No one keeps their word
No one kept their word, thirty three years have come and
gone, no one kept their word
When I was a child a Vaishnavi had stopped mid-song and said
I will come back and sing you the rest on the twelfth day of
the bright moon.
How many moon eating dark nights have passed since then?
She never came back. I have waited these twenty five years and
more.
Nader Ali, the boatman in my mother’s childhood home had
said to me, Big brother, once you grow
I will take you all the way to the great lake at Tinprohor
Where snakes and bees dance upon lotus bloom!
Nader Ali, how much must I grow? Will you take me
To see the lake when my head has pushed through
This roof and touched the very sky?
I could never afford a Royal marble
The boys of the Laskar family sucked on fancy sweets in
front of me
I stood like a beggar before the gates of the Chaudhury
house
Looking at their Raas celebrations
Fair skinned women wearing gold on their arms flowing with
laughter like streams of colour
They never looked at me once.
My father touched my shoulder, murmured, one day we too…..
That father is blind today, we never got to see anything
Those Royal marbles, the fancy sweets, that festival
No one will bring back for me.
Varuna tucked a perfumed kerchief in her bosom, saying
The day she would truly love
My heart would smell like perfume too.
For the sake of love, I have taken life in my two hands
Tied a red rag across the eyes of a great bull
Searched the world over to gather to her a hundred and eight
blue lotuses
But Varuna did not keep her word, today she smells only of
flesh
She is still just another woman.
No one kept their word, thirty three years have come and
gone, no one keeps their word.
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