Vinita Agrawal (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Vinita Agrawal

What if I looked beneath the A4 sheet of your thoughts?

 

What if I peeled back the map of this place,

would I find the ghost of my homeland,

a faint watermark beneath its streets?

 

If the sound of my name mispronounced had a colour,

would it be fractured gold;

a glimmer of recognition, but never whole?

 

And the taste of a word I cannot speak,

would it be bitterroot

lodged in my throat like a stone?

 

The colour of the sky when I first arrived,

its unfamiliar hue pressing down,

was it grey or just the weight of distance?

 

Laughter shared without language,

surely that was translucent blue,

thin as hope, but holding?

 

The flea market at dawn, its chaos and clamour,

was it just the pulse of life

beating louder than my loneliness?

 

My reflection in a shop window,

a face out of place, a shadow among shadows

was it just the light of belonging refusing to settle on me?

 

When I dream of home, its streets, skies and smells,

is it just the ache of memory

fading like ink in the rain?

 

Beneath the surface of this foreign soil,

would I find the roots of my own becoming,

tangled and tender?

 

Would I be reaching for the sun

or just the dry bones of what I left behind,

whispering ochre sand, ochre sand?

 

 

Foreign Land

 

Something arresting the weight of trespass

in a foreign land.

 

Something in the deep indigo of twilight

or the faint blush of dawn.

 

Something like a horizon cradled by memories

trembling like a prayer flag in the wind.

 

Something chanting tales of forgotten trails,

of an earth left behind, of rivers shackled.

 

Something like a single thread of prayer,

spun thin, piercing the soul.

 

Something tracing the last arc

of an eagle’s flight in the homeland.

 

Something haloing the mountains, softly

making silence bearable.

 

 

Vinita Agrawal has authored six books of poetry and edited two anthologies on climate change. She is the recipient of the Jayanta Mahapatra National Award for Literature 2024, the Proverse Prize Hongkong 2021, the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize 2018 and the Gayatri GaMarsh Memorial Award for Literary Excellence, USA, 2015. She co-edits the Yearbook series of Indian Poetry in English. She was former Poetry Editor with Usawa Literary Review. She is on the Advisory Board of the Tagore Literary Prize. www.vinitawords.com)

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Setu, April 2025