Wild Women: Read an excerpt from a collection of sacred poetry by women

A work by Rupa Bhavani, a poet-saint from Kashmir, as featured in Wild Women: Seekers, Protagonists and Goddesses in Sacred Indian Poetry.

RUPA BHAVANI

[17th - 18th century]

One of Kashmir’s best-known saints, Rupa Bhavani, like Lal Ded before her, walked out of a marriage, charted her own course and refused to submit to socially-assigned roles. Unlike Lal Ded’s language that was part of an oral tradition, Rupa Bhavani’s poetry was written, and ‘remained,’ says translator Neerja Matto, ‘the possession of the Kashmiri Pandit intellectual elite.’ There is a certain gravitas, or what Mattoo terms ‘a brooding intellectuality’, about her work, making