Dr Amitabh’s poem explores Matha  Bhanga, a life unlived, with memories of dust, rivers, and a lost Mrinalini, exclusively for Different Truths.

After all these years, I still think of
Matha Bhanga, which means in Bangla, a broken head
to me, Matha Bhanga remains a life I had
probably wanted to live and let live
green paddy expanse remains another sky
and not far off is Bangladesh
where green is still the sky and nothing else
except sometimes
a rippling streak
of red
In narrow corridors, we had once tried
to survive
A Willys Jeep brings me to Matha Bhanga
balancing on a tightrope of muddied roads
shanties on either side,
and many ponds
My eye is on the road
many hundreds of years old
The mind races, gathering such ponds
one after another, green and black
I try to find patches of azure blue
holding women in red-bordered handloom sarees
their kohl-lined eyes in a tryst
They sought tales
I was leaving
They always looked back
The dust smelled of rivers and shadows
in involuntary proportions
far ahead, in different odours
perhaps far off in the inherent blue
and rampant tea gardens rolling down
Mrinalini is a palace
And then she was never the palace
She is me in one ancient night of laughter
In a rite of destiny, in a puzzle of sacrament
In the darkness of your hair, in moonless nights
When crickets talked, creaked
and enduring promises sustained
white cotton dreams, shared only till daybreak
the tea thick with milk, with cinnamon and
your smile
The thatched tea shop caught your neck
sunbeams poured onto blue veins
trapped for many more years to come, you stayed
I had looked through your eyes
into the resolute
off the track, the fishermen swept their nets
Your voice spoke uncannily of everything I
believed, and you said of stances
When the thunder god with its armies of rain
and sodden thought will break through
The zamaindarbari through Matha Bhanga
its people
Shrill defence and anger will merge once again
with river, sea and crypts of our mind
Mrinalini will suddenly disappear
as many other things you see every day
and tales you cannot encrypt
Loving is still unloving
The blue-green of Matha Bhanga will always be only you

raptures, we both disappeared on a sudden day
like this 

Illustration by the poet

Dr Amitabh Mitra

Amitabh Mitra is a poet, artist, and medical doctor based in East London, South Africa. He is the Head of the Trauma and Emergency Medicine Department of a tertiary hospital complex in the black township of Mdantsane. It is the second-biggest Black township after Soweto. Recently, the Department of Arts and Culture, in association with Oxfam, honoured him for his contribution and long-standing devotion to the people of Mdantsane.

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