On Asking My Mother about Winter 1990

By Abhijit Sarmah

On November 27, 1990, President’s rule was imposed in the Indian state of Assam and counterinsurgency operation Bajrang was launched against separatist groups. Thousands of  young men were arrested, hundreds were killed.

We hid the moon in the silent river

so they couldn’t chase the uiis that


lived in the incisions of the last crag,

laughs my mother, they toppled like nests


of baya weavers on the way of Bordoisila

rushing angrily to her mother’s feast.


but, the rest? I ask as sunlight drips down her twiggy legs

and strews its nerves gently on the mosaic porch.


Oh, in dugouts covered with banana leaves

we girls numbered snails and trembling tendrils of light,


oak whispers and green gooseberries to dip in salt—and

sometimes when their tawny mastiffs came our way tearing


through thick scrims of fog tinctured with slivers of the moon

we ran for our brothers hiding in the forest.


then they saved you? Oh, they were never there.

They always went hunting for finches, for floating clods of stars.

Notes:

Uii: “witches” in the Mishing language; Bordoisila: a severe cyclonic storm that marks the incoming monsoon season in Assam, India.

Source: Poetry (January 2023)