Poetry: Basudhara Roy

Basudhara Roy

Topophilia

Not all places grow into you.

You have to let them settle

and negotiate, the place and you,

till both decide where, if at all,

they may, uninhibited, meet.

Places have souls too. Empty

rooms are full of waiting till

the right tenancy arrives. Floors

cannot rebel and ricochet under

your feet but to have them yield

to you in love is fortune.

A surface, crack, bolt, switch

can be stubborn, hostile till you

summon empathy to touch, and

read their frayed tender longings,

braille-like, on fingertips. You

must be grateful if corridors

usher you along, if windows freely

give way to light and air, if

shadows protect you from the

excesses of truth, if the murmurs

of blinds keep you safe like

vigilant fathers across distances.

You must give yourself up

to a place before it can take you in.

And once the choice has been

made, the heart written over

and sealed with a kiss, even

the final ashed return shall be

a planting in dear love’s name.

In an Urban Household: Day’s End

It’s well past ten and

the night’s sirens have dissolved

in weary waves of determined

headlights speeding home.

I suddenly notice that

the lamp at my altar has remained

unlit. Are the gods likely to be asleep?

Grandmother always tucked them to bed

by seven when she lived.

I strike a matchstick and hesitate. But

if it’s all right to pray and be heard at

all times, why must gods be allowed

to sleep at seven?

I mutter to grandma under my breath. In

nocturnal homes like ours, gods perhaps

never sleep. They must keep awake listening

to voices, doorbells,

awaiting footfalls, making phone calls,

meeting deadlines, tagging attachments

to never-ending emails. They must

heave a sigh of relief

when we roost for dinner at the table,

when the warm, hearth-smell of rotis

fills the air like the hungry hurtling home;

when the child asks for more;

when pots and ladles chatter in bonhomie

with spoons and plates. At places in the

world god’s work may have failed today.

By chance’s logic, however,

things here have stayed in place. As the

clock strikes twelve and the house is taken

over by the assured purr of air-conditioners,

the gods too stretch

themselves, yawn, as the blinding lights

turn off leaving a phosporous glow so

hope remains undaunted by the dark. 

Basudhara Roy is the author of two books, a monograph, Migrations of Hope: A Study of the Short Fiction of Three Indian American Writers (New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2019) and a collection of poems, Moon in my Teacup (Kolkata: Writer’s Workshop, 2019). She has been an alumnus of Banaras Hindu University and has earned her doctoral degree in diaspora women’s writing from Kolhan University, Chaibasa. Basudhara’s areas of academic interest are diaspora writing, cultural studies, gender studies and postmodern criticism. Her research articles and book reviews have widely appeared in reputed academic journals across the country and as chapters in books. As a creative writer, she has featured in an anthology, Dancing the Light: Poems from Australia and India,  and in magazines like Borderless, Muse India, Shabdadguchha, Cerebration, Rupkatha, The Challenge, Triveni and Setu among othersShe is Assistant Professor of English at Karim City College, Jamshedpur, Jharkhand and can be reached at basudhara.roy@gmail.com.

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Local 2020 :: Setu, June 2020