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]

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[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”

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Voices Within-2020 :: Setu, February 2020