Three Poems on Guwahati and Beyond by Ayaan Halder
Photo: Ayaan Halder
‘And then the browning milk that has gushed into his shoes, and mine, / Carries us over / To someone else’s pyre. / The wind, by then, has ravaged his leaf.’
Signage Near the Tea Shops at Gauhati University
A nascent no-smoking sign in a spot where I have smoked before
(Its cigarette vandalised by two words counterfeiting depth.)
Its fraternal twin, the no parking sign, on which sit three rather heavy-set stick figures, gossiping over tea.
(By way of the initials etched onto each of them, I suspect one is meant to be someone who has taught me in the past.)
The AASU coat of arms, adjacent to a now-perhaps-obsolete declaration
(Rejecting the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019.)
And a casting call for a short series, which requires no prior experience
(Just genuine interest and confidence before the camera.)
An advertisement for a magical app that makes simple the renting of homes and PGs
(And BnBs too, for some reason.)
Somewhat overshadowed by a call to participants for a Vedic Quiz
(Organized by a temple in North Guwahati on the occasion of Krishna Janmashtami.)
Another advertisement for mushrooms—the non-magical kind, I mean—that one can buy, if they visit the Biotechnology department.
(or simply call a phone number.)
And of course, an abundance of posters for the last film
That Zubeen Garg managed to make.
*
The River Comes to Eden
Misstepping on a puddle,
The river comes up to my lip,
And—perhaps unwittingly—punctures my lungs with the pierce
Of polyester raindrops.
And then comes a man
Or what I think is a man—
Head covered with the fresh estrangement
Between a soft leaf, and an old tree
That has only just been put to death—
Pressing his fingers on the bloated small of my rotten back,
As he raises my own corpse up to the city’s skyline,
Or perhaps to the silken futility of a recently commissioned over-bridge,
And an umbrella barely holding itself together.
And then the browning milk that has gushed into his shoes, and mine,
Carries us over
To someone else’s pyre.
The wind, by then, has ravaged his leaf.
*
Elephants Break the Dawn in Kaziranga
The throbbing count of trampled sun
Paraded through the bow-legged darkness
In single file,
Oft breached with sugar and cane
Smacked across spatchcocked temples, and floppy ears,
Or offered up in prayer, or even a drunken fondness
Meant to coax out from trunks
That blow of the divine trumpet.
***
Ayaan Halder is a poet, author and Doctoral research scholar at the Department of Law, Gauhati University, Assam (India). His works have been published in various national and international platforms such as Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature, The Wire, The Little Journal of Northeast India, Kitaab Magazine, Littera Magazine, The Chakkar and Poems India. His work mostly revolves around the coexistences and contestations in the day to day lives of indigenous and diasporic populations in India's Northeast. You can find him on Instagram: @_inkslinger__.
