After Manjiri Indurkar's poem, This Poem is not for Kashmir-
this poem is not for bengalis
living in assam. neither for lower class daily wage muslim workers
or butchers who don't close their shops
even on bihu.
nor for the bodo, the mising, the ahom,
about whom nothing is taught about
in our history classes,
whose identity is limited to a state holiday-
we know school remains closed
on ali ai ligang
but don't know what it is.
this poem is not for any culture
if it's not my own,
not for any language
that's not spoken in my home,
not for the seats in our classroom
reserved for other backward classes
that mostly remain empty.
this poem is for the cape
of cultural supremacy that local media
has taught me to wear;
my koka rode his bicycle
across three villages
to teach nepali kids
and I don't even know what my nepali friends
eat for dinner.
so this poem is to say,
I'm sorry,
for taking up too much space
in a land that's not only mine,
for dropping racist bombshells
in the name of humour,
and calling them fire crackers,
for watching videos of people
throwing stones at your houses
and simply skipping to the next channel.
this poem is not for any of you,
it's for me,
a finifugal person who's ashamed
to even offer you her poetry.
Shlagha Borah is a 22-year old undergraduate student pursuing Economics from Lady Shri Ram College for women. She is a regular contributor and Select Writer for Terribly Tiny Tales and has been an editorial intern with Katha Publications. Her work has been published in various online literary platforms like GroundXero, Ayaskala, The Alipore Post, Silver Leaf Poetry, etc. She is also the co-founder of the mental health collective called Pink Freud that works around destigmatizing mental health issues. A city girl through and through, she runs to Arundhati Roy's work at the first chance.
Instagram- @shlaghab
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