Kinaara

Anurag Rudra (19) is a second-year undergraduate student of English at Cotton College, Guwahati. He spends most of his time sleeping and in addas on Chandmari Flyover in his city, where he pens his poems.

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Haiku

An old room
Light seeps in –
Hope

—

An Untold Tale

Me and my room-mate,
Buddies,
Sometimes
Share
A moment of silence
Together.

Sometimes —
When we’re not
Teasing passing women,
Making lewd remarks
Shouting ‘Ogo eto tara ki?’
What’s the rush baby? —
All the while
Conscious of being seen
And branded as rowdies, goondas —
Like to enjoy, together,
An endless moment of silence.

An endless moment of silence,
When the sound of our breaths –
Deep-bellied and mellow –
Shout out loud
Betray our senses
Like whores doing penance,
And mourn the silence

Stripped of our pretensions
Of sad civility, shame,
When the shirts hanging
In our cupboards
Struggle to cry out
And invade our moment
Like afternoon salesgirls
With kohl-coloured eyes,
And the holocaust wind
Tries desperately
To shatter the silence
Into bits.

Sometimes
The eerie silence
Can get to your nerves
And you try frantically,
Desperately,
To find a topic suitable
To break the silence
Into bits

But otherwise
It is
The most comfortable
Moment on the earth:
The moment
When me and my room-mate,
Strangers,
Sometimes
Share
A moment of silence
Together.

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