Preeti Vangani | In the club, a remixed version of Duma Dum Mast Kalander comes on. My friend asks, “Oye Sindhi, isn’t that your people’s song?” | Poets Resist

Preeti Vangani is a poet & personal essayist. Her work has been published in Buzzfeed India, Glass Poetry, Gulf Coast, Threepenny Review among other journals. She is the winner of the RL Poetry Award 2017 and her debut book of poems titled Mother Tongue Apologize (RLFPA Editions) was published in Feb 2019. She holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco.

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Poets Resist
Edited by Michael Carter
August 19, 2019

Preeti Vangani

In the club, a remixed version of Duma Dum Mast Kalander comes on. My friend asks, “Oye Sindhi, isn’t that your people’s song?”

We were born from the Indus, swaddled with tricks of trading textiles and saris. Our line of fathers sang thanks to Jhulelal the water-god — for being a trusted sales route, for being root of life. We carried separation on waitlisted tickets. Our history packed overnight into overweight shoulder bags. Maybe, we are a hand- woven zardozi border of blood and money, one our ancestors sewed but couldn’t wear. Maybe, a couplet in a script leaping forward into blankness

دما دم مست قلندر

Forever arched in translation, our travelling soles — a song of god and light that has survived 750 years. When our inheritance comes to be observed not as a temple, but an amusement park dance becomes a form of survival. When the DJ scratches over chaar charaag tere baran hamesha May your shrine always be lit with four lamps, we imagine our third-generation body as the fifth lamp and burn as we sway — our dried throats, the wick. A small growing fire, our sky-pushing hands.

Over 2 million Sindhis were displaced from their homes during the 1947 partition of India and Pakistan