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).
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