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.
Photography by Leela | Poems by Goirick Brahmachari
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