Here’s Lopamudra’s poem, dedicated to her mother. It’s a soulful dialogue between a daughter and a mother.

(1)

Where have you been all these days, mother?
I have been counting my days, nights, weeks, months,
Squinting inside cold rooms, peering out of windows,
Trying to believe this high intensity of truth,
That all is there, but not you.

Standing before the door that led to the narrow veranda
Where visitors flocked in and waited,
Placed a wreath on death’s numbness,
I smelled the garlands and incense, sharp and toxic.
The flesh and skin, the bones and joints burnt
To its last, dying embers.
Standing before the door, I was veiled by dark curtains
Hiding my face deep in their folds,
Scraping my senses to bleed on the brink of this knowing.
I wanted to run out, lock the fang of my wanting
In hidden places, rooms where dust and old photo albums
Sneaked in, like a film of sunlight.

I wanted to burn myself to merge into your colours,
All that burning: red, ochre, burnt sienna,
The orange, the last, vanishing yellow of fire.
But I flopped down beside tears and broken faces,
My whisper, tattered and torn.
I have meant to throw myself upon the altar of this life
Get all washed away like the loose sands of the shore
By the wild, taunting, reckless ocean waves.

Where have you been all these days, mother?
I have been waking up, trembling and creaky,
Hitting myself to a thud and a fall
After a reverie where I wish you goodbye.
I sink into daily tasks and deadlines
After this dream communion,
Do my duties of the foolery of this life well.
I am counting my days, nights, weeks, months,
The narration of this plain, earthly song, without you.

(2)

I have come to talk to you, my child
To let you know how your tears were mine
While my body lay ice cold and numb,
As I was soaring above it, melting in my release,
I was freed from my encumbrances, one of them were you.
In the crescendo of my release, I looked down and found you
Stoned in despair and disbelief, refusing every morsel
Of advice, counselling and condolence.

I wanted to embrace your pain,
Be the mother who sang to her baby,
Clapped her hands when you danced with the morn
The carefree child I carried under my arms.
My spirit, swaying in the horizon held no stress or strain
But the rhapsody that was a promise was not born.
I sought you out as I broadened my sight,
I saw you, forlorn and lost, looking at my ashes
Dispersed to the earth as a river song.
I saw you throwing food to the crows on the river banks
As the tears bathed you — like trebling melodies.

All the while, I walked with you, barefoot and free,
I walked with you, in the whistling notes of your pain.
I greeted the sunset and the moon in full bloom
As you questioned, pondered
The end of another day, without me.

I have come to talk with you, my child,
I have my feet, floating upon the alter of this life.
I have left this life, the encumbrances
That tightly held me in their grasp.
But I am caught up in you, drifting down
To hold your hands, tell you that you
Have my light, shining down upon your pain.
I am there, the sunlight and shadow
Singing with you at your darkest hours.
I am there, the tethers of your earthly longings
The mirror that now reflects your face,
The fledgling growth of doubt and suffering,
That in time, blossomed into love.

Talk to me, I am hanging with you
Like the night’s last tendrils,
We will sing, dance, rise, chant…

Picture design Anumita Roy, Different Truths

Lopamudra Banerjee

Lopamudra Banerjee is a multi-talented author, poet, translator, and editor with eight published books and six anthologies in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She has been a featured poet at Rice University, Houston (2019), ‘Life in Quarantine’, the Digital Humanities Archive of Stanford University, USA. Her recent translations include ‘Bakul Katha: Tale of the Emancipated Woman’ and ‘The Bard and his Sister-in-law’.