Festival of Memories

Bulldozed brick by brick, my

childhood was torn apart by

tears streaming down the stone

facade as my house collapsed.

Grand, lit by thousand lamps,

memories of festivals, funerals

ingrained into the cement had

bound us with umbilical love.

Remnants of those blood-bonds

stretch across the sky each

dawn, gathering us scattered

across the globe. They recall

a heritage more ancient than

walls built of stones, of open

fields that stretch across the

grass waves of Stonehenge,

that predate the Nabta Playa,

that predate the first war, long

ago, perhaps when Sahara was

green and the African hearth a

home to Lucy's progeny. We were

all bound to the ancestral soul

growing from a freshly sprouted

species, to live and soar with

Earth lores. And yet, few millennia

later, we weep for broken walls

— walls made by us and fostered

in Mordor's murderous forges.

Have we forgotten those times

when we emerged from the womb

of the Earth, bare, primal, naked

with unbelonging and yet belonging?

Nebulous like the stars in the

distant universe, life sang paeans

to existence. Existing, we learnt

like lemmings, to self-destruct.

When will we start building again to

create open spaces of hope laced

with love, learning from the skies to

shelter, to nurture… only to love and live?

Mitali Chakravarty is the founding editor of Borderless Journal, an online site that hopes to bring together all humanity as one, transcending humanmade borders and walls.