(Published in The Little Journal of Northeast India, Issue 7 )
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Those are my grandmother’s eyes
floating on Silsako’s purple patch;
these water lilies, I have seen them before
flying with hyacinths, escaping the turbulence
of ma’s wicker khaloi pacing
the needles of kawoi fishes in thick mud
and letting the sky in, once in a while
like her hair parted by the wind rightly.
Why green smells like naphthalene balls to me
has an answer folded in ma’s mekhela,
now lost in the waves of one huddled wetland
packed tightly in a box of bricks.
People die, places die too.
Silsako, you are shreds from her golden sari,
the printed buds have blossomed now, in pink.
You are my canvas
you are Monet’s.
-Jharna Choudhury
