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4/7/18

Poems | Sreejita Basu

Credits: Amrit Ghosal
Winter Wonderings

I long for oldness,
Is there even such a word?
But I know you get the idea anyway
A feeling tinged with nostalgia
Accompanied by the smell of mustard oil on the skin
A winter afternoon like this
A lot more warm, a lot more familiar...

Are my thoughts incoherent, a little muddled perhaps?
But how can I help for I am not quite the same myself
My head does not think the way it did, maybe just about a decade back.

A decade back...
A face without the dark cirlces,  a father without the white hair
A me without a voter ID, undefined identity, unchartered paths...

A closet full of woollens, loose, baggy ones
A drawer full of photographs, undigitised, unseen for years
The ring of the BSNL landline, textbooks in brown papers

Coming back to now, a lot more difficult
The same winter temperature. Fitted woollens. Much more fashionable
A little less sunny, a little more grey.

The Walk

My cheeks had a rosy tint
And a few strands of hair played truant with my forehead.
Deliberate, was it?
My T-shirt clung to my body. 
My contours prominent, visible even in the dim light. 
My breasts jiggled. May be I should have been careful with the bra. 
My thighs. Fleshy. Attractive.
Which even the unfitted track pants could not hide. 
My underarms were sweaty as I brisked my pace.
I wouldn’t find that alluring. Did they?
I had my earphones on. Why did I?
That made me un-careful. Not on my guard. 
Change your route. Change your route. 
Every single day.
Because I was provocative. 
I provoked. 
With what I thought
Was just an evening walk. 

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