reader submission
POETRY / Ghostly tenants
My father speaks in a dismantled language that goes up in smoke.
POETRY / The song of freedom
the bullet hole/ in my brother's chest/ unfolds like a pandora's box
POETRY / Wonder
I feel my rage, ma, a living thing;/ A beast, caged, like me
POETRY / The things I wish I had never known
I skip talking to myself for hours / The “me time”, before going to bed
FICTION / Wings Across A City Wall
Shimu and Tushar had grown up together on an alley in the Mirpur area of Dhaka city. Their neighbouring houses were separated only by a brick wall, about two meters high. The branches of a tree growing beside Tushar’s house overhung the wall, its foliage shading a part of Shimu’s courtyard.
POETRY / My scarlet incarnation
Being a woman comes to me naturally If not me, then who? I was never asked to be one I was never asked to cook
Poetry / Bombardment
What’s life if a sense of darkness/ doesn’t connect night to sunlight
Poetry / Silent screams
Let us raise our voices, let us be heard, / Justice for the dead, let their voices be stirred
Poetry / Prompts
The pavements are hotter in winter, the rain never wets the asphalt and I never tell you to do anything else other than “be”.
Black swan
from my blood fangs, disarrayed cold / looting my sore body / that has done so much for me, while I ached
House of god
I wonder where God sits in that tower. I wonder whose cries are louder.
Oak cognacs
From moon beamed mountains To plains deltaic; In Diasporas–detached
Anjuman and the stories of the mango people
My father’s ancestors were Ayurvedic medicine men from a remote corner of the North Bengal. A few generations ago, one of them had cured a long-lasting ailment of the Raja of Taherpur and had received, as a reward, a large chunk of agricultural land or “joat” next to the mighty Joshoi Beel.
Diphylleia grayi
The burst of fragrant marigolds on the blanched porch of our old Calcutta home, free like sand, unbridled like the wind
Crooked lines
To sit on thy laurels seems apposite, Yet to dig graves for perceptive pleasure resemble a breach Of lines bridging the things learned, unlearned.
Jauhar
We walk past the singing bells and our chambers, Blind to the perils beyond our walls.
I AM FROM…
I am from the 19 houses in 15 districts, none of which could become "my home, sweet home"
Of nineteen thirty-four
The motor car is always a thing of darkness, In the sun and lighted roads of day And in the luminous gas at night though
Acquaintance
I found a gold pendant which I decided to keep. I wore it around my neck and looked in the mirror. Did my mother ever wear this pendant?