Activists andresidents standing inthe Bay of Bengalwaters, protestingagainst theKudankulam AtomicPower Project in2012 (seen in thebackground) Activists andresidents standing inthe Bay of Bengalwaters, protestingagainst theKudankulam AtomicPower Project in2012 (seen in thebackground) My Invented Land

My native soil was created from tiny sparksthat clung to grandmother’s earthen potwhich conjured savoury dishesI’ve been looking forall my life in vain.

My homeland has no boundaries.At cockcrow one day it found itselfinside a country to its west,(on rainy days it dreams looking Eastwhen its seditionists fight to liberate it from truth.)

My people have disinterred their alphabet,burnt down decrepit librariesin a last puff of nationalismeven as a hairstyle of native womenhave been allowed to become extinct.

My native place has not been christened yetmy homeland, a travelogue without end,a plate that will always be greedy(but got rice mixed with stones)

My home has young peoplewho found their dreams in a white substanceand the old that transplanted their eyes,it has leaders who have disappearedinto their caricatures.

My home is a gunpressed against both templesa knock on a night that has not endeda torch lit long after the thefta sonnet about body countsundoubtedly rapeddefinitely abandonedin a tryst with destiny.

—Translated from Manipuri by the poet

Robin S Ngangom, Manipur(Robin S Ngangom is a bilingual poet and translator who writes in English and Manipuri. He has co-edited two significant anthologies of poetry from Northeast India. His latest book, My Invented Land, appeared in 2023)

An Impression of Being Alive

All day we have watched the street shiftand careen, shed skin, refill, crest and yaw,corrected our taste for orangespacked by other hands from other places, boughttokens of summer and the coming happiness—we paused at the Korean romances: A Tale of a Prince,

Over Rainbow, Tree of Heaven. And the corporate typewho went mad for a girl.No prince arrived with a piece of fax.You said Plainly, it’s all money and for-nication, just like everywhere else. We smiledat the notion of moon bases and hummed a tunefrom the movie we figuredwe were still living in.

All day the sun kept tangling and stumblingamong bright open windows while the shopgirls cheered on,and the pavement singers, and those womenfingering black laces in Foreign Laneand we lived in and out of restaurants, smoking nonstop,

plate after plate of consommé not thinking or speaking, our nervesshattered by the urge to depart. All daywe have waited and waitedunder heaven’s wide and lovely treefor princes, advisors,even some flannel postman to come and saythat the ship’s sailed, the bushas left, all families look for us.Have we said too much? Or not enough–

And here we are, the day goneto its usual brilliant bedtime, the astronauts gone, the rainnow cadencing in our heads. The restaurant must close.We have learned nothing. You wisely add: Really,there was nothing to learn.

Mona Zote, Mizoram(Mona Zote is a poet living in Aizawl. Her poetry has appeared in various journals, including the Cordite Poetry Review777club, Indian Literature, IQ Magazine, India International Centre Quarterly, Carapace, Sangam House as well as in anthologies such as Dancing Earth: An Anthology of Poetry from North-East India, the Oxford Anthology of Writings from North-East India, and The Borderlands of Asia: Culture, Place, Poetry)

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