Photography by Leela | Poems by Goirick Brahmachari
I am not the one who
breezes through the narrow lanes of your evenings in salt,
ashes; no,
I am not your memory.
For 50 years you kept walking
Rejoicing loss, hallucinating hunger
In cotton knit stories
For what joy?
Here,
I give you some flowers
Dance?
You could have asked us to stay over.
Outside the road has grown old and weary,
crows go wild when the sun slips.
We soak ourselves in water
and fight this cold with ink in our teeth
Drumbeats, smoke
And a strange smell of fish
You ask me
if it is always like this, here.
Incestuous.
I took the same route everyday
The one that led to your house
Only that, I disappeared
Every time it did not rain.
Rich people stay at Salt Lake
At least that is what I hear
I was born a migrant
So I chose to stay in south.
And suffered every mile I traveled across the bypass.
Every empty space, every wide open field
Every stinky factory waste now
Reminds me of you.
I am not a Bengali from West Bengal
I do not know of its grandmothers.
I live in the island of wind and frogs
My grandmothers sing of rain,
About sleep, and boats over Padma;
Of fish moon nights and mustard,
Coriander and liquid walls.
We could have been friends.
⁂
