Mainstream WeeklyAway from home,
– Away from my dear cat, my books and papers, my
friends,
– Away from my life,
– With my face and head covered in a quilt stinking of uncertainty,
– Lying for days on end
– Lying one knows not where,
– With the heart gnawed and clawed viciously.
Then when the heart stops, the inevitable CCU,
– To draw life somehow back from the edge,
– Back to throbbing, the heart would like to return,
– the sick body seeks home,
– To return to the cat, to friends, to the cherished touch.
– The mind journeys from CCU to CCU . . . !
Who cares to listen to the heart!
– Picked up from the CCU, she is told,
– In a voice severely sombre, that shakes you to the core,
– Go to some other country, leave this land.
– Where can I go? I’ve no other place to go,
– When I die, bury me in this soil,
– You can then tear up the soil to find my roots.
Who cares to look into anything?
– Who cares to be miserable at a human being washed away in her own tears screaming for help?
– From the CCU into exile,
– They flung me once again like dirt into darkness,
– They had washed their hands clean, the distinguished authorities,
– I stood before them, with bowed head, and folded hands.
(Dainik Statesman, February 7, 2008)
Translated from the original Bengali by Samik Bandyopadhyay