Dr.
Nishi Pulugurtha is Associate Professor in the department of English, Brahmananda
Keshab Chandra College and has taught postgraduate courses at West Bengal State
University, Rabindra Bharati University and the University of Calcutta. She is
the Secretary of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library, Kolkata
(IPPL). Her research areas are British Romantic literature, Postcolonial
literature, Indian writing in English, the literature of the diaspora, film and
Shakespeare adaptation in film. Dr. Pulugurtha has presented papers at national
and international conferences in India and abroad and has published in refereed
international and national journals. She is a creative writer and writes on
travel, film, short stories, poetry and Alzheimer’s Disease. Her work has
been published in The Statesman,
Kolkata, in the anthology Tranquil Muse
and online - Café Dissensus, Coldnoon, Queen Mob’s Tea House and
Setu. She guest-edited the June 2018 Issue of Café Dissensus on Travel. She has a monograph on Derozio (2010) and a collection of
essays on travel, Out in the Open
(2019).
ALL RIGHTS FOR THESE POEMS BELONG TO THE AUTHOR.
Hidden
Beneath
Bonds
broken
Trust
betrayed
Hypocrisy
all around
A
materialistic world where things are more important
Where
relationships do not matter –
Where ego
reigns supreme
Where lies
cover up
Camouflages
all around
Layer on
layer
All covered
up
In smooth
talk and smiles
It does
drop off
The
veneer, that is
In due
course
To reveal
the ugliness
The truth
It always
does, but then the pain remains.
2. It
does find a way
Beside a wall that separates
The small plant seeps through
Breaking through a gap
Creating a crevice
Wild and green
It stands up steady
Breaking through the masonry
It does find a way somewhere, somehow
In a few days, the first violet bloom
Bright and cheerful
Smiling in the September sun
A few raindrops clinging onto
The leaves and flowers
Glistening,
The light reflecting through
It always does so.
3.
Looking at, Looking through
Huge leaves, gentling shaking
The plant, wild
Large holes in them
Nature at work
Holes that form patterns
No worms eating in
No disease or pestilence
Looking at them
Looking through them
There is so much the eye cannot see
Hidden behind
Here and there
The gaping holes reveal
They conceal
There is no design in all this
In nature
In the leaves that look up
And bend down.
4.
Mela
Vivid colours that meet the eye
Kettles brightly coloured
Ladles too, steel plates, glasses
On paper fortified with cloth
Each one tells a story
She sings the story
Woven with myths and folk tales.
Unrolling the canvas as she goes on.
Her parents did this too
Her grandparents too
She has come from afar
Her little son, sitting in front of her
A brush in his hand
Colours around him
He is looking for a ball
To play with
The colours do not interest him
He is going to be with her
Till the mela is on
Away from school
Away from studies
She says her wares do not bring her
much
Difficult times stare at her
Her song goes on.
5. Home 2
It was
in a village there
Now,
what was its name
I knew
it, it was a big village
Beside
my house was a big pond
Horen da
caught fish in the pond
There
were a few big trees too
What
trees were they?
Green
things hung, sour things
Later
the green ones turned yellow
My
brothers climbed up those trees.
I stood
below, waiting for them.
Mango
trees – one, two, three
Ma stood
in the compound looking at us.
Now,
that was home.
Not this
building.
(A person who has dementia will often
be at home and want to go home. What he/she means by home is difficult to
comprehend, is it an older home, is it a childhood one? This poem is inspired
by someone I knew who had dementia and who told stories of her childhood home)
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