I have been married to the stories of our hills
I am a pahari from the hills in the east
Now let me sell my stories to the citydwellers
Let me sell some of the AK-47s
That my mother found while collecting firewood.
Let me read my poetry of rape
At India Gate and the Gateway of India.
In the stories of our hills
Poetry fails poets, dead ones are the heroes
Curfew walks the streets, with silence its companion
Folktales have evolved into tales of revolutionaries.
And people like me, who love such fables,
Are high day and night, trying to narrate stories
In some corner of a city,
With words like rape, death, bullet…
I know this city is loud
But its youth lack stories to get high on.
They have not sunbathed on riverbanks,
They have not heard stories of men
Who painted the streets red with their blood
And decorated them with red stars
Before they succumbed to their injuries.
They have not heard of Yumlembam
lbomcha screaming:
'If grapes are bullets,
Shoot me again and again!'