner
And she declined the offer politely”
And then I have seen you as gregarious
As the peasant coming home in a gala group of thirty,
Carrying the best of the yields in golden carts, Singing
and dancing merrily
I have seen you
Curled up
Like the rabbit
Caught suddenly in rain

And in hurricane
That choked his burrow
With leaves dead and electricity wires
Let loose.
And then I have seen you
As vulnerable as the deer in Kalidasa
Scratching the eye of the mate
With horns green,
Not ripe as yet.
“May you grow up by leaps and bounds,
Happy Birthday”
As I say this and lower my eyes to pray,
You say with a smile,
“Mama, which birthday?
I am born afresh
Almost every day.”

ANITA NAHAL
Virginia, USA
WHAT’S WRONG WITH US KALI WOMEN?

There’s nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. That’s your fear
labelling us. We are the Kali women. And all other female,
male, androgynous gods. We don’t distinguish. We seek. We
learn. Comprehend. Embrace. We are the Kali women. In the
forefront, striding and yes, strutting our stuff too. Some men
gulp and gawk. Making a tight knot of patriarchy right in front
of their balls. They are the same who have been bowing before
Kali’s statues for centuries. Marking their foreheads with mitti
from her robes. And then they call her Ma Kali and walk away
brash, brazen, evil. Don’t think she’s not watching.
There’s nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. That’s your fear
labelling us. We are the Kali women. And all other female,
male, androgynous gods. Always in front, straddling between
pathways, poles, blocks,and behaviour. Between screams and
footsteps pining for justice denied. Justice battered. Justice
flagged. Murdered. Burned. Their dark skin, their gender,
religion, their sandals blood stained, their clothes drenched
and smelling of your foul breath, with your hands striking, your
feet jutting and hitting. And then some in their sinister voice
sing well into the murky night, Ma Kali. Ma Kali. Ma Kali. Ma
Kali. Don’t think she’s not watching.
There’s nothing wrong. Nothing wrong. That’s your fear
labelling us. We are the Kali women. My skin is kali, my heart
is gold, my soul is a child, cries,laughs, jumps, feelings flow like
fresh churned cream from cow’s milk. My skin disgusts you. Yet
you try to tan yours. My skin disturbs you, yet you find it exotic.
My skin you call gandi. But I am clean. I bathe. In winters when
my skin lightens a bit, you proclaim, I’m looking saaf, fair. I
was always clean. It’s your mind that is dirty. Even mock
bathing in river Ganga might skim above your falseness. Ma
Kali. Ma Kali. Ma Kali. Ma Kali. Don’t think she’s not
watching.

* Mitti: Dirt/Earth
* Kali: Of Black colour and also Goddess of destroyer of evil
* Ma: Mother
* Gandi: Dirty
* Saaf: Clean, also, a colloquial word to imply fair skinned
* Ganga: Considered to be one of the holiest rivers in India
Previously published in the author’s third poetry book, What’s
wrong with us Kali women? 2o21.

BASHABI FRASER
Edinburgh, Scotland
I DID NOT RECOGNIZE YOU

You came to me one morning
Wrapped in your swirling skirt.
Your layers of jumpers defying
The cold gusts intent on blowing
Your faith in life adrift.
You rang the bell and stepped back
Unwilling to look into my warm
Interior. My questioning glance
Was answered by the flask
You held out, your hands dry
Your eyes lined with care.
I walked back to fill the kettle,
You slipped out beyond my wall,
I came back with your flask full
Marvelling at your smile and mettle.
I did not ask you in. I did not
Pour you a cup of steaming tea.
What I first took as your guile
Was your own proud gypsy style
As free as the wind in my trees.

LAKSHMI KANNAN
New Delhi, India
SWIVEL STOOL

Years stole into me even as I was swaying blithely on the
swing tied to a sturdy branch of our mango tree.
Between the arc I carved,
time moved in surreptitiously. My children dislodged me
from the swing to make their wild moves.
I now watched, their worried mother.
Ah well…
I gifted myself a rocking chair that tilted back and forward
while I read a book. The small munchkins, my
grandchildren, scampered on to my lap to rock. How
they shrieked with delight.
On the large, plush swivel chair in office I rotated left to
counsel a young colleague
then far right to answer the phone ‘For god’s sake, don’t
swivel!’ whispered a peer It doesn’t become a woman.’
We, the girlie gang, hit upon a woman-friendly bar. Each
one had a stool to herself to swivel away and order for
innocent drinks.
Lemon-soda spiked with black salt, ginger ale in tall glasses,
virgin margarita rimmed with salt we licked off. Eagerly,
we waited to taste life.

MALASHRI LAL
New Delhi, India
KRISHNA’S FLUTE
(To Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia)

The sweet melody of Krishna’s flute floated
Over the ominous, silent streets of the city in pandemic
People huddled home in fright
Staving off the invisible enemy
That brought fever and delusion
Breathlessness and death.
The gentle notes wafted through the air
Filling the emptiness of their
Anxious homes—
A kitchen with unlit fire. A room with unmade beds.
That shelf with tattered clothes. This face with hollowed
eyes.
The flute’s music found but one spark
A tiny lamp at the base of
A bearded Pilkhan tree
Witness to generations of suffering.
The flute asked the spirit of the tree,
“Why is it so eerie and quiet? Have people lost their faith?”
And the tree said,
“They look to science
Forgetting the healing of music and poetry.
Play to them, bring them hope, oh Krishna’s flute.”
The sounds drifted in a swirl of sweetness
Embracing the Pilkhan in ageless understanding
Of human fear.
Quietly the flute said,
“I’m not Krishna’s flute alone

Radha must structure my symphony of love.
Bring her to this desolate city
Dear friend, then
My music will turn sadness to hope.” “Yes,
I remember,” said the ancient tree,
“Krishna and Radha’s tussle with the flute
Creates divine notations
Stubbing fear with the
Certitude of Faith.”
The sweet melody of Krishna’s flute floated infinitely
In search of Radha.
Previously published in Krishna in Indian Thought, Literature and
Music, 2021.Included in my book Mandalas of Time, Hawakal
Publishers, 2023.

MEENA CHOPRA
Toronto, Canada
ME AND MY DUSKING BODY

A fugitive moment
Snuggled in my pocket.
The dead dry sky,
Cutting me,
I etched and re-routed the dull routine
Outlining a defined self.
My contours shone but I did not,
Delimiting me to my caving body,
I stared at a lilting note beyond a receding symphony.
Could you hear the strains of the mysterious night?
Soundless chords?
Could you see a secret land in a smouldering sky?
Smoke-dust that pasted ash on my forehead,
Shadows long, rigid, dense and unshakable
Plastered my body cells close to each other,
Weighing my feet even further to the ground,
Nailing me down.
Break me,
And take me
If you can, my love.

PRAMILA VENKATESWARAN
New York, USA
THE GRAMMAR OF CONTROL
“…guided by the history and tradition that map the
essential components of our Nation’s concept of ordered
liberty, we must ask what the Fourteenth Amendment
means by the term “liberty.” When we engage in that
inquiry in the present case, the clear answer is that the
Fourteenth Amendment does not protect the right to an
abortion.”

~Dobbs decision, 19-1392, June 24, 2022~

Today’s right taken away at whim
by graying supremes on “order’s” side.
Order, they say, their gaze on women, is
for our own good and you will abide.
Wearing the mantle of the Constitution,
they interpret ordered liberty as freedom
to follow the old order, personal rights shunned,
so women are penned by fear, words drummed
into us: know your place, relearn the old order,
liberty for some, not all. One who takes out the trash
should know their place, as does the soldier
or the wife. You will give birth to your child
even if you are dying, you’ll be praised as a martyr.
Forced to place our necks under SCOTUS’ knee,
we hear guns have rights, even their gods agree.

RADHA CHAKRAVARTY
Delhi, India
DESIGNS IN KANTHA

Sewn into soft, worn layers,
forgotten fabric of grandmother tales—
patterns of the past,
secret memories, hidden designs,
intriguing patterns in silk strands
dyed in delicate dreamy shades—
embroidered storylines
in exquisite, dainty kantha-stitch.
Years of laughter, heartache, bliss,
Tears and yearning, rage, despair—
worked by artful needle into
guileless fictions of innocence,
pure and tender baby love.
Fleet fingers, fashioning
silent fables, designed to swaddle
innocent infant dreams, shielding
silk-soft folds of newborn skin
from reality’s needle-pricks,
abrasive touch of life in the raw.
Previously published in the Journal of the Poetry Society of India,
2020-2021.

RUGMANI PRABHAKAR
Bangalore, India
TRAIL OF PAIN

Dedicated to Soldiers of War Everywhere
Where do you carry
Your trail of pain?
Oh, Soldier-Poet
Oh, Flyer of machines
Of peace, of destruction
Do you carry your pain
By the side of your heart
Parallel lines
To your oath of allegiance
Duty bound
In cold, lonely bunkers
In sub-zero temperatures
Fires burnt out
Do you carry your pain
By the side of your medal
As you bury your friend
In the darkness of night
In blustering winds
Crackle of gunfire
Does the trail
Stretch the distance
From your home
Far away
Where your children asleep
Alone and afraid
While you wake up
At dawn
In this other world
Estranged
Cold, white, silent
In this other world
So strange
Oh Soldier-Poet

Where do you carry
Your trail of pain

About the Editors

A poet, short story writer, critic, editor and translator Dr. Sanjukta Dasgupta, Professor and Former Head, Dept of English and Former Dean, Faculty of Arts, Calcutta University has been the recipient of the Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) and Fulbright Scholar in Residence (State University of New York, Oswego) Australia India Council fellowship, Gender Studies fellowship, University of British Columbia, Translator Fellowship, BCLT, University of East Anglia, Norwich, among others. Apart from invitations to participate in national and international seminars and conferences Dasgupta has taught and lectured at universities in the USA, UK, Europe, Canada and Australia. She served as the jury member and Chairperson of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, United Kingdom. She was the Convenor of the English Language Board of Sahitya Akademi, Ministry of Culture as well as a member of Sahitya Akademi’s General Council. She is currently a member of the Advisory Committee of the Jnanpith Award. In 2018, she taught in Poland, as Visiting Professor, at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. She is the Honorary Visiting Professor of the Dept of English, Sister Nivedita University, Kolkata and the Chairperson of the Advisory Board of the Centre Of Excellence in Literature Language and Communication (CELLCS) of The University of Engineering and Management, Kolkata. She is the President of the Executive Committee of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata.

In October 2024 she delivered two lectures on Tagore’s writings at St. John’s College, Oxford University and the Oxford Centre for Hindu studies (OCHS), Oxford University. In August 2025, she was invited to Belfast to speak on colonial Indian and Irish writers at the Belfast mela festival.

Sanjukta Dasgupta received the IWSFF Women Achievers Award in 2019, the WEI Kamala Das Poetry Award in 2020, the ETHOS Literary Award in 2022, Muktadhara Tagore Samman 2024. She was conferred the Governor’s Scroll Of Honour in 2024, and the CLRC National Lifetime Achievement Award 2024. In 2025 she joined ScoTs, Edinburgh as ScoTs Research Affiliate in order to continue her work on Tagore studies.

Dr Malashri Lal

Malashri Lal, Professor of English at the University of Delhi, retired from her positions as the Dean of Colleges, Dean Academic Activities & Projects at the same university. She had previously served as Head of the English Dept (2000-2003) Director, Women’s Studies and Development Centre (2000-2006), and Joint Director, University of Delhi-South Campus. As a recipient of prestigious writing fellowships, she has conducted research in Harvard University, USA, Bellagio, Italy, Salzburg Seminars, Austria, York University, Canada, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada, and Newcastle, UK, and also other universities. Focusing on literature for social change, Malashri Lal’s specialization is in Literature, Women and Gender Studies about which she has 24 books. Her poems have been selected for inclusion in the Yearbook of Indian Poetry 2023, and The Penguin Book of Poems on the Indian City (2025). Malashri Lal’s next collection of poems Signing in the Air ( Hawakal Publishers) is expected in November 2025.

Malashri Lal has served as a member of international and national book award juries such as the Commonwealth Writers Prize, London, the DSC South Asia Literary Prize, London and India, The Hindu Literary Prize, Crossword Book Award, The Sushila Devi Book Award for Women, among others. Currently, Lal is Chairperson of the Jnanpith Advisory Committee for English, and Convener of the English Advisory Board of the Sahitya Akademi. In these capacities she has been deeply engaged with global literary culture.

Malashri Lal has been a Senior Consultant to the Ministry of Culture during the 150th year celebration of Rabindranath Tagore (2011). She serves on the advisory committees of several universities and prestigious journals, including The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (UK) and Gitanjali and Beyond (Edinburgh). She is a frequent speaker at literary events such as the Jaipur Literature Festival, the Kolkata Literary Festival and the Sahitya Akademi’s programmes.

Among other recognitions, Malashri Lal received the Maharani Gayatri Devi Award for Women’s Excellence, the Ethos Literary Award, The SETU Bilingual Award of Excellence, the Kalinga Fiction Prize, and the Raghu Sinha-Mala Mathur Lifetime Achievement Award for Education.

Malashri Lal received her education at Maharani Gayatri Devi Girls’ Public School, Jaipur. She received her BA Hons, MA, and PhD degrees in English, from Rajasthan University, Jaipur. She taught at the University of Delhi for over four decades. Since her retirement from the university, she devotes time to literary research and writing, public lectures, and community service for underprivileged women and children. She is Honorary Vice President of The Guild of Service, a civil society organization.

Anita Nahal, Ph.D., is an educator and writer. She has worked in higher education, both in teaching and administration, at various universities for over thirty years. She’s been a Fulbright scholar and an NEH fellowship awardee among other laurels in her academic career. She has published, presented papers and seminars, and created numerous workshops in her discipline of history.

On the creative side, Anita is a poet, novelist, flash fictionist, and children’s book writer. A two-time Pushcart Prize-nominated Indian American author. She won the Nissim Prize for Excellence in Literature for her poetry-prose novel, drenched thoughts in 2024. Anita was a finalist for the Tagore Literary Prize in 2023 for her fourth ekphrastic prose poetry collection, Kisses at the espresso bar (Kelsay, 2022). Her third prose poetry collection, What’s wrong with us Kali women? (Kelsay, 2021), was nominated by Cyril Dabydeen, poet laureate emeritus, Ottawa, Canada, as the best poetry book, 2021, for British Ars Notoria and is mandatory reading in a multicultural society course at Utrecht University, the Netherlands. Her novel, drenched thoughts is also prescribed in the same course and university.

Anita’s most recent book is a collection of prose poetry, Animals—Prose poems on sentiency, decency and indecency (Kelsay, 2025) which is entirely composed of poems on animal mistreatment and animal rights.

Anita has sixteen books published in all–one novel, five poetry collections, one of flash fiction, four for children, and five edited anthologies. Anita’s poems have appeared in numerous journals in the US, UK, Asia, and Australia and anthologized in many collections. Her poems are also housed at Stanford University’s Digital Humanities Initiative. One of her poems, “Hold on baby, we’ll soon be home,” was included as part of a video produced by Doordarshan TV, Kolkata, India. Her biographical details appear in the Encyclopedia Dictionary of Diasporic Indian English Writing (Springer, 2025).

Recently Anita ventured into short filmmaking on her poems, and her first short, “Clubs my sinful dance muse,” was awarded the Best Super Short Film Award by the Five Continents International Film Festival, Venezuela (August 2024). It was also screened at the Alibag and Goa Short Film Festivals in India in 2024.

Anita is the former secretary of the Montgomery Chapter, Maryland Writers Association, and former editor of the newsletter, Poetry Society of Virginia. She is an active member of the Northern Virginia Writers Club, the Poetry Society of Virginia and the Maryland Writers’ Association. Anita is the daughter of Sahitya Akademi award-winning Indian novelist and professor, Late Dr. Chaman Nahal, and educationist Late Dr. Sudarshna Nahal. Anita’s family includes her son, daughter-in-law, a grandson and a golden doodle gal. Anita teaches at the University of the District of Columbia, Washington D.C.