The Other Revolutionary

She took up Irabot’s sickle
To chop off the overgrown beard
On her mother’s chin
She too is a revolutionary

The wicked wind licks lecherously
Her thighs along which the phanek slithers
Yielding to the wanton wind
The phanek prostrate on the wayside cried
‘hey lady! you have dropped me’
She knowingly did not look back
She too is a revolutionary

The evening prayer to Sanamahi was offered
Forgetting her crimson lunar cycle
Only to remember when her man tucked her phanek
From her waist in that drunken night
As the faint scent of haeme whiffs along
She too is a revolutionary

She rode away in the air
Screamed with the muffled mouth
Forgot when ought to remember
Swam in the cloud
She too thinks a thought
She too is a revolutionary

That night in that bloody war
A seed of revolution was sown
In her ravaged womb
Against law against time; against all dimensions of life
A revolution grows in her belly
She is a revolutionary through the ages

Rainbow

Violet leibaklei pierces the earth
Many a summer ago when she once walked on this vale
Its faint scent opens its eyes whenever I close mine
Her dim soul glows whenever I look at a lazy distance
On the way back I saw her soul slowly descending and rising
With the waves of the archaic wind
In the autumn air I saw it nestled in the cradle of a weightless leaf

Indigo sky mocked at me
As I once tried to play with the clouds
At last I played with pebbles and marbles
As if there will never be a game after
It was the morning that went and never came
Although I waited for the final game
On the way back I saw it between the human bulls
In the muddy battlefield I saw them rolling like buffaloes in the mud

Blue ribbons with which I bound my hair
Fell and trampled in the dust and foot
That day when I first came out of my home
Seeking a strange freedom in that seized street
On the way back I saw freedom curled asleep like a street dog
In the garden I saw it playing hide and seek in the folds of the foliage

Green moors of this valley beckoned me
Whenever I am exiled from this land
Like calling me for the last truce
‘As you killed my son give me your daughter’
And I shrugged and said so as you say
On the way back I saw her son making love to my daughter
From dreamy mountain I saw their love melting down in ravines

Yellow November fields opened itself for her visitors
Who were never ever inheritors
Wild herbs; shrubs; half sun baked cow-dung and snails
Their sole heritage from this soil red with their kin’s blood
On way back I saw the visitors performing their daily rites
In the field I saw their dreams opening pearl-less oysters


Orange suns deliciously drooped on my courtyard
I plucked them one by one
One for me; one for the unknown; and one for the unnamed
I put them in the jar of my anguish
On the way back I saw suns getting burnt
In the jar I saw them melting into warm rays

Red cheeks of that summer beauty
Blushed by the unruly highland wind and Orion’s luring gaze
At last they fled with her beauty
And the lovelorn searched for the stolen
On the way back I saw her beauty kneeling at the tomb of the slain
In the grave I saw it walking every evening like a lost ghost

Leishat Tamba (Blooming)

Chumbhrei mapaal shaare
Angaobagi yug oire
Shamu mamei tatle
Noknabagi matam oire
Shangbrei mapaal shaare
Lairembi haraobagi matam oire
Shamji nachom leishatle
Kenbagi matam oire
Thamoigi chingchepta lammei chaakle
Laaklaroidaba maabu ngaibagi matam oire

Blooming

The peach blooms
It’s the age of doom
Gone is the elephant’s tail
It’s time for disdain
Shangbrei blooms
It’s time for carnival
The bunch in the bun blooms
It’s time for fallen flowers
The wildfire blooms in the slopes of hearts
It’s time to wait
For the one who will never come

The Last Exchange

Do not go away so soon
Share with me your last secret
Before the evening bell rings
In the temple of this hazy hamlet
Come let us have our last exchange

Do not go away so soon
Share with me this last slice of green mango
Let me feel the shiver of sourness in your chin
In this dense orchard of illicit vine
Come let have our last exchange

Do not go away so soon
Share with me this warm hay-fire
Before the last winter ends
Let us talk at last of you and me
Come let us have our last exchange

In Red

I shall recall once before the everlasting sunset
How beautiful it was to be red
Myself red and
The red sky of dusk
And I shall recall what I whispered
That evening in red
In the ears of the hill-echoes
‘Where shall you take me morrow?’
Far away from that furry thing
I touched beside my bed in my nightmare
Far away from that unknown that stalk me
When my sleep bound my limbs

I shall recall what I whispered
That evening in red
In the ears of the ripe sun
‘Whom shall you take me to?’
The one who will give me answers to all my queries
Like ‘why have I come here?’
To tell me what I do not know
When I say ‘I don’t know’
Like why some are forsaken
While other shake the bars of prison

I shall recall what I whispered
That evening in red
To the smoke of fresh burnt hay
‘Where shall I go back now?’
And how much I wanted to say
‘I do not want to go back
Let me stay right here in the midst of this meadow
Forever and ever
As long as I am red’
Until the green grass turned red and said
‘No, you must go before the night turns red’

Your Coming

Every ladder I climbed so arduously
And you with your sly smile
Came so gaily
Just to put another…
Another endless rung on it

Every sky I flew so painstakingly
And you with your generous stroke
Came so nonchalantly
Just to paint another….
Another vast blue on it

Every road I took so eagerly
And you with your willful intent
Came so scornfully
Just to elongate another…
Another infinite mile upon it

Every wrecked dream I shorn of
And you with your malicious heart
Came so silently
Just to give me another...
Another unfulfilled wish upon it

August Night

The bamboo silhouette against the evening sky
Like a spiky haired ghost
The nimbus sulky in the sky
Of unfallen tears and unaccepted pleas
In one such august evening
The doors of my heart shut itself
Unasked uninformed
The prick of the pebble under my feet
I have loved that day
In evening like this, secretly
I left him behind in an unknown place
I came back to my kitchen
The flaming butane in my palm
I have loved it that night
The tears shed, the pleas accepted
The nimbus roared in exult
Through the fissure of the thatched hut
I felt the rain drops nudging
On my cheeks
And I have loved it that night

One Last Time

One last time
Let me be disgraced in front of those million eyes
One last time
Let me ruin myself from where there is no salvage
One last time
Let me be immoral that shames the immorality itself
One last time
Let me go wild into the wilderness in search for an aphrodisiac
One last time
Let me taste the most hated of loves
One last time
Let me exile myself from where there is no return.
One last time
Let me kill with my own hands
One last time
Let my body be tattooed with all taboos
One last time
Let me enjoy the most wanton of all dreams
One last time
Let me show my nakedness to the man of my choice
One last time
Let me be a mother without ever knowing the key to wedlock
One last time
Let me drink the poison of life and die just to live again
One last time
Let me be sinfully free …
One last time
One last time…

Untamed

My wayward mind
Thought the unthinkable
My willful heart
Sensed the un-senseable
My disobedient feet
Tread the un-walkable
My untamed lips
Spoke the un-speakable
My mischievous ears
Listened the un-listenable
My feral eyes
Saw the un-seeable
Yes untamed am I
With my heart out
Waiting for none
Telling to none
Asking to none
Alone all alone…
Let me search for Thoibi’s khwangchet
It must surely lie in that far fringe of Moirang
Let me search for the last adornment
Around Mainu Pemcha ’s neck
Let it be my last adornment this hour
Let me trace Paanthoibi’ s footsteps
And be one of her last metamorphosis
Let me search for a grain of Phouoibi
Just to drop it stealthily in the chengphu of my love
The mermaid would not stop swimming, even when
Her fins are etch
The sun would not stop climbing the mountain, even when
The height haunts it
The flowers will not stop blooming, even when
It’s long fallen
The birds would not stop flying, even when
Its wings are stolen
And I will not stop living, even when
I am long dead

To My Comrades

The world would not stop being beautiful
After you and I are long gone
Isn’t it lovely?
The scorching taunting sun
The soothing platonic moon
And Ah! This land
Yours and mine
Where we all belong
You and I
I know why u smile
I know why you cry
I know why you scream
Even when no word comes from your lips
My heart talks to yours
You and I carry different flags
But we knowOur mom had made them for us
To wave in the wind In the thunder
In the dual roots of the rainbow
Comrades! I take this path
And you the other
Hand in hand
Or Sword to sword at this day
But I promise I will meet you there
And I will be with you that day!

Remembrance

I remember wiping
The falling ray on your brow
I remember you and me under an umbrella
Shielding away the rain of souls
I remember the fence on which you leaned
Mossy with the lore of sundry loves
I remember our dreams
Flowing from my eyes to yours in streams
I remember the butterfly
Fluttering in-between you and me
I remember the unsolved riddle
Solving all knots between us
I remember every flower that bloomed
On every node of my body with your touch
Forgetting all I remember you
You play you swim you laugh
In this tiny hollow heart of mine
A heart that no longer belongs to me

NE girls and Delhi

Original article by
Rina Dutta (Assam Times) and my reply


THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE
NE girls and Delhi

As far as we know, the student and professionals working in Delhi includes
both boys and girls. If the offences committed were of racial nature, even
boys should be attacked. But why is it that only girls are harmed? There is
no incidence of north-east boys being attacked in Delhi.
Morever *there are chinky students from Bhutan, Nepal, Korea etc. studying
in Delhi. Why is it that an Arunachali, a Naga, a Mizo being in the focus?
It is time the girls from hill states introspect. *
The media in north east talks big of 'free culture' in the region. But in
reality, all people in hill towns like Kohima, Aizawl and Itanagar are
indoors right in the evening. After 7 pm, one will not find any shop open,
any vehicle or girl on the streets and roads. Why is it that a Mizo girl
thinks that she can roam about in Delhi at 2 'o' clock in the night. It is
known that north east tribes like Nagas, Mizos, Arunachalis etc did not wear
clothes some decades back. So they have the habit of wearing short and
skimpy dresses. Since this is their habit, they can go and study in
Australia. There they will get the royal treatment which chinkys get in
Australia.
Delhi doesn't need lessons of discrimination when the north east tribes are
best in it. They are good in emotional blackmail and blaming others for all
their wrongs. And they have a north east media like Dhritarashtra who
supports the nonsense blindly and throws all blame on Delhi. To know why
some NE girls get into trouble in Delhi, one has to go to Delhi and see what
a weird, vulgar and awkward image they have made for themselves and the
region. North East boys also dress in a very unsmart and third class manner,
with cargo pants, half pants, tattoos and rings, spikes etc. Maybe because
they are tribal, they do not know to dress decently.


MY REPLY (Shreema Ningombam)


ON THE NORTHEAST BOY NOT BEING ATTACKED

The attack here pertains to sexual harassment, molestation or rape. Girls are sexually harassed by men and if men had to be ‘attacked’ who will do it? Is another man to sexually harass another man or is a woman to harass a man. Is it feasible for a woman to sexually harass a Northeast man/boy or for that matter any other man belonging to any community or race? It is a universal phenomenon that no man can be in the legal sense sexually harassed. The maxim goes ‘Man can’t be raped’. The point is men’s sexuality is never in danger. Each of the sex perceives their sexuality differently. For women sexuality is associated with morality and prestige but for men they are free from any such associations. So what does it matter if a man is raped? It does not make any difference at least socially if not personally. They have nothing to lose nor their prestige or morality but for a woman who is raped nothing is left because the social norm snatch away from her something un-seeable, intangible things called prestige or morality.


ON THE TERM CHINKI

Chinki is a derogatory term for the people belonging to mongoloid race just like Mayang is for brown Indians or Yankies for the Americans. Derogatory words are part of common language spoken and written. But in a public forum if someone utter such derogatory term directly pointing to the other then it not only shows the person’s prejudice and biased attitude towards the people of other community it also shows the level of insensitivity and immature attitude of the speaker. It is indeed a pity that a forum can publicize such writings without a second thought. It shows the forum’s indifference and disdain for the people involved.

ON ROAMING IN THE NIGHTS BY GIRLS
There is a huge difference between the life of some sleepy towns or villages in Northeast and the life of metropolitan cities like Delhi or Mumbai. These are metro cities with vibrant night life which one cannot find in a remote small town or village of any part of India. If a man venture out in night and enjoy then its ‘macho’. But when women do then they are blamed to be inviting dangers. Let us say dangers are invited then why men are so willing to take this invitation? Why these man have no judgment over their own choice on whether a woman walking alone in the road can be raped or not. If a woman bares her breast or open her legs why some specific men are so willing to grab the opportunity. All men would not like to taste the parts of women who are strangers. Let us say some men want to then there is brothel where women of all kinds and colors that attune to their fascination are available. But why hunt unwilling women in nights; there is indeed a dark psyche involved.
The perpetrators are the prisoners of their own uncensored and unrealized conscience. They are positively un-free. It is not woman who had to be freed from the clutches of man’s unholy hands and undignified eyes but it is the men themselves who had to be salvaged from their unrealized conscience. The unholy hands and the undignified eyes are the shadows of their unrealized conscience. As much as the shadows disappear with the disappearance of the real object the former will disappear with the realization of their conscience.
We cannot blame the women’s desire to venture out in night just because some men are there to hunt them as prey. Why are some men hunters in the first place? Why can’t they stop hunting women? Or is it something like it is inherent nature of some men to hunt women as sexual prey. It cannot be; it can never be.
Why do we see only Northeast women as available or cheap? Because their looks are different and they are vulnerable as they have come far from home, they can be easily distinguished in public. But we failed to notice the vast North Indian women who are too raped, molested and harassed because they merged in the North Indian Crowd. If one stays in any women’s hostel in Delhi one will get to hear every stories…………from sexual harassment to sex-sell by the girls to rich middle aged Indian for as much as ten Thousand bucks a night. These are gossips, stories and rumours. But you cannot have smoke without fire. One only wants to see the dainty Northeast girl standing beside the road waiting for a customer for the night but one willingly fail to notice another beautiful North Indian girl standing next to her waiting for another customer. But the regular customer knows her so she will be picked up surely. But the North Indian eyes want to see and blame only the Northeast girls. One sees only what one wants to see. We have to put another lens more secular enough to see all women as a whole not as North Indian or Northeast women. They are willing then who has the problem. One must accept the fact that it is woman as a whole regardless of caste, class or race is the victim. One must instead of hunting for unwilling women should go for women who are available.



ON NUDITY

The writer must too be born undressed from her mother womb. We were all undressed initially. If we trace the human evolution human ancestry can be traced to Africa undressed and raw. If someone is comfortable with his or her nudity who are we to tell him or her to dress. If you see all the high profile fashion magazine nudity and semi nudity is the best way to express the garments. If you see sculpture David made my Michaelangelo you will find the celebration in the beauty of male nudity from his limbs to his soft penis. And if you see the sculpture you will find it is indeed beautiful to be nude. Unfortunately the people of this world abandoned the aesthetic of nudity to clad themselves. And if the people of Northeast have dressed late they are lucky enough to be true to nature and to be committed to the aesthetic beauty of nudity for that long enough. Unfortunately now people of this region dress more than they are suppose to. I feel the slim and trim and sexy thighs of the dainty girls regardless of race or place deserve a decent look, an appreciation of its beauty not to look at it in the raw sexual lecherous way of a sexually frustrated man/ woman. The attire of a person or of a community can never be judged. The person who makes any such judgment is of cheap, shallow, biased, abnormal mind. Such person’s opinion is made to reach a public forum mean then it fails in holding responsibility towards its image and toward the general public. The point however is that it is much better to be a human, naked then be a full dressed beast.



DEMYSTIFYING THE TRIBAL NATURE OF NORTHEAST
The region is presumed to be predominantly inhabited by the tribal. This is contrary to the ground reality. According to 2001 census only about one-fourth of the population in the region is tribal. Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh are tribal in majority of its population but the whole region cannot be categorized as predominantly tribal. There is another assumption that the tribal population is still very ‘primitive’. On the contrary a large number of them are educated and western in lifestyle unlike the marginalized tribal in other parts of India. That is why unlike in other regions of India the policy of protective discrimination for ‘schedule tribe’ in the region raises serious questions of justice and equality for the non-tribal population. In these circumstances conceptualizing Northeast in the special ‘tribal’ way has to go.
The extent to which a state's population is tribal varies considerably. In the northeastern states of Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland, upward of 90 percent of the population is tribal. However, in the remaining northeast states of Assam, Manipur, Sikkim, and Tripura, tribal peoples form between 20 and 30 percent of the population. The largest tribes are found in central India, although the tribal population there accounts for only around 10 percent of the region's total population. Major concentrations of tribal people live in Maharashtra, Orissa, and West Bengal. In the south, about 1 percent of the populations of Kerala and Tamil Nadu are tribal, whereas about 6 percent in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are members of tribes. There are some 573 communities recognized by the government as Scheduled Tribes and therefore eligible to receive special benefits and to compete for reserved seats in legislatures and schools. They range in size from the Gonds (roughly 7.4 million) and the Santals (approximately 4.2 million) to only eighteen Chaimals in the Andaman Islands. Central Indian states have the country's largest tribes, and, taken as a whole, roughly 75 percent of the total tribal population live there.



WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A TRIBAL?
When we eat food we are tribal, when we have sex we are tribal, when we give birth we are tribal, when we kill people we are tribal. We are all tribals in cosmopolitan cities. We are the tribes of this world. Just because you wear sarees or trousers or just because you are in a world of gadgets you don’t stop being a tribal. In our elemental way of living we all are tribal. So to despise others as tribal is despising oneself.


Conclusion: Whore-house is a social institution and to seek for sexual gratification is an atavistic human desire. Both will remain as long as human remains. But the point is how you get sexual satisfaction –through willing partners or by forcing someone. Moral judgments are always full of bias and in the world of suppressed sexual frustration of highly orthodox and conservative society a dainty pair of Northeast legs is intolerably luring to them. Had they been watching these sexy legs since birth they would not have got so turned on watching it suddenly in a city and that too for the first time at the age of 30 years or so. The outlet they use is by grabbing on women’s breast, nudging their groin on women’s bottoms and at times bumping at women in the pretext of stumbling. This disgusting way of releasing their sexual desire is shown in bus or trains or in roads almost everywhere. Our world is filled with specific dirty hands and genitals. The problem is not with women be it Northeast, north Indian or belonging to any nation or race, the problem is in the vision these kind of man looking at women with the sinister desire to rape, to grab and at times even to kill. The problem is in the psyche of such individual not with the attributes of women. Her attire, her nudity, her legs, her semi or full clad nature or her being just a woman can lure man can seduce man but it is not a reason for a man to sexually harass her or rape her.

In Love

Your weedy canals
Your wayside flowers
Your unknown lady with the fishing net
Your faraway hill like a dream
In a misty morning
Your cool wind teasing me
Your highway like lines
In your destined palm
Your naked children
Playing in the ground
The suckling calf in the meadows
My heart slowly yields into loving you
What else could I feel?
Than an adoration for you
And I stand in awe
To watch you full day
To love you like no one ever did
For a day I pushed away
My daily dose of rebel
For an hour I froze
My frosty ideas
For a minute I muted
My acerbic speech
For a moment I freed
My willful muse
I left for a day
My love and its remnants
I seek no justice today
I fight for no right
Today I decided in just loving you
Today I decided in celebrating
Your victory over me
Today all yes
To your sunshine’s whims
Tonight all my love
To your moonlit night
Today all my heart
To your hill ranges
Today all my hopes
To all your people

Becoming of You in Me

When you look at me
I become the most pure
When you smile at me
I become the sibling of moon
When you walk beside me
Cherubs flirt with my hair
When you inhale me
I become the smell of divinity.
You paint my lips with the brush of your lips
The hue of pale heaven
The trail of your thumb on my breasts
The trail from here to Mecca
Your knees swallowed in the clefts of my thighs
What is it if not paradise?
That day dicing with words
I played a poem for you
Tonight your eyes dice with mine
I become the poetry itself.
This becoming of me
This undoing of you
Is neither you nor me
This is you-becoming-in-me.

Another You within me

Your memories arrived again
Unasked and un-courteous
Suddenly standing in front of my door
The morning sun warms my skin
Like your palm warmed it once
The evening sun brings me your slanting shadow
Right beside me painting me with dark
The moon follows me every night
Coaxing me with your tales
So large is this world
So tiny is your feet
How shall I trace you?
In every mountain you climbed
In every river you swam
In every forest you through
You must have left a relic
Your familiar scent; your warm breath; your soft touch
How I wish you left a remnant of you within me
Another piece of your flesh
That will grow into another you
Another you within me………………..

The Sublime

She filled her pockets
With pebbles of life
Just to went down into the waiting river
Like she was going back to the deep tranquil womb

She made the breakfast for her daughters
Then came back to the kitchen
Just to put her head in the gas oven
Like the final retreat to maternal odour

She was the mistress of the World
One say ‘they will eat her alive’
Of course she was eaten and left
Naked and coiled like a foetus

Women like they
Rebel with their broken hearts
Their rebel is mad as we say
For they come from their wrenched guts
Women like they
Are destined never to be loved
For they are to be made sacred
Has the sacred ever been loved?
Rinsed with unnamed anguish
Lathered with the purest betrayal
Washed with ethereal agony
Glowed with the dew of pangs
They became sublime
So sublime that they are
Forbidden to touch
Forbidden to love
Forbidden to rescue
They are goddess
Destined to stand alone
In a ere temple filled with pungent prayers
With its crumbling stone limbs
Who knows a goddess’s loneliness?
Who knows her hunger for earthy love?
Who knows her yearning to be a simple woman?
Who knows the stone too bleeds
Who knows the mute does speak
It's just that you and I
Have no heart to feel
No ear to listen.

Last Offering

On the bank of that river
We went to play with a shiver
On the pebbles of the shore
Its resplendent sand
We ran and sang
Stumbled upon a piece of bone
And I smiled for I knew
Someone’s smile have lost there
Drunk by the hungry sands
One tiny piece of fabric buried there
I smiled for I knew
Someone’s light of life melt into a whimper
Sucked by the thirty stones
Yet I smiled
What else could I offer?
Tears had abandoned my monotonous eyes
My wails no more fancy my throat
The frown on my brows
Betrayed me for a prettier one
And Look there! Walking away from me now
Is none but my ripped heart
Alas! What was left was my smile
The God there
The priest here
If something purest they seek
Seek it on my lips
To the bone; to the fabric
My last ceremony
Would be my smile
A virgin smile

The Lost Scent

Tonight my bound hair
Has fallen astray in this prison
The scent of chenghi in my tresses
Has vanished among the stink of the wolves

The lost scent of my tresses
Torments me
The indelible marks of paws
On my bosom haunt me
In my dream-like-life
Oh my tresses, my comrades
For many a seasons
Somebody cut it this day
It is beyond my endurance
The remnants of stench
In my tresses; in my body

Ema, please cut my hair!
Ema, please peel my skin!

One Day Ema!

It will rain
And you will unbound hair and wash it
In the slow dripping from the thatch
One day
The flowers will bloom
In your dark mystique bun
As if they were never plucked
One day
The wind will carry
The scent of your fresh steamed rice
Through the corners of this ravaged street
One day
They will come
Whom you have waited for so long
In this life or in this death
One day
The rainbow will color
The ashen shawl around your bosom
With your darling shades
One day
Your children will fling open
The eternally closed gates
With the calls Ema! Ema!
One day
The kites will fly
In your blue sky with tails of freedom
With no one to harness them with a string
One day
I will garland around your neck
The wreath so painstakingly woven
As you walk past the triumphant crowd
One day…
One day…

Her Inheritance

Dressed with skin to skin
Unbound hair
Let me wander freely
In search of an elusive bequest
Before I forsake this place forever
A mermaid and an angel at once
I wish to be
In search of an unclaimed space in this world
A piece of this earth will never be mine
So in water in air
I hunt for my birthright
A space I can call all mine
A reclusive, a null yet a totality
Seeking it
In the fullness of this absolute void
In the color of the colorless firmament
In the music of the still quietness
In a life of the deceased
I gathered
A morsel of myth
An ounce of sky
A bunch of space
A ray of sunlight
A handful of cloud
A fraction of thunderbolt
A yard of receding tide
All I can claim mine
So I clench them
Clench them tight
For they are my sole inheritance
From my foremothers

Khullang Nupi (the lady-reaper)

Lao! eidi awaba khangde
Khaoshi louse hathu hathu
Timphagi akeebasu leite
Linna chikpagi nachungbasu leite
Echagi puk thannanaba

Eche! Eche! hallage ei yumda
Eecha khomlang lamlammmani

Thamna khenjong na wai wai
Tharo thambalna hai hoom
Thambou nangshu onthokna luuna
Mara taredako adubu taangani eina
Echagi puk thannanaba

Eche! Eche! hallage ei yumda
Echa khomlang lamlammani

Numitna hayeng thorakpaga
Khwanchet laklaga marakke
Chinbandana momon minok
Thawai khubakta haplasu
Lakkani shoidana ei hayeng

Eche! Eche! hallage ei yumda
Echa khomlang lamlammani

Maphi maron thongda
Mamai mamit chamot chamot
Shannaramgani koichen chen
Nungshibana pathoraklaba mitni eigi
Uninglakle echado

Eche! Eche! hallage ei yumda
Echa khomlang lamlammani

Unburdening the dead spirits

Oh! Kunti you are lucky
At least you know the father of your first born
Look at me
I do not know who he is
But I am sure of what he is not
He is not that magnificent sun
Nor is he wind
Nor the earth nor the fire
Nor the water nor the sky

He came and keeps coming
Yet each day I knew him less
A formless
A scentless
A colorless being
Was he actually a man? That too I do not know

I remember that night
The eternally locked doors of my maiden-room unlocked itself
I crossed that uncrossable line
That infinite line in between him and me
That day they say
Some tiny spirits like ‘prestige’ deserted me
One after the other
I do not know
How many such death spirits I need to free
Before I free myself

That night he embraced me
On the floor of that horizonless expanse
He disrobed my clothes one after the other
With each pieces of clothes he rustle away from my body
A tiny spirit flew out from me like eternally caged birds

He put his lips on mine
And they say I lost my grace
He put his lips on my breast
And they say I lost shame
He merged within me
They say I lost everything…
Then………..
The smudged kohl of my eyes stained his shoulder
The disheveled hair of mine teased his cheeks
The rose of my lips shamelessly bloom on his forehead
My breast merged with his chest
I do not remember what covered our togetherness that night
My phanek or his khudei!
I know not

The wicked womb continued its eternal betrayal
Yet for the first time I loved to be betrayed
For the first time
I trump the eternal betrayal of this world
For the first time this betrayal freed me
From those dead spirits
Named ……….

Izzat
Leirangi leinam
Chastity
……………..
……………..
……………..

This ultimate union
Made me lose everything
I did not know it’s too easy to lose my essence
My maiden body has to take a man…
I did not know it’s too easy to lose everything
My maiden mind had to just spill a secret.

The Defiance

Let me cast aside these jewels
The adornments in my ears; the necklace in my neck
Who am I waiting for to be watched wistfully.
For whom am I waiting with such burden?

Let me cast aside the inner layers beneath my phanek
Let my blood flow along the smooth of my thighs
With a freedom that it has never known
Beyond all shame let it be seen by you all.

Why my breasts are being bound so with such tightness
Is it the crime of shedding the divine milk?
They say it’s a pair of divine beauty.
Divinity! Oh u always comes with chains

Who has thrown me a piece of veil?
Veil be cast aside,
It is your gaze, it’s your sense
What have I and my veil got to do with it?

Your feet I touched that day in the public
Now in this silent night u kiss my feet
Tell me whose feet are pure and who’s impure.
Oh! What is this purity somebody tell me?

A dip in the ganges of ‘sin’
A silent confession in front of a sinner
A nikah that can end with three ‘talaqs’
A marriage solemnized by an illiterate priest
Purity made of all impurities.

Mother, my beloved Motherland

You were everywhere.
Yet I searched for you.
In the places of Carnivals,
In the deepest of woods,
In between the locked horns of the wilds,
Among the cries of the flags,
Among the phantoms of the nights.

I came home
I found you
In the nearest corner of my heart,
Peeping behind the curtain of my mind,
Playing with the music of my soul,
Beating the drums of my pulse,
Dyeing the crimson of my blood,
Swimming in the breath of my life

Some say you are a witch
Some say you are an angel
They say you are damned.
They say you are divine.

I came home
To salvage your grave
Where I found
The skull of my ancestor,
The naophum of my ancestral kins
A torn phanek stained with her primeval blood
An old chest that opens with the faint smell of ancient breathes.

Tonight I light the light of my heart
Prostrate in this vast graveyard
With pride or with guilt I do not know
Should I Carry another translucent mortal being in my womb
I a nameless mother waits and waits
To mourn the death of my yet unborn.

The bronze pillar and the crystal fairy

Like the tide that dashed against the shore,
She dashed against the bronze pillar,
Just to be shattered as ever.
Just to be gathered as ever.
The lustre,the glow,the strength,
All that she is to him,
She is happy to dashed against him,
As long as the fairy flies.
The broken wings,the untold tales,
The perfect pillar,the imperfect man.
So this is your story.
So as i heard so am i told.
This is not your world dear!
Come shall i drop you to your etherial home,
Gather up your pieces, your wings
Make haste dear,before the storm comes.

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