Poetry by Shlagha Borah

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