BEFORE I BECOME A SERVANT

My feeble mother went to the astrologer to see the Kuthi

It’s written no ritual can get rid of the ill omen

Hare Hare Radhe Radhe! Laughingly fearful.

I want that kuthi to be used as fire starter.

I feel like becoming the astrologer and see the kuthi

Pulling up with the bamboo strip of belief, I try to tie

The fallen beam of my house of thought,

It breaks, it splits again and again.

The two prescriptions of varied tablets given by Dr. Bihari of

RIMS psychiatry Department couldn’t make me sleep a moment even.

I sleep with Che Guivera on my couch

Pulling each other the shabby blanket

Talking for a new independence

He gaze Manipur in the moonbeam passing

Through the hole of the wall

And he put off his hat and gives gesture

to me to shift to other planet.

Without a word’s utterance people

run hastily on the road.!

It’s like Japan War, story told by my grandmother.

I asked eagerly but replied tediously-

“Ask to the people, we are not man” replied

I imagine, I meditate and concentrate;

I suppressed my feelings and make it calm down,

That opportunity of a moment has taken away from me

The last bullet of mala reached me

When I opened my eyes already I lay unconscious in the muddy field in nudity

Two ears of mine were sucked so freely by the leeches.

The stranger who looks not like man that ploughed the field

Repeatedly ploughed over me with his iron ploughshare where I laid down comatose

In the muddy, bloodshed field

That creature’s urine splash all over

What a horrible picture

A dream scene in a dream is not as ghastly as this

I have an aspiration

Before the mango flower blooms,

Before peach flower come into bud

Before the smiling spring comes and stands on my door

That lady with a beautiful hair

Has made me a bondage with her only mole

I kept many riddles only just for her

Who always smiles when she see me

And many more questions that ignore an answer

But no more spring comes, it retreats, gone away.

My frail tongue couldn’t utter a word then

Just now I understand the gesture of Che Guivera

Before I become anybody’s prey

I feel like living in the beautiful bamboo hill slope

To burn away in the forest fire

Before I become a servant

In their air void planet.

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translated by: Amarjit Tongbram
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