What we cannot hear is our own voice by Shivaani Dushyanth
Religion is my disabled
Neighbour who washes
Her feet in the blood of botched
Relatives and cleans the restroom
With newspapers because
The headlines are to be flushed
In toilets while she Is
Being abused in the same.
She wears a piece of cloth
In evening sunsets and praises
The mosques then enters
The churches and sits in
Temples while muffling in
Dargahs and vomits a language
Of peace that is swept
By late night, and settles in the
Garbage tanks by morning.
Every other day, she
Tries to knock the houses of
Fragile secularism but
Rather hangs herself
In their verandahs,
And yet the servant
Shakes her like a cloth and
Hangs her again, but this
Time in their terrace wires
As she is dried and
Worn out in words of her death.
While walking on roads
She claps her hands and
Stamps her feet while
Standing on top of traffic lights
And road signs to be
Noticed but humans
Seldom obey them, let
Alone avoid her from being
Another accident of
society's rage.
In the dhaabas and
Hotels she praises
Houdini and lives in the
Served food hoping to be
Swallowed recklessly, but
Cautiously she's thrown away
To the feets of dogs
Because the first man died,
And the second poisoned,
And the third was of
Another cast.
While, she is being sold
In markets as a prostitute
Her meaning is spelt as
Equality as sex begs to
Differ in languages of
Bigotry as the organs
Between your thighs
Orphan the dictionary on her
Name and the skies turn yellow
When they moan, and red
For the same when they aren't sold.
The casual apocalypse
Of her anarchy is swept
Under the doorsteps and
The world remains a saint but
While it opens they
Poke fingers on needles and
Stumble on staircases for
When cuckoos learn
To abandon greed, her
Body will be a mere statue
That is seldom worshipped.
She walks, jumps and even
Hears the cries of
Grief but is disabled in the
Most convenient,
A mouth sewed with the
Thread of her ancient grandmother
And stuffed with stones carved
As idols, she cannot speak
In the consonants of freedom
Which might cleanse this world.
For what we cannot hear, is
The sound of solitude
From her tongue chewed off
By the dogs in her street
And will continue to
Doom ourselves as the weak,
Because what we cannot hear
Is religion speak the wisdom
Of unity which remains foreign,
For what we cannot hear is
The stop signs, as
What we cannot hear is our own voice.
Un-remembered photographs by Aadrit Banerjee
I sit naked
stitching old photographs on my skin.
Forgotten putrid smells, little touches
stored with them — lost somewhere
among the neon-square pixels,
de-focussed, — returns, remembers —
kisses, frozen in frames, reappears on
my skin, as little droplets.
This blurred
monochrome shot of the crooked banyan
tree was taken on the day you left me.
In their sensous language, photographs
speak to me of your absence, suck out
memories of my bones. My fingers
grow numb
scrolling through the rainbow grid,
similar to how I would
trace stars on your chest.
This close-up of the earthen cup
of chai, with the red walls of the college
in the background, was shot
on the day you had told me
I was looking sad in the warm blue
shirt I wore.
I have never understood why we store photographs, nevertheless, I look at them,
till I forget pain, believe in the false sense
of presence these photographs create.
This one, here, of us, was clicked
by your friend, when you sang the
first ghazal, stopping in between,
to look at me. In the room full of people,
I had helplessly looked away.
I close the screen. A drastic heaviness
settles down. I look up. I try to
breathe in the abyss where you have
left me. I open my phone — drawing
the quick pattern, connecting the
dots, but never reaching you —
and I open my gallery.
There's Jama Masjid, silhouetted
against the Ramadan sky, and there
is us, kissing under the half-moon. The
photographs makes this city feel like
home.
I hit delete.
Why do we exist only in photographs by Nithya Vijay
My phone keeps blinking:
Brimming with memories,
I'm staring at a photo -
I wish I could delete,
Occupant of my phone storage,
A flower in my head,
Amma says I hold on too much,
But I've rented a room in my past,
Perhaps I've got to let go,
The Past and bygones;
Pebbles from beaches-
Still, hide at the corner of my shelf,
I hold on to them-
Like I store teardrops to drown my misery,
And this photo on an April Sunday
It's an old one,
My phone scoffs like Amma,
Blinks twice disbelievingly-
Are you planning to let go?
You've aged 3 years,
It's a blurred one,
Why do you care?
I press the delete button,
Yet it asks for confirmation.
My smile pleads through the glass,
I remember -
I don't even smile for snaps now,
A hazed photo -
But will I think of it then:
50 years later?
The moment as I see-
Through the pixelated photo,
If it ceased to exist,
With the press of a button,
Would that memory-
Travel to a dark corner of my mind?
Why do we exist only in photographs?
Not a poem on my eyes;
Maybe I'll keep this color,
Perhaps it'll keep me off the noose,
Or pull me up from a cliff,
Perhaps it'll make it to my obituary-
As the only picture of a cynic;
I'll keep it for the lavender,
my lover's movie - a scapegoat,
Maybe I'll love myself this little bit,
The only capture of my smile-
Through the lens that loves the burgundy sky.
Poems on prompts "'Second thoughts before Deleting a photograph' and 'What we cannot hear'"