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| Photo Credits: GB |
Rootless
Getting down at Fakiragram junction when I went to catch a train
upcountry, just then they surrounded me, and shoving and dragging,
they made me stand on the platform.
Everywhere around my body were garments of the minority
community. In my tongue was the language of the minority. In the
eyes was the withered look of hunger. In the stomach was a terrible,
painful hunger. My dry thinning muscles were exhausted. My dirty
clothes screamed it to everyone how even after independence I was
a landless farmer and beggar-labourer.
I gave them my name. I gave them my post office. I told them the
name of my district. I just could not mention my house number. I did
not have a house. Neither did I have land. I did not have even any
certificates from school. My house went down in the flood. Along with
it, went down my entire world with my wife and children.
They asked my father’s name. They asked my grandfather’s name.
They asked me about my birthplace. I told them everything. I said I
don’t have anything called home. I don’t have a bed to sleep. I don’t
have clothes to cover myself. Except fire to warm myself, I don’t have
any quilt or blanket. Even after the Partition, I don’t have a mother
tongue. I don’t know alphabets. I don’t know words. I don’t know
language. I don’t know anything except hard labour.
Getting down at Fakiragram junction, when I went to catch a train
upcountry, just then they surrounded me and being able to catch a
traitor like me, they screamed in delight.
The more I tried to answer, the more they went mad to attack me.
I wept inside. I wept inside my heart. I curse my mother who gave
birth to me in this country, in this India. I look for my father to ask
why he created a rootless son like me who is without country in the
country of his own birth.
Getting down at Fakiragram junction when I went to catch a train
upcountry, just then they surrounded me, and branding me a
foreigner, they sent me to the prison. From the prison, they sent me
to the detention camp and since then, I wait for my death in my own
country as a rootless man.
Dear Northeast
Dear Northeast,
I know I am not the only poet who resides in the interiors of your
geography. I am not the only poet immersed in your indiscernible
beauty filled with immeasurable wonder. I am not the only poet
who is marked as a warrior in your gold-plated pride. I am not the
only poet who spends the nights in your love and trust, adding new
dimensions to life.
Like all the other poets, I too am your child. I am just another poet
who has drunk your milk to quench his thirst. Perhaps this is why I
am proud of my humanity. Perhaps this is why I live spanning you,
circumambulating you, touching you.
I exhale in the scent of the flowers that bloom on your body. Sleeping
in the shape of your body, I dream. In your flowing sound, I travel in
a fraction on the endless road. I remain awake in the fading applause.
Dear Northeast,
You are my mother. You are the state of dream that awakens in my
heart when I spend my silence and wake up in faith. Sometimes I
wake up in intelligence and conscience.
In silence, I walk on the road of hunger that stretches beyond the
horizon, slowly losing its shape in trust and relationship, slowly
building me like a rainbow in the making to break me in the light.
Dear Northeast,
I pick up the notes of the ethereal music of life in your unadulterated
air every day. I acquire the primal power of humanity in your
transparency. I spread everywhere in your reverberating hour. I wake
up in the dominance of your tireless conscience.
I am not the only poet who lives in your geography. I am not the only
poet immersed in your indiscernible beauty filled with immeasurable
wonder. Revealed in your soul, I am just a sound. I am an undeclared
war for life, touching you in your insides and outsides.
Whenever I protest, they
call me a terrorist
Whenever I protest, they call me a terrorist.
Whenever I protest, they tie my hands.
Whenever I protest, they thrust in my hand
complaint letter of the forged law,
declare me as a traitor and
cage all my freedom.
They keep me away from my children.
They keep me away from my wife.
They keep me away from my parents.
Whenever I protest, they call me a terrorist.
They shoot me dead in fake encounter.
Sometimes they keep me in prison for life without protest.
Whenever I protest, they call me a terrorist.
Whenever I protest, in democracy
they plant seeds of Indian fascism.
They might arrive today as well
They might arrive today as well.
At midnight they might surround my beloved village.
Pointing rifles and firing two-three rounds of bullets
in the air, they might alert
my sleeping people, alert young boys and girls, men and women.
Like hunters who surround from all around
to catch the hunt,
they might pounce upon my people.
In front of my mother they might rape my dear sister.
They might strip naked
our ancient civilization.
They might torture our agitated hours.
They might sexually assault and kill
my innocent moon-like sister.
They might arrest the youths or
chasing them to the field,
they might kill them in fake encounters.
They might arrive today as well.
They might attack our humanity.
Breaking the tradition of civilization,
they might turn us against mankind.
They might arrive today as well.
When they do
we must protest.
Standing tall, we will have to fight like men.
When they arrive, we will have to walk even towards death.
And far away from death,
somewhere near freedom.
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