Phoolti Abo’s Tales
King’s canopy crumbled
Washing away river’s rule
Religion and culture are like flowing rivers
Like the way there was once satti
Now gone; reformation in a way
Yet it hardly pleases your heart: old people, old songs
The heart has its own say: the days of the kings were rather good
We could have only wild roots as food, yet had the soul to sing bhawaiya songs
Days out, and days in,
This is what Phulti abo keeps humming in
Sorrows of Sarinda
Swagata Barman
Who is playing the sarinda there
At the brow of the banyan tree
By the broken
As the night ripped apart
By the wild dove’s soulful tears?
So many a times Dwijen Bepari
Celebrated the wedding of the Oak and the creeper
So much of fun so much of frolic
Now the place is all about a sullen groove of snakes
Who is playing the sarinda there?
The wild dove keeps weeping …
Someone plays the sarinda there
We Still are Aliens
Tushar Bandopadhyay
We still are aliens
The thought sets my heart ablaze
Stiff are our hands like old bamboos
But they say: “we are king’s inheritors”
We sold all our herds and homestead
To beg for alms
Like homeless monks
Mahajans sucked our bones dry
Good old days haunt as we close our eyes
Villages are now empty fields, bald cremating ground
Times, they are a changing,
Times, they are all new
Let a generation sprout in the northern croft.
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