On Asking My Mother about Winter 1990
On November 27, 1990, President’s rule was imposed in the Indian state of Assam and counterinsurgency operation Bajrang was launched against separatist groups. Thousands of young men were arrested, hundreds were killed.
We hid the moon in the silent river
so they couldn’t chase the uiis that
lived in the incisions of the last crag,
laughs my mother, they toppled like nests
of baya weavers on the way of Bordoisila
rushing angrily to her mother’s feast.
but, the rest? I ask as sunlight drips down her twiggy legs
and strews its nerves gently on the mosaic porch.
Oh, in dugouts covered with banana leaves
we girls numbered snails and trembling tendrils of light,
oak whispers and green gooseberries to dip in salt—and
sometimes when their tawny mastiffs came our way tearing
through thick scrims of fog tinctured with slivers of the moon
we ran for our brothers hiding in the forest.
then they saved you? Oh, they were never there.
They always went hunting for finches, for floating clods of stars.
Notes:
Uii: “witches” in the Mishing language; Bordoisila: a severe cyclonic storm that marks the incoming monsoon season in Assam, India.
Source:
Poetry
(January 2023)
