How is it that we hurt the people we love the most?

The moment I said it I wanted to take it back

But words take up a life of its own

It hung heavy in the air between us,

Poisoning everything in its path.

How easy it was to wound, to hurt,

A part of me had wanted some payback

for what you had told me the other day,

for all the all years you kept telling me

what was good for me, who wasn't good for me

And for your concern which I tend to see

as a judgement on my choices, on my life

So I lashed back with the only

weapon I had, but I see how childish that

was of me, because really, I do love you very much

And I am older now, not a sixteen year old

rebel-without-a-cause, and you are older too

And I should have been more considerate

Instead I had caused you pain

And I suddenly saw the world from your eyes

The fear that your children are slipping away from you,

But I didn't know how to fix it, you see

You had retreated, I didn't know how to draw you out

And the day dragged on with this pointless

 hurting, with our swollen hearts painful to bear.

How is it that we hurt the people we love the most?

You asked me to write a happy one

You asked me to write a happy one,
 And I did think of one yesterday
On my way back from Loktak,
And there was so much beauty to be
grateful for- the worn-out boat docked
at the shore where I wanted to fall asleep in,
the cheerfully yellowing fields.
But the words got lost
in last night's sleep.
When I woke up, the bitterness returned
I guess I just can't fathom the world around me
I am home after so many years
and it breaks my heart daily
To see so much beauty smeared
by so much rottenness.
History hasn't been kind to us, you see
This country hasn't spared a thought for us
and democracy has lost all its meaning
As for myself, I am railing against
the idea of merely following
a life that has been laid out for me.
I fear of becoming just like everyone else,
cocooned in cynicism, to be content with tokens.
Maybe it is hard for you to even comprehend
how looking non-Indian can affect my life.
In some ways,my life was rigged against
my favour from the start.

In my stories

In my stories, the girls I write about

don't win in life, they are shunned, feared

and hated, they live in the margins 

they are the witches parents warn about

In my stories, these girls live a life

I don't have the courage to claim

They talk back, they scream, they shout

They hurl things at people who

are always telling them they are wrong

They laugh recklessly and often

They drink and smoke in the backyard

They let their garden grow wild

In my stories, I give them a house

If I feel generous, a trip to the beach

Where they can run wild

and sleep on the sandy shores

But I don't let them win at life,

Sometimes they miss their family 

who have disinherited them,

At times they wish they had a shoulder to cry on

Sometimes they think of ending their lives

A few times, they do.

In my stories, my girls live a

life of protest, and isn't that something too?

The real war, my darling girl

Are you scared that we don't die when we bleed
Like men invariably do?
Do you think your threats would stop us
speaking up, breaking down the doors
which you built to contain us?
They forget that I come from a long
lines of witches, we have slayed
bigger monsters than you.
The wars between nation-states are fought
by men in the name of land and women,
Using our names to satiate their egoes,
A fight in which men inevitably wins.
That is no war for you and me
Th real wars, my darling girl,
is going to be fought in our homes.

To outgrow all your friends

Is a sad and lonely process

May isolation fare you better.

Warning to trespassers

When I was younger and still wanted to be loved
I asked you to come visit my home
I wanted to take you to the Langol hills
I grew up climbing
and that little island in Loktak
But you were scared of guns and bandhs
And never came.
But by now I know who you all really are
And that we are just a dot in your map
which you have bled red.
To think that I loved you all once,
All of you with your shiny futures
Your uncomplicated loves
Made true by our sufferings, our deaths,
You have never known hate perhaps
 Because you kill and maim us
without thinking of us, and perhaps
you think us non-human because we don't
look like you, speak like you, eat like you
By now I know that if you come
you will only make it worse
with your ready words, your misinterpretations
For you, we are just stories confined to four lines
in the fourth page of your newspaper
But if you do come to my land
even after I have warned you
It would do you good
If you remembered we were once
head-hunters, fire-eaters and spear-throwers
And that we once had freedom before
you snatched it away from us.

From one woman to another

But everything is political, Baby
Even your love
Shine a light on it
Shift through the coarse grains of biases
How often do you compromise?
How often does he gets his way
Love is a battlefield
The most crucial one, Baby
If you win,
the rest would follow
Don't believe him when he says it is
silly to fight over it
He has the weight of the patriarchy by his side
It is easy for him to brush it aside
Because he has never had to fight like you, Baby
He doesn't know how it is like to be gagged from birth
He doesn't know how it is like to kick down doors
The world has been shaped by men for
the benifit of men, don't you forget it
He set the rules of family, state, religion
and expects you to take it,
by means of sweet talk or coercion
What will other people say?
has often been asked of you in the course of your life
Right from childhood by your parents
when you were forbidden to play with boys
To neighbourhood gossip when you didn't marry
all through your twenties.
Love is where it starts- the inequality, the cruelty
Don't let love blind you to what is yours
Don't let it make you accept
a vicious mother-in-law, a greedy father-in-law
When love asks too much from you, Baby
You raze it to the ground if you must
Light it on fire and watch it burn.