Fluid
I openly, freely
And eagerly took beef a couple of times
During my younger days
With the white coloured sacred thread
Already happily present in my body...my birth entitlement
And my social obligation hidden inside my shirt;
Pork was my most favourite
And sought after meat until
A few years ago...
(Health wise restrictions actually stopped it now)
I got drunk frequently,
Beer, whisky or local liquor
Hardly making a difference and
Often smoked also the pot too madly,
Too stoned at times to even move a finger;
I deliberately broke almost all the
Rules in the book
When it came to my excitements
With love and hatred,
The faith lost in me
And my own faith restored,
Predefined social and moral values
To fight for or fought over,
Even kill or get killed...etc, etc.!
The idea was to see actually
What finally happened to me by such
Forbidden acts,
Afterwards my silent conversations with me...
The ultimate notion being,
To discover the difference between
The truth,
And all else before one fine day
I heard someone saying inside to jot it all down...
It was getting a bit too heavy within...
But if I write,
I could not fake,
I had to know both the inside out,
Both the love and alike the longing...
Happiness and likewise the pain,
The only path to the ruler
And the otherwise numerous rules
Followed till date...
Just true devotion sans anyfanatism...
With wearing only the garb of
Devotion and the patience inside...no loss, no gain!
I know,
I will be grossly misunderstood
Anddisapproved for what I did
In my lifetime and later bluntly wrote about it...
Yet,
I can hardly help it,
I still do a lot many things even today to
Test my inside before
I pick up the pen to write...
And Ijust cannot stop right now…
For I still have a few more miles to write…God bless me‼
- Swapnajyoti Bordoloi
Two eyes
Your absence is
The absenteeism
Of calmness in all else;
I heard,
"The burning heat within a wave
In a rushing sea makes it diverge
Traveling to the shores,
Some die and vanish,
Others quarrel entangled whimsically
In the bosom of the soul…"
- Swapnajyoti Bordoloi
If I Don't Give Myself My Company
If I don't give myself my company
Who else will stay with me?
Actually I want to stay with Tulika
Rendered homeless after terrible loneliness
Rendered restless by mental strain
And struck to trembling by half-invited pain
I want to take away the spike
That pierced her the cruelest of all
She is flying like a sea bird amidst blizzard
Circling at times and sometimes obliquely
Lava of sorrows accumulating in layers
Yet I am not tired and I don't want to listen
To strange tales beyond the grave
She has been rendered lame
By pain of sleeplessness
And I want to guide her to grassland
On the bank of Siang
Through the clouds to the hilltops of the Himalayas
Make a gift of a friend or a lover to her
She would roam about hand
Hand in hand with him
To forget her sorrows
He would clasp at the wild bees with a vibrant body
(I am certain there is no such man in the world)
None can embolden her like solitude
At times I am afraid
If at the end of my private prayers
And the destructive dreams of scepticism and doubt
She kills herself
I shall lose my dearest Tulika who gave freedom
To the warbling mountain spring.
- Tulika Chetia Yein
The Stream of Love
'You Too Brutus'
King, Gunning; Woman in a Purple Dress Picking Flowers on a Riverbank; Brighton and Hove Museums and Art Galleries; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/woman-in-a-purple-dress-picking-flowers-on-a-riverbank-75142
Dear Mitali Baa,
You Know
And me too
Sooner or later
The icy hands of death will touch the cocoon of our soul
And the music of sorrow would be played
But before singing a song to welcome death
Let's escape somewhere secretly
Where you'll sing a song for me
We'll fly above the clouds to the tune of your songs
The flame of the forest, Ximalu, Madarand Nahar
Would bloom by the tender touch of monsoon
I'll pluck an orchid
To put it in your bun
We'll sit beside the bank of river Siang
To say farewell to the sailing boat of fallen leaves
We'll catch the golden masher by angling
And looking at the sailing boats
When the birds will dance to the tune of your song
You and I will supervene Adam and Eve
And stepping into the moss wrapped ancient place of our ancestors
I'll search the Brahmastra to build your bones
Enemies are dancing furiously
In the heart of our courtyard
We pledged to free our home, granary and the crop fields from the enemies
We will walk on the surface of ice when the moon will melt
Tease the sunshine, dancing in the rain, bathing under the moonlight
We'll look at them
Who left us by showing the mirage of love
Towards the world of abundance and luxury
For whom the meaning of love is just consumerism
Wallowing the precious ideal of love in the valley of our blood
He who can decorate his wife with Satsori and Junbiri
Standing in front, that fiery icy pain
I'll touch that siren at least for once
Fond of whose caress he forgets the shore of the river, call of the wild Sambar
The endless talks under the old Banyan tree
Those afternoons rejoiced with silence
And the evenings were filled with the chant of prayers
With the warmth of my heart, I wrote letters
Dreams of love were running with the postman's bag
Crossing the prolong nights of waiting
Came his pearls like written words after a fortnight
I touched them tenderly when woke up at midnight
Looking at the moon-dots he showed
But those were just mirages
Like clouds rain by stealing all the sins from the Earth
They built a rainbow home by stealing our dream
We ran insanely miles after miles
The pride of our love floats on profuse tears
The tomb of love broken in terrible pain
The house of love engulfed by the fire of cheating
And after that, we learned to compete with the sky, the Earth, and the stars
For you, I failed to be someone's wife
Couldn't carry on the oath of the sacred fire
Every night amidst the chest of sleeping storms
I dream inside the thunderous clouds
And wake up with somebody's weeping blues
Tell me Mitali Baa why it happens?
How far I tried to escape from the stream of love
It haunts me and you
Memories of passing days never let me die or live
What shall I do?
Just tell me...
-TulikaChetiaYein