# The Third Glass of Wine

- Link: https://writersworkshopindia.com/2016/06/06/the-third-glass-of-wine/
- Published: 2016-06-06T03:44:14+00:00
- Author: shuktara

4.7/5 - (4 votes)

**Author:** Dipika Mukherjee[⌊WP_20160605_17_17_19_Pro 1⌉](https://writersworkshopindia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/WP_20160605_17_17_19_Pro-1.jpg)
**
Pages:** 88 **Year of Publication:** 2015 **Price:** Rs 250 **ISBN:** 978-93-5045-
125-0 (9789350451250)

_**About the Author**_
 Dipika Mukherjee is a writer and sociolinguist. Her debut
novel, _Thunder Demons _(Gyaana, 2011) was long-listed for the Man Asian Literary
Prize; it has been republished as _Ode to Broken Things _(Repeater, UK) and distributed
by Penguin/Random House worldwide in 2016. Her short story collection, _Rules of
Desire _(Fixi, Malaysia) was  published in 2015. She won the 2014 Gayatri GaMarsh
Memorial Award for Literary Excellence as well as the Platform Flash Fiction Prize
in 2009. Her edited anthologies on Southeast Asian fiction include _Silverfish New
Writing 6 _(Silversfish, 2006) and _The Merlion and Hibiscus _(Penguin, 2002). Her
poetry chapbook, _The Palimpsest of Exile_, was published by Rubicon Press (Canada)
in 2009. Her writing appears in publications around the world including _Asia Literary
Review, World Literature Today, Postcolonial Text _and _South Asian Review_. She
is Contributing Editor for _Chicago Quarterly Review_ and _Jaggery _and curates 
an Asian/American Reading series in Chicago.

_**Teaser**_

_Migration, Exile… These Are Men’s Words_

Migration, Exile… these are men’s words.
 Women have always been torn up like rice
seedlings to be replanted in marriage (or another name); my language weeps its wedding
melodies in many dialects, many tunes _In my next life, O God, don’t make me a daughter:_

Exile, Migration… what meaning then?

I am no woman-poet-migrant-in-exile.
 Keep your labels, please.

I am not tamed by toil, shoulders stiff
 with xenophobia; nor a person of color 
shunted to workshops where grievances grow in collegiality. I am a nomad, homeless,
rootless, I am the zephyr – the _vayu_ that breezes past rooted trees. I swish past
suburbs, four-bedroomed homes, theatered basements, the two-car garage; nothing 
stops me as I skim by brooks, snake to large rivers, course by course, I am fed 
by a hunger, sharper than life, to live in _this_; to suck bare a skin, tender as
peeled lychees, always terrified that there may not be another rebirth to appeal
to.

For now, there is this. New
 beginnings, another journey, roads unraveling untraveled.

I find my muse as much
 as she finds me, without home or temple, veena in hand, 
book in another, in the feminine infinite we make our home.

_**Contents**_
 47 poems