I’m in a room full of women in ball gowns and tiaras. The walls are draped in pink and gold, and the tables are adorned with pink roses and glasses of champagne. A woman in a blue dress laughs, pulling her gold-gowned friend to the red carpet for a selfie. We’re at Mangoes restaurant in Santa Clara celebrating the release of Nivedita Lakhera’s new poetry book I am not a Princess I am a Complete Fairytale. The book was released this week and has soared to the number one spot on Amazon under hot new releases. Perhaps it will follow in the footsteps of Lakhera’s first poetry collection, Pillow of Dreams, which remains the best-reviewed women’s poetry book on Amazon to this date.
Someone hands me a glass of champagne, and I meet the other guests: Jasdeep Virdi, Kavitha Jayachandran, Gautami Agastya, primary care physicians who are the organizers of the event. As other women introduce themselves—surgeons, hospitalists, clinicians—I realized I’ve never seen so many female physicians in one place. Lakhera herself is a doctor who works as a hospitalist at Regional Medical Center in San Jose, California.
Have you read the poem “‘Don’t Make Me a Goddess?’ It’s my favorite!” Priti the nephrologist gushes while clutching her book to her chest. She finds a chair in the front so she’ll be first in line when it’s time for the book signing.
Everyone takes their seats as the guest of honor arrives. Lakhera walks down the red carpet in a billowy white gown, her silver-sequined bodice twinkling under the lights. As she approaches the front of the room, Gautami gets up and crowns her with a diamond-studded tiara and the room buzzes with fan-girl energy.
“You are all princesses,” Lakhera says. “But I wrote this book because I want every woman to know that she’s not just a princess. She’s the castle; she’s the armor, sometimes she’s the dragon in her own way. She’s the knight that saves herself. She is everything.”
Many of the poems in “I Am Not a Princess I Am a Complete Fairytale” are poems of survival. Lakhera herself survived the assault, divorce, and a massive stroke at age 27 that caused transient right-sided paralysis. Her poems tackle themes of abuse, shame, and suicide, several inspired by the stories of real women. The message is clear: more often than not, women are the ones who do the rescuing both for each other and for ourselves.
After her talk, we get up to feast on tandoori chicken, spicy cauliflower, and basmati rice. I looked around me at the sea of pink, gold, and purple gowns. Women sip wine chatting about politics, poetry, and medicine. A woman laughs, licking pink frosting off her fork. We smile and blow kisses at the camera. When was the last time I’d been in a room like this?
This gala was a five-year-old’s princess party brought to adulthood, a junior high sleepover for grown-ups, a wedding celebration for someone marrying her truth and expressing it as poetry. There was a special magic in women gathering together. It was an evening that reminded us of the strength we brought out in one another and the beauty that was always within.
Joyan Sanctis, a tall charming talented artist who volunteered to take the pictures of the event was learning about Lakhera as the evening was unfolding while Albert the amazing videographer was having an adventure of capturing this fairytale even come to life.
Don’t Make Me a Goddess
don’t make me a goddess
and put in in a temple
of brink and mortar
don’t praise me for my quiet
or reward me for
repressing my every sense
and call my silence holy water
don’t offer prayers for my caution
and tie weights of honor
to my mouth, skin, and feet
don’t make me a goddess
and keep me away from pious lands
when my womb
prepares for sustaining humanity
don’t offer me shame
when I am fulfilling
the cycle of life
don’t keep exhausting
scriptures over me
don’t stitch limits
for my heart and soul
which you won’t stitch for yourself
my tresses belong to the wind
my heart belongs to wild dreams
my soul traverses the route
that each of my cells has arranged with the sky
I am not going to offer you
cleansing of your veins
with the blood of my dreams
don’t make me a goddess,
I wish to be free,
and that is my spirit of sacredness
my refrain is not your redemption
the wings on my feet
are not worried about your threat
to rob off the ground beneath me
you cannot take away who I am
Article contributed by: Seyed Shaho Ahmadi
Seyed is a journalist, biographer, environmental researcher, poet, and
storyteller. While romance and nature are the main themes of his poetry, he has focused on science-fiction topics in writing short stories.
