Nishi Pulugurtha (Voices Within)

Nishi Pulugurtha is an academic and creative writer. The Secretary of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata (IPPL) she writes on travel, film, short stories, poetry and on Alzheimer’s Disease and has published in The Statesman, Kolkata, in Tranquil Muse, Caf├й Dissensus, Coldnoon, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The World Literature Blog and Setu. She has a monograph on Derozio, a collection of essays on travel, Out in the Open and is now working on her first volume of poems.


Swing

Two long nylon ropes holding a square wooden board
Ropes reaching high up to the branches
Knots holding it all together
The wooden board moving round to the gentle breeze
Waiting patiently for someone to sit on it
Someone to swing away in joy
Sitting on the board is always great fun
A friend behind giving a push maybe
A fierce push results in a jolt and a thud
Or just moving in a gentle motion all its own
Shade and balance the huge tree affords
Sheltering and holding all
I sit on it for a while, takes me back
Always a sense of joy as I sit there
On another huge tree by the green pond
Another swing, this time a rubber one
Knotted, somewhat like a noose
Two pairs of legs and a happy face swinging on it
Carefree and happy
Moving here and there, in complete abandon
Freedom, joy, contentment.


Patience

Plants in staid pots on the window sills
A chimney in the distance, some green spouting out
The curtains danced a little and stopped
The cup in front was half empty
Waiting. Its contents cold.
A crow on the ledge, cawing loud.


Flowers

As I move all over the place wherever I look, I see them
On window sills, on doorsteps, in small patches of green in the middle of roads
Oblivious to the whizzing cars
On walls, creeping up, here and there
Red and yellow, violet and pink, lavender and orange with some green tucked in between
At times peering out from all the brilliant colours
The palette is enormous, the colours myriad,
Even when I move away, they seem to look out and smile to me
A small wooden barrel, beside a wooden seat, inside a churchyard
The colours standing out from the wood

Teasing, smiling, shining. 

Voices Within-2020 :: Setu, February 2020

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