Abha Das Sarma (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Abha Das Sarma

3am in Los Altos hills

 

trimmed silence

of a nightly yard-

shy stillness of pool

and sauna bath.

mother-child deer under apple laden tree,

voices of my neighborhood I fear I bring,

buzzing Nagashetty Halli to Los Altos Hills.

 

water pouring into plastic drums,

washing of clothes on pavements-

hallooing hawkers ‘methi, dhania, neembu’*

pushing green goodness to doors.

stoves in readiness

of chopped onions and beaten eggs,

making of roadside omelets.

 

wind chimes entering the temple bells,

jet-lagged dreams breaking the day-

delightful walks at noon

and pink magnolia warming the heart.

filter coffee among the choices

of medium and large,

a breadth of dark draught.

 

a passage of weekly skypes,

a community raised child

driving home through the garage door.

little times between great moments

of respect and deeds running into a blur.

at the end

the shattered silence closing around us.

 

* In India, hawkers sell fresh greens on carts going from door to door calling out loudly the names of vegetables like *fenugreek, coriander and lemon.

An engineer and management consultant by profession, Abha Das Sarma enjoys writing. Besides having a blog of over 200 poems (http://dassarmafamily.blogspot.com), her poems have appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Spillwords, Verse-Virtual, Visual Verse, Sparks of Calliope, Trouvaille Review, Silver Birch Press and Blue Heron Review among others. Her poem 'Do Not Go Just Yet' was nominated for Best of the Net 2024. Having spent her growing up years in small towns of northern India, she currently balances her time between Bengaluru and the Bay area.

---

Setu, April 2025

Kashiana Singh (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Kashiana Singh

How Families Remember

 

Like a spider weaving its web,
focused on the white humility
of silken strands, each thread
unbreakable, yet extraordinary.

 

Like the old letter found,
its words curled in the cursive of love,
or a slip of grief braided in audacious
expectations, brittle leaves forgotten.

 

Like the game of hide and seek—
the thrill of being found, unfound,
devouring the last apricot behind
a hinged door, plenitude in nothing.

 

Like the language of a bespoke snake,
its tongue forked with the unspoken,
its venom eager as a lover’s sigh,
the calm ache of a reptile's embrace.

 

Like the wound that outlasts pain

throbbing around the skin so red

that blood itself seems pale, as if

ignoring disease will make it leave.

 

Like we live, in a constant swerve

none of us home, forever unsure

of whether we were coming, going

or had already been done, undone.

 

 

Fursat: What Happens When Time Is the Space Between Words?

 

Spend the day with instructions for coffee—
let coarseness seep into the percolator sieve,
perking its presence with a whistled signal,
brewing genetic memories, totems of place,
drip by drip from the spout, just as potent.

 

All I smell some days is a candle in a glass jar,
on the carved Kashmiri walnut chest,
its flickering light casting folds in the air,
my mother’s home etched in the creases of time,
waiting like pressed flowers, curling at the edges.

 

infinite possibilities

and then the first gadget

arrives

 

Pre-stories

the ink of ancestors

rises through newborn skins.

 

 

When Kashiana is not writing, she lives to embody her TEDx talk theme of Work as Worship into her every day. Her second full-length collection, Woman by the Door was released in 2022 with Apprentice House Press. Her newest full-length collection, Witching Hour was released in December 2024 with Glass Lyre Press. She lives in North Carolina and serves as Managing Editor for Poets Reading the News as well as President of the North Carolina Poetry Society. Besides being a poet practitioner, Kashiana serves as vice president of the healthcare services industry.
 

---

Setu, April 2025

K. Purna Padmaja (Diaspora Dual Identities)

K. Purna Padmaja

On The Run

Not by choice, nor in pursuit of dreams...
Amidst unrest and uncertainty
They flee their homelands in fear
Their eyes streaming with tears
Leaving behind all that they had ever known
and all that they once called their own
With just the clothes on their backs
and a few things in a bag
they run off to foreign lands
In search of a safe place
to live with dignity, security,
and simply just to stay alive.
They inch ahead with heavy hearts
laden with prints from the past,
They stand exposed as they stray
far away from the lands they stay

Walking on borrowed land
beneath a foreign sun
Hearts thudding, dreading detention
and vulnerable to exploitation,
They survive in morbid trepidation
in fear of deportation.
Facing anti-refugee xenophobia
They struggle and battle
a lot of apprehensions.
In shared silence they face
widespread human rights abuses and violations

With determination they
slowly begin to sow their dreams
and build new live styles.
Their accented voices
and words of their native tongue
slowly infused with trends
from this foreign land
Holding steadfast to the roots of their origins
they reach out to claim a future bright
Piecing together a patchwork
A quilt of joy and aching loss
in colors of hope bright
changing the landscape
of the land they now tread on.

As traditions mix, they build new lives,
Memories of childhood lands,
and customs left behind
they lovingly weave into stories lore
fondly handing them to future generations
to keep alive the love and bond

of all the lovely things of their past with these stories galore.

 

 

K Purna Padmaja is currently pursuing a PhD in Psychology. She has been engaged in literary pursuits through participation in plays, debates, extempore speaking and poetry reading since her school days. Her poems have been published in various print and online magazines and anthologies. She has initiated book reading and poetry reading clubs in her neighbourhood, thereby enriching the lives of the people around her. Purna Padmaja is passionate about helping people in need especially children, and she does this in myriad ways. Married to an Indian Forest Service Officer, she often travels with him, exploring the flora and fauna.

---

Setu, April 2025

Jayshree Misra Tripathi (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Jayshree Misra Tripathi

I

Ushered gently towards a sacred space,

jasmine and sandalwood assail my senses

as I kneel on a colourful mat,

palms folded in reverence. Musical notes

from a well-loved harmonium

strike familiar chords in my heart,

as those around me begin to sway.

Where am I?

Sudden despair pricks my eyelids,

my lowered gaze shields me from

eyebrows raised in concern.

Here on this island, on distant shores,

a temporary resident, far from my Homeland

that I continue to be homesick for, truth dawns.

In my mind’s eye, I see Him and Her -Their

hands raised in blessings for the motley crowd.

Harmony in diversity, bonded by Prayer.

 

 

II

 

That October morning we left Kampala at dawn,

to arrive in Jinja, well in time, to commemorate

 a ‘universal apostle of peace and non-violence’

the plaque states - beloved Bapu ji, Mahatma Gandhi.

He had wished for some of his ashes to be scattered

in great rivers across the world, it is said, and here,

in the waters of the source of the Nile in Africa.

Every year, his statue is garlanded, his life celebrated.

We observe moments of silence. Peaceful moments.

Together. Strangers from different cultures.

Standing here, on the northern shores of Lake Victoria,

the White Nile flows so serene, I reflect ……till the rapids

further down; Words have raged between countries

over water rights at journey’s end, the Blue Nile. Life flows on.

 

 

Jayshree Misra Tripathi's writing focuses on the human experience, especially the silenced voices of women. She draws on over six decades of global experiences–as a child from Odisha to England, then as an adult to six countries. Jayshree worked briefly in print media in the 1980’s. She travelled with her husband, an Indian diplomat, to diverse cultures and taught English, where permissible. She has been an examiner in English, for the IB Diploma and an International Education Consultant. Her poems and short stories have been published in global anthologies and reviewed in the Sahiyta Akademi's Journal of Indian Literature.

---

Setu, April 2025

Gayatri Lakhiani Chawla (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Gayatri Lakhiani Chawla

Paper Tiger

 

Don’t hug me too tight saudade                               

you dance to the aromas of the mango chutney,

like a gypsy woman

sangria-coloured salvation.

It has taken me half a lifetime

to accept the truth,

a home abridged with bereft voices

solemn as if it never existed.

How does one make believe history?

when it sits like a mynah,

every day on your window sill

singing songs of yore.

In another life I will be a bird

a one-legged crane,

flying across man-made borders

to my village of Manjhu.

I have blood on my hands saudade                                                                                  

crimson stains on my restless soul

crucifying the cursed fate

You the dervish

spinning like a wooden top

I the seeker taming the inner paper tiger.

 

Unifier

 

Somewhere far over the gleaming horizon

a star is pinned in the clouds above

where earth and skies merge as one

carrying reflections of each other.

 

Who paints the dividing line in charcoal grey?

the one who gives wings to birds flying home.

The songs of the boatman

echoes with the radiance of waters of the Ganga

breaking the silence of early dusk.

He sings in a language I cannot decipher,

my migrant heart is brimming over

it speaks of a love that is rancid

those supposed spring times withered into winter

like leaf-shedding of our bodies,

leaf by leaf,

little by little

memories disown you

or you them.

 

Who guides the Aghori up the steep slopes of Panchgani?

the one who gives us the breath of life

I stop to process the beauty around me

its efficacy crystallizes

in the crescent of the moon.

 

Love Spell

 

Burn brightly,

Upend your fragile heart’s contents,

run far away into jade wilderness

tatoo your lover’s name in Kreol or Korean if you please,

someone once told me

if you ever fall in transcendent love

you must be fierce,

feisty,

fawn, like the trusting shade of brown

of the love that makes you weep

not languish in vain

for the risk of love is loss.

 

Gayatri Lakhiani Chawla is an award-winning poet, translator, healer and French teacher from Mumbai. Her poems are featured in the anthology Modern English Poetry by Younger Indians published by Sahitya Akademi, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English and The Kali Project. She is the author of three poetry collections – Borders and Broken Hearts, shortlisted for the PVLF Author Excellence Awards 2023 . Invisible Eye longlisted for Cochin Lit Fest Poetry Prize 2018, and The Empress winner of the 2018 US National Poetry Contest by Ræd Leaf Foundation for Poetry & Allied Arts. She is the author of ‘Healing Elixir’ The Hawakal Handbook of Angel Therapy, Numerology & Remedies. She is recipient of the Rahi Kadam Inspiration Award 2021.

---

Setu, April 2025

Cyril Dabydeen (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Cyril Dabydeen

Spilt Dreams

                                    

Everything requires for its existence its own

opposite, or else it fades into nothingness.

--Carl Jung

                        1                     

Almost languorous you tell me

about dreams you’ve been having,

grown-up as you are.

 

The same dream over and over,

what you remember most—

two faces, two heads.

 

And one talking on the phone

with the other, unheard voices,

like a mute tongue’s rasp.

                                   

                        2

Your mother now asking

Am I becoming Caucasian?

Who’s turning black? Not white!

 

A dating scene, images compelling

as life mustn’t pass us by,

I let you know.

 

A refrain, like doing a makeover--

Michael Jackson dancing

to “Victory,” believe me.

 

                        3

A moonwalk I tell my daughter,

about the man in the mirror

wanting to become a fashion model

 

making faces when you’re asleep

 as I listen to you like no other,

solid dreams coming my way.

Loveless

           

The man who’s loveless desires an old pain--

mediocrity lies in what he will say next

 

close to a trinity-peaked mountain

where a hummingbird flaps its wings

 

being never at rest as he considers himself

only in an island & travelling again

 

to other places like Florida, then to

Louisiana, boundaries bringing us closer--

 

where we haven’t been before, but

wanting to be in one place only as

 

his lyrics are like a dreamful song, if only

in America where all things are best,

 

he tells me, but now here in Canada

where he will make his mark though

 

people are sometimes prickly at best,

with one territory only in his mind--

 

the landscape reshaping itself as I

contemplate it the more he talks about

 

himself & looking up at the mountains

because of where he will live longest.

 

Distancing

            Like wasted prodigals,

            happy to be home again.

                                    -Will Durant  

 

            With new shirt on--

                        not bedraggled-looking

            but come from America

with a stranger’s smile

            unlike his parting ways.

 

            Being back in the village

                        he has bolstered a nerve

            to say who he isn’t anymore,

nothing of past years as

he longs for perfection

 

            Murmuring to himself

about wanting to remain

in one place only all his life

in his individual style

            being a stranger always.

 

 

Cyril Dabydeen is “a noted Canadian poet” (House of Commons, Ottawa). Recent books of fiction are Forgotten Exiles and My Undiscovered Country. Previous titles include: God’s Spider, My Multi-Ethnic Friends, Jogging in Havana, Black Jesus and Other Stories, My Brahmin Days, North of the Equator, and Imaginary Origins: Selected Poems (Peepal Tree Press, UK). His novel, Drums of My Flesh (Mawenzie House), is an IMPAC/Dublin Prize nominee and Guyana Prize winner. Cyril’s work has appeared in the Oxford, Penguin, and Heinemann anthologies, and in Poetry (Chicago), The Critical Quarterly (UK), Prairie Schooner (US), The Fiddlehead, Prism International, and Canadian Literature, etc. Ottawa Poet Laureate Emeritus, he taught Writing at the University of Ottawa. 

---

Setu, April 2025

Bina (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Bina

1. A Wild Wind

 

a wild

wind flew

through the

forest

of words

singing

in my head

sweeping

syllables

into the

spring air

for nomad

birds

to catch

and conjure

into liminal notes

that float

with wayward

clouds

to fall

in a drizzle

of rain

on the

arid plain

of my skin.

 

2. War 

raw is war

drumming

in my head

a fury of words

that speak

to the dead.

3. Archipelago Of Alphabets

in the vast ocean 

of meanderings

i found

an archipelago 

of alphabets

waiting to be strung

into words

that would echo

allegories 

of the impossible

with the possible

of comradely 

conversations

between Michelangelo 

and Banksy

between Hitler 

and Buddha

between Christ 

and Kafka

between hatemongers

and pilgrims of peace

between the inhuman

and the humane.

an archipelago

of alphabets

stringing songs of war

into hymns of peace.

 

Bina (Sarkar Ellias. b. 1949) is poet, writer, art curator and editor-designer-publisher of Int. Gallerie, the award-winning global arts and ideas journal she founded 1997. Her eight books of poems include Fuse (taught at the Towson University, USA), ‘Ukiyo-e Days... Haiku Moments’ and the current Chapbook ‘If Stones Could Speak’. Her poems have been translated into Arabic, French, Greek, Mandarin, Spanish , Urdu, Telugu and Tagalog. She authored the acclaimed “Big Book of Indian Art” in 2024, and has received several awards, including ‘The Women to Watch, 2024, Award’ for excellence in her work. Bina resides in Mumbai, India.

---

Setu, April 2025

Bashabi Fraser (Diaspora Dual Identities)

Bashabi Fraser

Suitcase

 

This battered suitcase is my companion of old

Its dents and stains hold stories untold

It has made transnational journeys through years

Defying borders and custodians of fears.

A whiff of jasmine escapes as I lift

The lid under which are memories and gifts -

A temple bell tinkling from a pluralist shrine

A white cotton sari drenched in her silent brine

A flute from a cowherd waking to the muezzin’s call

My school choir’s photo harmonising our hall

A bursting ripe jackfruit beside delectable mangoes

Karabi[1] with madhabi[2] and a bedewed tuber rose

A soft quilted kantha[3] from recycled cloth

Handstitched by Thakuma[4] for my daughter at birth.

Fresh mountain mists wrap tea leaves in a tin

Ma’s songs on a tape, still sweet and serene

A feather from a pigeon floating free from its flight

A string from the intense blue of an ambitious kite

A plate of Sal leaves with teardrops from my stream

An ember from pyres where countless more gleam

A glass from a tea stall sweetened by friends

In interminable addas[5] and debates without end

A neat sheaf of letters in Baba’s elegant hand

Recounting the days I have not yet left behind.

 

The 1st of Baishakh

 

It is New Year today

In my native Bengal

Where I know friends and

Relatives will incessantly call

To seek my Baba’s blessing

And Pishi’s assurance

Of her love’s endurance

In the blossoming of spring

With its fresh beginning.

 

Keep the southern door

Ajar, Gurudeb[6] would say

Let the wind of Baishak

Enter without delay

Let the harbingers rain

Soak the dusty plain

Let the rivers be replenished

Let the meadows be embellished

 

Let the deep roots feel revived

Bring the paddy fields alive

See the mountains respond

To a pulsating bond

Coursing through land and sea

In a dance of unity

That envelops those I love

With a peace from above.

 

My Boat

 

I had considered myself washed ashore long ago

And had built my timber hut with care,

Keeping it warm in winter, cool in summer,

Lighted, airy, well-stocked and comfortable.

 

It was one of many houses

Indistinguishable as I liked it to be

But mine once I entered it -

A world I got lost in willingly.

 

Then one day a storm blew away

The walls that fenced me in

And I saw a white refreshing expanse

Uplifting itself to reach the sky;

I realised that my world had been washed away

Overnight, for there was a call

For me, to leave all and dare.

 

So, I found a boat, and put my all into it -

Me, mine and my life -

And we set forth - for I knew

That the shore was there beyond the blue

Pushed away for the time being

But waiting for me and mine

To build again - an edifice in stone.

 

Bashabi Fraser is an award-winning poet, children’s writer, translator, editor and academic. A transnational writer, her work traverses continents. Her awards include a CBE (2021) for Education, Culture and Cultural Integration, Doctor of Literature Honoris Causa from Swami Vivekananda University (2025), the Indira Gandhi Gold Plaque by the Asiatic Society of India, (2023), UK Bengali Convention Lifetime Achievement Award, 2022 and declared Outstanding Woman of Scotland by the Saltire Society in 2015. She has published 31 books and is widely anthologised as a poet. Bashabi is a Trustee on the Board of Scottish PEN and Hon’y President of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, India.

---

[1] Oleander

[2] An evergreen liana with white scented flowers.

[3] Handstitched quilt often made from recycled saris and dhotis that is distinctive of Bengal.

[4] Paternal grandmother.

[5] A Bengali word that indicates an informal conversation amongst a group pf people, usually friends - on diverse subjects, which can go on for hours.

[6] A reference to Rabindranath Tagore; literally it means the divine teacher.

---

Setu, April 2025