The peom was first published in the 13th issue of "The Little Journal of Northeast India" and was selected later for "Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2022" (Hawakal).
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Darkness falls faster in the hills, the lady said –
nights are for clearing minds.
With the last stroke of light fading into a shade of no return,
I reached the village square, jaunting the red soil of Khasi hills,
dodging tall grasses, betel nuts; escaping the nudity of a lucid river.
The ‘6:30’ of the lady’s eatery clock was smudged with smoke,
people were engrossed in rice-daal-aaloo fry – a simple affair.
Nights are simple in the hills, the lady said –
eat and sleep. Primitive, yet existential.
By the time I finished my simple affair, the rain washed
the village with wind and moonlight; making it
cleaner, quieter, simple like the night.
My night was a blue house at the end of the road uphill.
How do they know that I like neon gold light when it rains?
A veranda with a thousand sun stains?
May be the rain told them this house is like me, with
more windows than walls,
more rooms than space,
a silent floor, a roving roof,
a blue house for my blue rain.
I had no baggage, only a few pebbles from
the river Umngot that got inside my pocket when
I was trying to sheathe her nakedness with mud.
Why did no one tell her that clarity hurts?
Ignoring my half-drowned heart’s daylong persuasion,
aloof, she went down(stream).
In acquiescence, I left her water as it is and ran to the hills.
Hills are not rivers; they know how to hide things
that belong only to them.
Tomorrow, I would hide her pebbles;
her secrets safe with the hills, with me, with the blue house
that has too many windows to hide secrets but few walls,
like me, like the river – too much clarity hurts.
Nights are simple in the hills, the lady said-
days would come like a dream.
By Dr. Chayanika Saikia
Noida