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And just like that they left
Right here
From the centre of that coiled labyrinth
Where all the paths were to become clearer
They left
“Look at that overbridge, look
It was I who spread
Out the rainbow colours on it”
Perhaps with a smile they are telling us now
How they smiled everyday was how they left
“How much could humans love their lives?
Perhaps none as much as me
Do you know, only for the life I love
I fought countless battles each day
To make this body mine”
Perhaps they are telling us now with a cigarette burning on their lips
How they lit a cigarette everyday was how they left
“Listen, their palaces of pride would one day crumble
The darkness of their minds would one day disappear
I think, standing here”
Perhaps caressing their long hair, they are telling us
“Do you know, even now they are talking about my body
Hahahaha, who could knock sense into body-obsessed people
The moment they buried my body
Was in truth the moment, I was freed
And just like that they left
How they smiled everyday was how they left
How they lit a cigarette everyday was how they left
How they told us every day was how they left
To liberate them, to liberate us, they left
A single whistle
Flew from my aunt’s lips
And landed on the mango tree
I followed close behind
Sometimes the whistle reached
The meadows
My aunt sowing the earth
The whistling wind riding ahead of the paddy saplings
I followed close behind
Sometimes fishing in the ponds
Sometimes along the flight of fireflies in the night, my aunt’s whistle glided
And I followed close behind
My aunt said from every heart a whistle keeps flowing to every other, endlessly
And so, we carry love
Is a whistle hiding in her heart just like mine- I thought
Because my aunt told me my love was different and beautiful
With the whistle on my lips, I sometimes dawdled around her
She smiled and asked- what’s that in your heart, a whistle or me
It’s love, love- I replied
That season, a cluster of bees swarmed the city
Cloaking its skies with their wings
Me and her, we stood watching in awe
She said that saving a colony of bees would save the entire world.
We wandered aimless through the city
What’s love between two girls, it mocked
And so, I buried her in kisses at random places
In the bookshops of Panbazaar
On the top of the Chandmari flyover
While dragging on cigarettes at the Paltanbazaar rail tracks
Or splattering the waters of the Basistha River with our feet
While sipping tea on the footpaths of Ganeshguri
And in all the ‘cinema halls’ of the city
The people stared
What’s love between two girls, the city howled
But my kissing her was crucial
I wasn’t able to save a colony of bees
Or the entire world
And so, my kissing her was crucial
Somewhere, a small world lived.
He felt how biting the rain was today, without it ever touching his skin
Sitting on the threshold of his home,
He was trying to carve something
Upon the mud porch, with his toe
His mother stirring the rice pot inside
Talks about the likeliness of a flood this year
He doesn’t respond, his will for it lost these days
On days like this, an impatience crept inside of him,
As though something knocked on the walls of his heart
It was on such a monsoon day from the gone year
In a relief camp on the embankments of the river
That he’d met his lover the first time
His shy self was in a tizzy, as he stepped into the shower with so many men
But flood made its visits to the village every year
And there were relief camps on the embankments every time
Every time he found himself huddled amongst flocks of men
And every time he felt the unwelcome eyes and uninvited touches that grazed him
But during the flood last year
On those very embankments he’d met his lover
The rain poured heavy and incessant on that day too, as he waited in front of the shower, hesitant
And then someone said, ‘come this way, I’ll stand guard; no one can touch a hair on you’
And just like that their love-tale began
All love needs, is a mere excuse
For lovers are forever ready
And today, his lover will arrive yet again
Once the rain is done and gone
And together they’ll watch the river from the embankments
This year he will not drift through the floods alone
And perhaps what he had carved upon his mud porch
Was his lover’s name
All poems are translated from Assamese into English by Daradi Patar
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