Issue 1 Poems

You told me
Thongam Bipin
.....................................................................................

I.
You told me
I am
The symbol of your family;
Sorry, our family, you said.
I am
The symbol of our society
And, I need to be protected
Within tight and closed four walls,
Under the veils
Like treasured family ornaments;
Under layers of social customs and traditions
To maintain ‘order’.
So, I ask you, join my hands
I’m fucking tired of being your symbol all alone.

II.
You told me
We are one.
For humanity
I should shed my parochialism.

You told me
We are one
We are all Indian.
For India to be protected
And remain united,
I need to shed my community Identity,
I should stop asserting my issues and concerns
Because it becomes illegitimate
In the national discourse.
Okay, I said.

I left behind all my identities
All my parochial ideas and thoughts.
I joined you
Then I found you
And you alone
In the humanism,
In this India.
Then you killed me slowly
Day after day
Left me with nothing.
I have nothing to lose.
So, I fight.
Though I know how big you are,
I still say,
Fuck to your lips service.

Incoherence
Thongam Bipin
.....................................................................................
A feeling
That is hard to put off
Why is it hard to put down on a paper?
Late in the night
Tamed by the darkness all around
Still awake with a pen in my hand
Scribbling all over my mind and paper
Trying to bring coherence
This yet unborn feeling impregnate in my mind.
And, Mary and Devendro cross my feeling.
Wished they had brought home gold.
And they would have become true and real Indian,
All the more,
In Facebook, in the newspapers and in the comments.
The one that I could never become,
Or Sharmila, or Manorama
Or many other chinkies like me.
Oh Olympic! Come back soon!
And, one of my friends told me later:
“What if, one day, suddenly, Mary Kom comes out and say,
I support Irom Sharmila's struggle.
Will she remain as the icon as she is today?
Icon that the media has been creating around her now”.

City sentiments
Jayanta Oinam
.....................................................................................

Metropolitan nights have dogs
In the guise of men,
Men in the guise of dogs
Walking, roaming, exploring
The beauty of nights
Helium-lit nights
Chasing, barking, biting
The shadows cast by the moonlit nights.

It took me some time
In fact, a decade or so
To know, I was one amongst them
Sometimes with a tail, like a dog
Sometimes with a bag, like a man;
It was yesterday
Only yesterday
While I was returning home.
Dogs, dogs everywhere
Dogs barking at expensive, big cars
Dogs sitting, leering at women
Dogs meeting, talking about civilisation
Dogs walking, in two hinds
Hands clasped behind
Thinking, nodding, worrying
But all in the open road,
Where animals of all types frequent,
Under the hazy moon,
Clouded with dust and smoke;
Urinating men with corporate bags
With glittering logos
Cover the bushes of fake plants
Leaving stench of their fake existence,
Behind the bloodied veils of survival
Children in all fours, beg for food
Crouching, mimicking, crying.

And children,
Children with clothes
Children without clothes
Children with empty, dirty plates
Children with stinking, colourless hairs
Children of my son’s age
Children looking after kids
And their parents
Still and motionless like some expensive canvas
Placed, fixed on the railings of city bridges.

Some ages later
I reached my rent
And a layer of unfinished dreams covered me
Leaving me in a park
Where newly married couples
And their newborn babies play.

Then, another layer of dream
And I was crossing a foot overbridge
And underneath
Hungry cars, buses, trucks
Honking, screeching, fighting
Waiting for children to fall like fruits.

Redemption: A poem
Jayanta Oinam
.....................................................................................

So many of them declared me dead
seeing the muse succumbed in gloat
for poems were growled
but for me, who has stood
the hearing of the deafs
I have chosen to walk away
“ From their torments and wretched petticoats”;
walking and dragging myself
“for the begging and their mercy-laden taunts”
over the belief that, there
not so far from my view,
lies my beloved, sleeping,
hiding inside a mound of requiem;
and I thrust myself
thinking of each morning I have waited
dreaming of each night I have wandered
in her tender dreams;

for her,
my poems were the corsets
she died into every night,
my poems were the birds
that took wing for her soul.

of late
the muse,
she dressed rather unceremoniously
and in her invites
pleasures flew in remorse
so,
I wrote a few poems
like dead birds flying and falling
and hiding feathers inside the pages,
like wedged memoirs of cursed duets
sung rather coarsely during mating
of intellects and socialites.

I have chosen to walk away
defeated and terrified
from such rituals of poetic extravagance;
those poems, I am afraid
shouldn’t be buried with my dead body,
for I will lie next to her
with her favourite poems.

I am bewildered
Okelo Yaikhom
.....................................................................................

It is 2am in the morning,
I just ended a conversation with myself,
I put the clock four hours back so i may go back,
I am going back to the love and time,
When they say love is blind,
And when someone hugged you blindly,
Without even realising our opposite attraction,
I am wild,
I am nervous,
I was hugged by the travelers, of time and moments,
Bewildered I am,

There came the swings of drift,
I lack your memory that makes me realise,
It is late and I am alone with my sweet silence,
It is humming her beauty,
But she runs away with a gentleman who buys her garden,
Time collapses and misleads, ruining love,
And nature is corrupted with me,

I am bewildered
And I may be a poet of this century
Who is f*cking his life for nothing.

It is 3am in the morning,
And time passes when I write poems,
My poetry, my thoughts at night,
A thought that carries and feelings that are amazing,

I wish to pass my life, my mortal life,
A lie of regretting and repenting,
Or a dream coming true to the true lovers,
And the believers of an eternal shrine,
There are so many to learn, to know,
Like the mountains of Shinobi,
Or islands of many countries, many amicable things,
But what is there to know more than life?
Will you be born again?

I wish to lose my life,
Writing and losing my soul in the woods,
Not to the words that are not me.

Of a speech in silence
Okelo Yaikhom
.....................................................................................

I am not Gautam Buddha, and bliss is his karma,
I am not the Dalai Lama, who preaches in silence,
I am not Dylan, that sings peace for love,
I am not the light yet I sweat in summer,
What I speak and bark, they don't want to accept,
They say, 'To preach a man, to influence a being',
'You have to be qualified'.
I am not qualified, I am a loafer,
I am idle, thinker, lazy,
And they changed me, to be like them.
'To be like me. The etiquette of men'
And what does it prove?
For me to live a good life, beg not like a beggar,
It proves to me,
Of a speech I can deny,
But I can't deny my reality,
I was a beggar,
Begging from the one and begging from all,
Begging for happiness and peace of mind.
Look at that dog lying at the doorstep,
It sleeps on its back like a man,
Every time I see, it sleeps on its back,
It is getting old slowly,
I saw the dog everyday and I wonder,
I wonder what it could be thinking,
Of the unknown world, of lonely living
Not with the family, nor with lovers,
Not speaking a word to express hunger.
The dog just lie there like a man,
One day, it shall be gone that I know.

I will teach you how to protest
Akhu Chingangbam
.....................................................................................

I will teach you how to protest
I have been in the streets of protest
Since my childhood days
The difference is you protest for corruption
while I protest for the lives that have been robbed
by the same corrupt government…
If they fire tear gas shells
hold some onions in your hands
make a circle of Colgate around your eyes
I learnt it all in my school days
I will teach you how to protest
Burn the roads, chop the trees
and block this shitty city
I’m already sick of this traffic jam…
Block some highways…
Stand naked at India Gate
Burn yourself at Ring Road
and run screaming.
Fast for eleven years in some lousy hospital
with the policemen guarding you
and write some poetry to be published
by some so called non-profit organisation…
Say no to education system
burn down all the universities
till they put an army camp inside the campus
Jantar Mantar won’t do anymore
But remember it matters who protest where,
In my land nothing matters
But in your land it might matter
Just try it out
Though I’m sick of everyone around
whether it is the govt. or you.

To my little sister         
Akhu Chingangbam
.....................................................................................

Your wooden guitar sadly leans against the wall
with one string broken
the thermomemeter silently dips
in a glass of cold water
and this piece of wet cloth is as helpless as me
we both fail to cool down your body temperature

I bought you cucumber
and boiled it with sugar
you didn't even touch them
I cut you the apples
just like in the fable
you didn't even look at them

I try to distract you from your panting
telling the story of the housewife
who stays opposite to our balcony
It is 4 am
still she is doing her dishes
when does she ever go to sleep
before we know she will be awake again
with her three naked children
running around with the broom.
you know,
yesterday morning the cat didn't even spill the garbage
the cat too knows you are not well.

you find your hands folded well above your chest
and speaks slowly from your dry lips
“ I am surprised to find my hands folded like this
this is how they lay dead men in coffins in movies..
I am dying for sure”

I laugh and remind you how you always wanted to die
and joke “but those are the way
people lay dead in hollywood flicks..
I am sure you gonna have a hollywood death”
then you stretch out your hand
to make me feel how hot it is
i try to rub off the heat with the wet cloth
but in vain
Oh sister, it is this little fever in you
that makes me cry at this dawn.

There is nothing in my mind now
except this worry and love
i have for you, my little sister..
i don't even care of my kingdom of scarcity
where potatoes are gold
where onions are silver
where people are happier than ever
where death walks tired on the deserted highway
trying to take a nap in some corner..

Oblivion
Homen Thangjam
.....................................................................................

Blurred engravings on cracked walls,
Broken promises, incomplete tales, erased lives…
Ruined tombstones in obdurate minds.
I salute your misery.

Wakching-gee nong: The winter rain
Homen Thangjam
.....................................................................................

This rain,
Cold and acid-like,
Numbs the flesh,
Cuts to the bone,
Comes riding the chariot of winter mist,
Perhaps, to dispel the shadows of the past,
And welcome the new with its shower of bitterness.

Naked I stood,
Underneath the downpour,
Soaking its bitterness,
Looking down at our land,
Ant-like people trampled,
By giants wielding guns,
By demons of democracy.

In a flash of lightning, I thought,
I saw the fangs of the Wakching-gi Nong,
Snarled, while its chariot stuck in the mud pools of blood,
Dried blood streaks of our people,
Wetted by the ceaseless torrents into mud pools,
Fangs of anger or sublime submission, I couldn’t decipher,
But the roaring thunder spoke of the obvious.

This rain,
Cold and acid-like,
In its bitterness snarled
Freed from the mud pools of blood,
And cleansed the land of its dirt,
By sweeping away ant-like people,
Without touching the untouchables - the giants and demons.

Naked I ran, lest the winter rain,
Washes away memories - sweet and bitter,
Nostalgic and pungent,
Call them treasures or black shadows,
Ethereal and fragile yet, the only proof of living,
Prayed to spare them in a corner of graveyard.

* Wakching-gi Nong literally means the winter rain


From the sequence ‘Broken sonnets for the Indian nation-state’
Ashley Tellis
.....................................................................................

Sharmila
Your body has slowed down to a dull throb.
There’s blood on the cotton with which you clean your teeth.
The tube in your nose is stuck to it with tape.
Your voice has thinned to a high-strung shriek.
Your frame is skin and bone, your eyes ablaze.
Your poems are flames flung into the world. Your words
search for us. But who knows where we are.

Manorama
They took you that night, slapped you around, and then
you were found dead in a field, bullets in your cunt.
They entered your body to take over
your mind. They killed you because they were afraid.
Enraged, your sisters took off their clothes and screamed
‘Indian Army Rape Us,’ ‘Indian Army
Take Our Flesh.’ They took your clothes off. Your sisters
clothed you again.


Ode to my book rack
Soibam Haripriya
.....................................................................................

It was between amber and brown,
between fire and earth.
The rich dark chocolate
of dusk had set in;
A wave of dust
had coloured the wood
I took contemplative miniature steps
– feeling every
wood, seasoned or un-aged,
Knocked
on planks,
of open doors
From your feet
to the brim,
heavy and bright,
My fingers had
brushed against you
You left an oval of dirt ,
on my fingertips.
I knew you were salty,
a fruit that the seas of
my emotion had chosen.
To stand against the
wall of the house,
open to me
like a mouthful of kisses
I had mourned and perished
and grew with the books in your bosom.
Naked in your skin
I will dismantle you slowly.
Take down
books of poetry and prose,
books clothed in their glory jackets
books naked and threadbare.
I wish I could depart with you,
to another life
but for now I kill you,
with pain that stabs me
when I stab you.
I will bleed my knuckles over you.
I will leave coffee mug stain on you
– a circle like a ring, a circle
akin to handcuffs you’d think.
Sometimes a house lizard will run over
leaving padded footsteps
marked in dust.
Your death will reduce to
ashes and the wind will powder me
with your gray remains.
I will lose my companion,
one autumnal summer of amaltas.

Ode to the natal home
Soibam Haripriya
.....................................................................................

My room
filled to the brim,
in expectation
of a grand farewell;
They want me away,
I should be away,
never come
in sight, sound, sense.

I am told
I am lucky
to receive
the carved furniture,
the carved pain,
the carved agony of un-belonging

Like chaff from grain,
They’d
throw away the husk of men
and give me the finest

Thereafter
they’ll grudge
my every visit.
Count
the phases of the moon

On the ninth day
after the new moon;
I’ll weep familial demises
at the door
unable to cross
the threshold
of my natal lunar calendar.

Love they said it was
that sent me away.
Ah! love,
that castrated me
from my childhood
into unequal parts

He too said it was love
that took me to him,
seven circumambulations
and I bowed each time.
He kept count.

I sucked on
a lozenge of hate
and counted all their love.
I will leave
with the hate stuck in my molars.
I’ll blot from life
and become a worm
still nibbling
on the hate of so many loves.

Asking inheritance
Aparna Eswaran
.....................................................................................

These corridors are lined with paintings
of women, brown with bronze amulets
around their waist, inherited from mothers
who visit them in their silent dreams
with widened eyes of past,
they stare out from the frames unaware
of their large naked breasts,
nipples unhardened, lax in a beauty of vacant desire.

Peeling purple patches of this pain
I long to wash my body
with the rasping tangible colours of these women,
scrub the tattoos of shame singed on me
in birth. Today instead, I bring you here.

My blood is dirty red with
phantoms of my half-birthed ancestors,
weavers with coarse fingers which
blunt my nerves to the beauty
of your silk and heavy gold.
I reside with revenants thirsty
for revenge, howling out for answers denied in death.
Yet I won’t ask for your snake shrines,
your aristocratic surnames,
your pretentious confidence.
But show me your knots of vulnerability,
your underground godowns filled with cobwebs of
hidden sins,
the temple ponds where half dead corpses of your insecurities
were thrown to crocodiles with open jaws
teethed with grinding stones of memory,
And in silence
mark out for me those scars that refuse forgetting.

Then, let me dance my febrile dance that
you reserve only for sex with mistresses,
watch me
inhabit these paintings, its women and their indifference,
and suffer from our denial.

The Tale of Kora
Thokchom Wangam
.....................................................................................

As I walk down that lane,
A lane on which the project lays
A race in which eternity lays itself,
A gory image of a half-man greets me.

A long shadow of a monument,
Erected over the place where
Two heroes met their end,
Years before -- an eerie setting.

There ended the similarity,
For this death wasn’t heroic sacrifice willingly given,
A pitiful pact with death for a paltry sum,                    
A life lost for nothing.

Blood gushing from a deformed form,
Devoid of both the limbs and yet,
A man’s wish to live for a second more,
Never have I seen such courage,
Reminiscent of the heroes of yore.

And yet I wonder, could he have lived?
Had there been prompt care,
And more caring people.
Instead it was the callousness that did him in,
And this I find hard to forgive.

Of the ones who gave him the gift,
The gift of death and the sum to make the pact,
We shan’t think of them.
The black sheeps as they are, amongst us, and all this while,
A momentary light was shining in a dark land.

And for this foolishness, all of us shall
Pay, with life and blood.
And the sangai shan’t gallop again,
Neither the people gather in its honor.

And the world shall shun this place,
Where life is cheap and death, cheaper.
But shall we forget the place as it was before,
In days gone by, when it was still the land of jewels?

Yonder in the park, of which it is said
The oldest polo ground in the world,
Children played amidst laughter and joy,
And the old sat with dreamy eyes and smiles.
And yet it is the half-man,
Who visits me every night,
And retells his woeful tale.
Mohammed Kora was his name.

Blame me not
Thokchom Wangam
.....................................................................................

Of encounters and denied justice.
Of atrocities committed in front of young eyes.
Of lives plucked before their bloom.

Of unknown strangers delivering strange letters,
and even stranger gifts.
Of phone calls that make you dread each ring.
Of shops closed and business halted.

Of frequent frisking, by incompetent bastards.
Given legitimacy only by the dress they wear, ever so shabbily,
And the guns they wield, without much care.

Of leaders who think of none but themselves.
Who can’t resist a high rise or a barren land,
And are tempted, ever so easily, by the bald man.

Of roads travelled, in spite of the rocks and the mud.
Not knowing, what awaits you round the next corner
-  a Rakshak or an explosion?

Of dealings witnessed, in the heart of everywhere.
Of deals, that needs to be struck, for what is my rightly due.
Even with the lowest of clerks.

Of classes lost, for reasons no one remembers.
Of exams appeared, amid dark nights and dry taps.
Of weddings held and the dead burnt.
All during one of the numerous strikes, which line the year.

You ask me why I don’t write for all of these.
You ask me why I don’t speak out and against.
You ask me why I am silent and berate me for my silence.
You berate me for the writing of love and happiness.
Of mindless musings of an idealist.

Well I ask you, can you blame me?

Can you blame me –
For writing of love, when enmity reigns supreme?
For writing of silence, when shrieks of sadness rent the air?
For writing of sanity, when madness masquerades as justice?

Can you blame me?
For wanting things to be normal.

I ask of you, blame me not.
I am just bidding my time.


Sestina
Akshi Singh
.....................................................................................

I've stopped reading the electricity posts -
Electrocardiograph counts of this train
That differentiate green from green.
Last night we held each other like lost children.
The release I feel is too much a weight
Leaving on the Jaipur-Delhi Ashram Express.

Old woman shares my seat, her elbows press
down on my knees. We could be posed
for some bohemian picture. Tom Waits
from last night provides a steady train
of baritone blues entertainment in my head. Rin
advertisement flashes blue against the green.

The mustard fields are still rather green,
in an oxymoronic way. How to express
to you the variations in that verdure? Children's
crayons would help. I'll fold and post
these fields to you, love. Courier the rain.
They'll reach you, freshly cut and wet.
Bandikui. The trees are restive giants that await
Awakening. They shade the black with green.
The announcements, this newly painted train
the Pepsi-Coke stalls, even, can barely supress
the sepia sounds of this forgotten rail outpost -
Major train town when our grandparents were children.

Drumming for Siva and Sai children
with plasticine bodies make figures of eight
Absorbed passengers avert their eyes, dread the post
performance claim for change – the green
painted boy has brown eyes that impress
on you the drudge work and strain

Of being a mobile god on a moving train.
I move towards the house where we were children,
On the Jaipur-Delhi Ashram Express.
Laughter from memory lit rooms is lead weight.
Are the curtains in those old rooms still green?
I've known you so long, love, but only post

Childhood. Now I go alone to where ghosts wait -
of toy trains, people lost, the drunk visions of children.
Photographs are fading. The past is a lonely outpost.

Halifax Sestina
Akshi Singh
.....................................................................................

Planked quay. Legs dangling over the Atlantic,
We drink cider and watch jellyfish.
On the translucent membranes of these natives
Of the sea, close together, four, dark, circles.
Psychedelic figures of eight from a church
Of Scientology manual? We are left to wonder.

The shore is a place of awe and wonder
The black rocks flogged by the Atlantic,
Sublime. Not pretty, like St George's Round Church
Inside which I stand, at home, like jellyfish
On land. The St George's blueprint is all circles
The circumference not crossed by natives.

Too chill inside for any but it's crustacean natives
They click to themselves and wonder
What current brought flotsam into these parish circles
The room's panels, black as the Atlantic
Close in. Mouth opening, shutting, undulating jellyfish
In a nightmare of death in a drowned church.

She asks what brings me to St George's Church.
Not the soup kitchen. The soup given to natives
was so concentrated with the stings of jellyfish,
lady at the Mi'kmaq Friendship Centre says, a wonder
Some are left to fill reserves with. Over the Atlantic
Their swarms sailed the latitudinal circles,

Sharpening knives. The St. Louis also went in circles
Back into the abattoir, to death. Church
Sisters helped the post-war poor in this Atlantic
port, the museum of immigration says. Natives
Of bombed Europe met by pastors. I wonder
Whose fat fed their kindness -- but the jellyfish

Don't answer. Contracting, pulsing, the jellyfish
Dissolve history. I finally look into the circles
Of her dark eyes -- because it is a wonder,
A wonder of architecture and history, your church
Your flock the best, purest of Halifax natives,
White as the wake of a ship crossing the Atlantic.

Beached jellyfish on the shores of the Atlantic
Too insignificant for any memorial in a church
And circular, like the trophy scalps of natives.

Disorientation of the lost boy
Arambam Kapil
.....................................................................................


I saw the trace of innocence in memories.
On those days when I look back upon
Then out of nowhere, came the first cigarette,
Wrapped with the choice of substance
I found thing makes quick rush inside me
And then the stuffs were everywhere
and then the manufactured chemical products
And then it was almost the end of the world.
But then came my bare-ass poetry
In its nakedness, I can relate my life easily,
Though I don’t know where I came from
I don’t know where I'm heading to
I'm just waiting for the last shot
And I'll come clean.

When the neighbourbood and beyond
They are suffering from cancer
Eating the happiness of our time
I resort to things that are available
within the close radius of my home.
For instance, I watch the weeds grow at the river banks
I love their independence, growing anywhere
In its appreciation I get stoned
and dream about going places,
But as I cannot leave
with this baggage of violence,
I travel around with a figment
to each corner of my hometown
I cannot simply go away,
Yet I find the rhythm in going high.

Now and then
when I regain my normal senses,
I'd have love to read Pacha
Many candles had been burnt
trying to separate the genius from the alcoholic
While I'm myself drawn to
rum and whisky and Moojikhul
In the darkness, I see more light in inebriety
Its light is anyway more natural
than the switches and plugs
that are put on forcibly
to say we live in the 21st century.
In the chaos, I'm left drinking more,
A toast to our lost generation!

Desperate and late I'm always
I would take the shortcut
Never mind any roadblock
Never mind the detour
I would take a jump on the wall
senseless of what lies
on the other side of the fence
Never mind the thorns
that shroud more secretly
than how our masters hide their booty
When we need an injection of reason
I'm left fixing the powder, reminding myself
with each killing and bomb-hurling rituals:
One fix is too many.
A thousand fixes are not enough.

In the school I learnt
Hard work's the only way
But those lessons are meaningless
Now the armies have made their camps
inside the school campus too,
Now I count on my persuasiveness
and my kinship's force to find a job
Or perhaps I would go on as listlessly
and some years later,
vanish into the oblivion as a speck of dust.

Get power cut or go kaput
A translation of RK Bhubonsana’s Mei Mamgera Budhi Mamgera
by Arambam Kapil
.....................................................................................


Get power cut or go kaput
— It is the new government notice
It is mandatory to choose one.


Get power cut or go kaput?


The octogenarians talk over
Amongst themselves, the better choice:
‘If it is affirmed
We should get power cut
than to stuck in a rut.’
Slowly the suggestions stream in,
Slacking their stooping shoulder
The burden on their walking sticks:
‘Going kaput, for us, is open-and-shut
Today is as confusing as yesterday and as tomorrow
So if it is really done, before we pop our clog,
Let the electricity be damned
Get some good sense back.’


And right away
does the government pass the verdict:


In view of the old folks’ judgment
There has been power cut
A regular load-shedding,
It is not a government's trick.


Get power cut or go kaput?


So the news spread,
Amongst the middle-aged folks
The discussion goes forward
As they campaign from home to home
Across the town.


And after deliberation they decide:


As far as electricity is concerned,
It had been a nonentity from our childhood days and earlier
And even now, we have always got power cut
But significantly
We had gone kaput (been senseless) as soon as we were born
With no recovery
And the condition is getting worse each day
Now life has reached its midway
Let it continue for it is hardly going to make a difference
So preferably we should have electricity ‘brightly’
Each night as we eat and sleep well
Let there be light!


How can you ignore their decision,
This group comprise the maximum electorates.


Thus adopted
The government
Several special schemes
To blackout the people's mind:
Thus the mark tampering scam in Manipur’s top civil exams,
Thus sans the rice from Guwahati, it is illegally exported from Manipur,
Thus so cowardly and yellow-bellied, electricity is bought from other places,
Thus the law-enforcing agencies work and function against the law,
Thus the ministers and MLAs’ defection make the land so unstable.


So is it because of the government,
Or is it because of the people, thus the argument.


Get power cut or go kaput?


The youth moots
In nook and corner
In schools
In groups.


Which one is better?


The decision.


We are the youth
Manipur’s future
Manipur’s welfare
All is in our hands
So inevitably
We want to get power cut as well as go kaput.
And if possible, please break a tooth or two, too.
Why because,
Electricity is more or less the same
Before the Loktak Project started
And after it was completed
And it is as it has always been,
On the other hand
The Loktak Project destroys fields and fishes(???)
It causes floods
It ruins man
It creates eviction, roots out habitation
It takes people out of work
It makes people go nuts.
Along with power cut
It is better to go kaput;
Why because,
For knowledge, we have read and studied
But we lost time and money.
We get knowledge to get jobs
And we lost everything as we lose the knowledge
while searching the means to arrange money for the jobs.
Likewise we are educated after studying
And we are reasonable after education
And we know the faults and flaws when we are reasonable
And we want to express when we know the faults and flaws
And in our land when we express,
We get beaten up, we are brutalised.
Literally, backbreaking!
So it is better to go kaput.
In any case
In a land sans any sense and light
What use is of a beautiful face
There is no use,
The face of the youth
It is more or less, all the same
Instead, for our expressive facial elegance,
The request to get our front teeth broken too.


Alright!


The pillar of the society, they are called
So necessarily, we should follow what they say
So the government intentionally
Make the Loktak engine go defunct
Make the people go kaput
Make the regular load-shedding programme
Anything against the youth
Anything that makes people go wild
All of these have been taken up—
To break the teeth
To beat up the protesters and demonstrators
It said, thus it does
These days.


So the people live up to their wish
They got no power and they go kaput
Their teeth broken
In the land of mani—the jewels, Manipur.


Translation Lines:
Mei Mamgera Budhi Mamgera, it is a colloquial title with no exact rendering in
English. It connotes an interrogation if you want to get power cut (mei mamgera) or
mental blackout (budhi mamgera). The most interesting word is ‘mamgera’, from
‘mamba’— in Manipuri, mei mamba is power cut and budhi mamba is literally mental
blackout. But for some effect in relation to ‘getting power cut’, I have used the
phrase ‘going kaput’ for mental blackout, ie., getting defunct, as in the mind and
brain going out of work.


Load shedding is a common phenomenon for the last couple of decades in Manipur, with
the common people receiving hardly 3—4  hours of electricity in a day. The state is
infested with conflicts and violence.

Manipur literally means the land of mani, the jewels.


Note:
This poem was originally published as Mei Mamgera Budhi Mamgera, in a book of the
same title by RK Bhubonsana. The book with 55 poems and published in 1999, was
awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award in 2002.



November is not too far
Amartya Kanjilal
.....................................................................................

A nightly chill has come to stay.                                                   
           Lilting dirge, lapping at the feet                  
    of
street-lamps and other watchers                                                     


            in the night. Streets converge                                          

                                                                                    

                                  and conspire.
This cold testament, a revenant in                                                  

                                                                                    

                                                                               

festive times, makes its legal home                                                 

                                                                                    

                                             between brick and bone, while the      

                                                                                    

                                                                      leprous day-

fire burns cold in the swill                                                        

                                                                                    

                  of the night.
November is not too far.

                                     
To Elle, in many ways this city was you
Rushnaf Wadud
.....................................................................................


In many
ways
this city
was you.


There
were the
lights
of Deepawali,


the credits
on screens
at the end,


an unplayable
guitar
in the
warm
coffee shop,


the contours
of a tiny
body
snug along
the borders
of
a monster's;


the pleasantries
of spring,
and
the hunger pangs
that
are winters.

Belonging
Rushnaf Wadud
.....................................................................................

There is a certain charm to the things
That travel with me from room to room,
House to house,
City to bigger to slightly smaller city,
Life to bleeding,
and then healing again life.
There are these certificates
And old pictures hung on my wall,
That same wall clock from childhood,
Those comforting books on my little table,
That certain shirt on the hanger at the window,
Tilted and flapping in the wind.

They're like history;
They talk of times before this time,
Times before this time,
Mistakes that we've made.
Fungus at the edges of photographs that fade,
A coffee stain on my favourite shirt laid
On a bed unknowing of other beds' crimes.

I say all this because
Of this sneaking feeling
That, just like man is owned by his past
And not the other way around,
I did not find these little details around me;
Rather,
It was me that they found.

Academia of passions
Shreema Ningombam
.....................................................................................

Through the lanes veiled by unseen cobwebs
Drown in ebony beams
From the node of the wayside woods
Phantoms’ murmurs define us
Amongst their insidious gazes
Under the enveloping fragrance
Of one October of moon and lamp
Grudging fate trails our steps to no end
How trivial is the witchery of nights!
It works only on male
While our charms desire
A flight to entice
Blue calves and golden serpents!
Among the rocks and shrubbery
In this academia of passions   
Through the wilderness of this metropolis
Mirage of flood in homeland fevers
Razing the bridge with the flaming tide
But why anxious of reaching me, love!
Hurl me the other end of the rainbow
Why worry of the thunder that dampens
Your voyage towards me?
In taming its snarls
Refusing to be wives
In nights like this
We fly and lay our wings on its lips.

Summons
Shreema Ningombam
.....................................................................................

Under that sky over those forsaken stars
Falling like your own tears
You wished never to be hungry through time and time
Tonight against the universe of my hair
Whisper me another promise!
When the fragment of the setting sun carries away the distance
The urban branches and the dusty roads, the jamming streets
That was the evening when life becomes traffic-less
The day I depart for that land
For a land that smells of smoked fish
The land as sour as the potful of bamboo shoot
And odours a clayey rural sweat

From beyond the hills from where…
Clouds have their endless exodus
Would you believe me if I say
Our ancestors were those clouds?

Would you deny if I say
That I branch out my tea cup over that sky
For a drop of rain, for a spoonful of sugar?

Would you believe if I say
This land means same to me
As to her, who casts her net, stands on the edge of that slender boat?
In that river that give them the scent of fish

My poesy swindles you with musical strings of words
Like would you believe me when I say
I string for you a set of pearls from where the great poets were exiled?
Would you believe me if I write about seas that does not shore our land
I don’t own a sea to write of its foaming waves
I don’t have a tower
from the top of which I can see all the splendour of this world
All I have inherited is a torn <i>phanek</i>
With the scent of women I belonged to
A few old weather beaten leaves of pages
Where I write poetry with a broken pen with dried ink
I abandoned a few and gathered fewer
I am richer by irresistible summons from the fields and hills
Long after the call from all quarters cease

Melodies
Robson
.....................................................................................

"Unnamed fighter
A maestro
Guns create melodies
Untuned
Untold stories
    that can't be told

Where's the glory in dying
    if you're not a fighter?"

Roses stink
Satin pricks
The world passes out

You have lost sanity
You do not have courage
You are a fool

You are not a fighter

You surrender.

We, never.

We believe in melodies
Untuned melodies.

.....................................................................................