Poetry: “Parle-G” by Palavi Ahuja
Palavi Ahuja’s poem is about far more than “a sleeve of Parle-G biscuits,” although it’s a thoroughly intriguing place to begin the careful weaving the poem accomplishes. The poem’s strands include the watching and relaying the narrative of the movie Life of Pi in fragments, snippets of conversation between the speaker and her mother, and the story of the murder of a young woman by six men in New Delhi. Meanwhile, between and among these strands, Ahuja considers what makes people believe or not believe there is a god, asking Jyoti, the young woman, if she did. Through a single column of flowing text, Ahuja brings us full circle by the end of the poem, back to the packet of biscuits where we began, mimicking the cycle of continued violence toward women.
Read Ahuja’s poem below.
For Jyoti Singh
Palavi Ahuja
Palavi Ahuja (she/her) is a poet and a second-year MFA Writing candidate at Columbia University’s School of the Arts. Her poetry is featured in University of Central Missouri’s Pleiades: Literature in Context (2023), The University Press of SHSU’s The Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume X: Alabama (2023), and forthcoming in Birmingham Poetry Review (Spring 2024). Her work explores the themes of family mythos/folklore, generational experiences, womanhood, culture, and more while also delving into various types of form, both new and old.
