All things Language, all things Culture
I took out the trash when you left. There are metaphors for these situations but nothing comes to mind tonight. There's only eggshells and coffee grounds and crinkled yellow wrapper from that horrid food we got last week. It was oily. It gave you heartburn. I think I am losing at this. This ending thing.… Continue reading Heartburn
The void is my friend. She has come to my door after ages. I fed her. Persimmons, cheese, rice made fragrant with lime leaves. I clothed her. In blue and silver. Silk and diamond. I poured her water from a mountain spring. I read to her the scribbles I have etched on my soul every… Continue reading Anatomy of an absence
Do not name your darkness, yet. Speak soft, gently... gently... Take the long way round. Take the stair by the patio, or the passage through the backyard. Cover your lamp, stay close to the bush. Your darkness awaits by the window. It is a lovely window still, if you but squint your eyes and the… Continue reading Hush
I sit up a little straight every time your footsteps approach. Pit pat pit pat they come, and then fade away.Always the same. Saunter. That's the word. The smell the sound the touch. The touch of a saunter is creepy. Yet I always forget that when you touch me. Touched me.I have listened for that… Continue reading The Unchosen
In the dream, I am walking. The chain around my foot rattles like a hungry snake. Yet I am walking, floating... down the sleek black streets of my past as if there is no chain around my ankle. As if this rain-soaked evening is as fresh and untainted as the day its first memory was… Continue reading Look Elsewhere
Poison penetrates me, drop by drop. I stand before her gaping mouth and count the rotting teeth. Row upon row of stones dark with ever-oozing blood and pus, and I think of the depths the poison would have to reach before being able to carve out such exquisite pain from their steadfast roots. The roots… Continue reading Purgatory
The heaviness in your heart is not for the world to see, yet who to share it with, but the world? Who to cling to but the unknown, the unfamiliar? Love can heal, they say, but what if love is not enough? What if the hurt you carry has spilled one too many times and… Continue reading Unfamiliar
#EverydayTranslations Day 2: A short poem by late Bangladeshi poet Shamsur Rahman.
A life update about three hundred words too long on which I procrastinated for two years.
Till a while ago, whenever I looked down from a high ledge, I'd retreat, afraid of a fall. Now, I enjoy looking down from this abandoned balcony without rails, strewn with blood-red broken chairs. Down below another abandoned balcony comes into view. Shadows deepen in the woods, clouds rumble in the sky. And in the… Continue reading Raai, Awake 5: Translating Ritam Sen’s Jaago Raai
In Other Words 