Category: Fiction
Rights: All rights available
There are days when you move through the world like a jellyfish, with no brain, heart, bones or eyes; when you’re nothing but a small mass of stinging tentacles. And then there are days you come close to beautiful—so close that you glow in the dark.
This is Neem’s world. Painful. Absurd. And yet, flushed with incorruptible, nonsensical joy. The kind that leaves her playing with bubbles like a raccoon. Flying kites and learning kabaddi. Roller skating, pub-crawling and writing forest songs. In between all that bed rotting, her hunger for life is still intact.
Introducing Megha Rao’s Bed rot, a collection of poetry that dives into the messy, beautiful, and heartbreaking experience of being alive. Through the story of Neem—who is violated by an older man introduced to her by her best friend and then pushed away by her entire friend group for telling the truth—these poems crack open the weight of injustice, pain and resilience. But this is not just a narrative of hurt; it is one of resistance, integrity, self-compassion and the urgency to live authentically.
The collection flows through moments both intimate and expansive—trauma anniversaries marked by the sharp clink of glass bangles (kuppivala) and the heady scent of Arabian jasmine (mullapoo), the freedom of surfing in Gokarna, and the warmth of eating milk payasam with friends from different religions. It captures the quiet comfort of a mother’s rasam recipe, the familiar embrace of her sarees, and the insecurities of being the family’s black sheep. It moves from finding peace in small South Indian rituals to animalistic running in the fields, from infectious laughter with friends to the euphoria of dancing in solitude. The poems do not shy away from the country’s current political climate, from the way faith and division intertwine, nor from the slow, tender act of rebuilding a relationship with one’s body after rape. And then there’s love—endless, overflowing and in many ways, cosmic. From friends, from lovers, but most importantly, from within.
At first glance, Bed Rot might seem like just a way to shut out the world and cope, but it’s so much more—it’s a prayer, a love poem, a renaissance, and, above all, a call to live life fully and on your own terms.
The author: Megha Rao