We’re still alive/ but they wanted to die a natural death

Self-confidence shaken, some shattered memories in their side bags

Being a woman comes to me naturally If not me, then who? I was never asked to be one I was never asked to cook

This is a translation by Md. Abu Zafor of Bimal Guha’s “Kalo Biral” from the collection ‘E Kon Matal Nritya' (first published in 2022).

Time to set sail for a new cruise, oh dear voyager Sindbad!

Time, heavy as a thousand suns combined,/ Bends mothers, smaller than the ones they bore,

What’s life if a sense of darkness/ doesn’t connect night to sunlight

Your tea in the kettle, piping hot water/ No sugar, so that you can really taste the tea on your tongue

This universe’s heart is hollow now for humanity has died inside it.

Spacious, shiny, new roads are built in my city to rent them for raw-markets

The hush of dawn and the whispered breeze,/ that caresses nature's resting face

She stands in front of the canvas and stares.

the moon watches over you, when whales beach themselves, the tides wash them back home; the moon looks down

News from Gaza rips the heart open/ Idlib is burning too

Eurydice, his beloved,  lost to the shades, In the underworld's depths,  where darkness pervades.

Who is the one playing such a plaintive tune on a flute

I cannot, for the life of me, definitively describe what makes music. Growing up in a family where music of any form was not typically paid any reverence, my exposure to it was tunnelled into mainstream pop songs for the longest time.

Death dwells between is and was, Riding the final particle of a fading breath.

It is odd that nowadays One seldom hears the words

Tell me what to say when I need to speak, If I have to say something, So what can I say: look at that