Poetry: Braja Kumar Sorkar

Braja Kumar Sorkar

Home and the world

Each of us has a different world,

Different their sky, air, different their water, land, people

And they live differently

This is the magic of life!

Who is my friend, who is my enemy, either

I don’t know, because

I have come to orbit in a new world!

A tree does not survive if its roots are removed, displaced in a new world.

but a man lives, he deviates from his roots and finds a new place,

creates his own world , invents and adopts all in his own way

with hard vows, fights with life with intense pain..

The thrill of reinventing oneself makes him dream,

Takes him forward in a new direction!

I found and left my beloved land, relatives,

I remember, I remember those days,

the memory wakes up in my previous birth..

I didn't know what Diaspora was.

I did not know that I have roots like a tree.

I have been gradually discovering myself for so long,

there is no such thing as home and outside.

I have made the whole world my home.

***

In search of origin

I came to a new land, new its sky, air, new people,

I left everything and came to a new country,

 I see everything in amazement,

 I can't match myself, but the new world.

There is nothing new, nothing old

Only a dream comes true.

New gets old and life makes its journey as before!

I have built my home afresh, with power and pains,

I have built my new world, in my mind.

 Have I forgotten the past?

Where is my root?

 Is there anything called paradise today?

Searching for myself, found the new me, discover me

Time and again….

The moment I think about displacement, I remember Amitav Ghosh!

He dwells on how displacement leads to negotiation with new condition

 that sometimes leads to the formation of identity.

I make sense of Country of origin.

What is origin?, I never thought before.

I am reading now ‘The River of Smoke’ and In an Antique Land

 He is Ghosh, who shows how new community is built

on the existential crisis faced by displaced people.

Am I a displaced man, anyway?

It is the same world, I watch differently,

As it responds to me

My home and the world…

***

Liberation

Humans are only migrants!

History of mankind tells so!

People move from country to country, find new shelter,

people leave their roots and spread their new roots

somewhere else to get a taste of freedom.

Humans are bipedal creatures, where they happily go,

unbound by any fixed bond, create new bonds,

and discover new worlds.

 A new present emerges from the past!

Sometimes people are expelled from their country,

 bear the pain, suffering, sadness of life and go out in search of

 a new land and a nest of their own..

Does God ever stay in one place?

 He is also a migrant

I believe.

Sometimes a god comes down from heaven to this world,

 wants to find a new address, wants to forget the heaven's sky, air and compulsions.

Gods, like humans also want to discover new abode, get the address of liberation--

I am thinking all these things, sitting next to the open window

 and watching how a golden bird is flying in the sky,

crossing over the horizon to a new horizon in search of a nest …

***

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Setu, July 2024