Sand Column

Purabi Bhattacharya is a Gujarat-based writer of poetry and prose, hailing from Shillong. Her first book of poetry, Call Me, was published by Writers Workshop, India, in 2015.

Teaser

From the northwest

From the northwest a strong wind blows
it sees most farmlands and hutments, stunned and sulking
promises tossed out through the Arabian
and the sea turns pale.

Fourteen summers have gone. Fourteen times
between hot contour sheets, love melted
we were set to pick up our shovels
clear the sheaf the veterans have left half-done.

I volatile, you vulnerable
you burn, I am frozen, neither
something is in flames, even if
in pyre it is not yet in ashes.

Fending for ourselves, with our words unmated
blaming it on bad weather, we have only escaped
our solecism. I wish there was something original in all
that you and I lost ourselves to.