Purabi Bhattacharya (Voices Within)

Purabi Bhattacharya is two books young. She has managed to herd together her coherent, incoherent cacography and turn them into Collections of poems, both published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata, India. She debuted in the year 2015 with ‘Call me’ followed by her second collection ‘Sand Column’ in the year’2019.She now works out of Gandhinagar, Guwahati and Shillong, India. Her poetry, articles, reviews appear both in print, online journals and elsewhere. She also remains an English enthusiast faculty. She is from Shillong, North -East India.


first networked share

After a long caesura, came a winter
the dewdrops in my birthplace cling on
to prosy grassplot, pine needles, barely bright orchids;
a new kind of wintry flower blooms
pale white with sprinkled blood blotches.
I hear odd tempered villagers have made merry
on their streets, singing bully songs
they want us out again, spewing phlegm
between the threads of hateful conversations
all over the lanes of PB[i]. I see the natives burn effigies
the year’s first networked share.

It’s the first month, fresh sprightly squirrels
take naps on large leaves, the sight
worth dying for, this season or that. There is
what you may find an indentured incense
of our hometown, we had for long tucked away
 in our memory yard.
For the much-needed change I place my frozen hands
on your unshaven cheeks, run them down
your eyes, lips, navel and let memories
slip out of my residual poems, be swallowed up by 
fog-smitten overlapping hills.

I don’t hear sparrows anymore. I hear an unusual chorus. Our children
bleeding, screaming, standing tall
pleading to not let our sentiments freeze for another decade.
Do I then play the word shepherd,
or do I
take to the streets? 



hibernal hush

I. Memory capsule

it isn’t love, that quells
a woman
at unease
it’s the wanton wind, the moments
of cloud crash
kissing the unchewed grassland
munching anecdotes after anecdotes;
the meadows’ kind breeze
drawing close,
the conspiring fallen leaves
whispering, jostling
making out of her a
Sweet Falls[ii]                                                                                
seasoning the ridges in Happy Valley[iii]
home to frequenting lovers,
once hers, do.

II. hush

This day,
the cloud image of a beloved
in the fleecy blue
native birds reanimate
brief maudlin times.

i am going back
i am destined to go back to fill my pot
waiting,
         waiting
for you
to pick up your tool
and make me feel your village,
your nonfiction stitched to your
dead mother, father, lovers and
childhood
emptied

I wait,
with hibernal hush
leaving bare my back.


I love, I love

bhalobashi bhalobashi [iv]
I love, I love
I see your eyes meet, just around the corner where my eyeliner ends
you know there’s someone
listening to you,
you live, I live.

Meanwhile the world wields its anger on streets, in some town market
someone I see
waives a pistol, wounding the other. Imperfect.
He offers freedom to another. Living.
Meanwhile this winter
we heard the sky cry aloud, looks like I got some rains for us from home:
and then when my eyes meet yours, I quite
don’t feel
the need to die


for you
for me
for the country
for a cause
for neti neti[v]




[i] A common market area in Shillong (India)
[ii] A tourist scenic destination
[iii] A locality in Shillong
[iv] Love, love; original Bengali Rabindra Sangeet
[v] Vedic analysis of negation: original Sanskrit “neither this, nor that”

Voices Within-2020 :: Setu, February 2020

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