Navamalati Neog Chakraborty’s Two Poems

Navamalati Neog Chakraborty is a poet whose heart bleeds with the scars on others bodies’ but doesn’t have an opinionated outlook. She celebrates all facets of human life in her myriad verses. Hailing from north east she is very close to nature, feeling its pulse and groove and has also witnessed the upheavals of atrocities. Her poems give voice to the victims silenced for life. Again, she raises hope in versifying the joy of togetherness and mutual trust in a world of ‘if’ s and if nots that act as an anchor in the shifting currents of life.

1. “A raped child’s experience “

I will die again and again

If such be your world;

I shall die again and again

If such be your lust.

I am all those girl-child

You jackals feasted on;

I am all those ravished ones

You must have lost count of.

Lock yourself up quick my sisters

lest they come again in droves;

Come not out at all my friends

For you know not these fiends.

They tear you apart my friends

Your body cannot take anymore

What it is they really want

At my age I sure don’t know.

Their laughter congeals the blood

That flow from my little heart;

Mother, save me, save me please

Wherever you be, wherever you are.

Hasten mother I understand now

The nightmare and ghosts you’d

Spoken about; for they bite me

And crush my little body apart.

My eyes and breath are now fain

Mother dear doesn’t come near;

Go hide yourself and bolt the door

Never come out, for you, I fear.

This last breath I painfully take

My eyes do not see at all clear;

Oh God wherever you may be

Did you at least hear …!

1. In all the ‘if’s’ of my World

If I walk with you shoulder to shoulder

And we hold hands in a friendly affirmation,

And you walk miles away from me

I look ahead to appreciate only your perfection.

If I step on a mossy path

And happen to miss my footing,

You are always there to groove my stand

My friend and say, here you be!

If in the darkness of the night

Those fears like monsters drive me crazy

You are always there my friend

To paste my laughter back in place.

If amidst the hide and seek of the world

None find me out in my nook where I chose to hide,

You surely will arrive to restore my belief

That you needed to find me as I do matter.

Within all these if’s your happy smile

Lies cemented within all the moments and seconds,

That my life’s arbour and reason to live

That holds on to all the fragrances.

Neither are you a nightmare

Nor are you the arrogance of scorn,

You are the bright streak of morning light

Graced by the innocence of dawn.

Bio note:

Navamalati Neog Chakraborty is a creative person writing poetry, short stories, reviews and translating books. She finds that to retrieve one’s precious moments in life one needs to teach, write, paint and edit. They are the ramp where she show-cases life’s realities. The lights switched on are her expression. Poetry fuels her with energy in her journey of life as she articulates her incisive thoughts. She translates with an organically natural flow and finds the response of words, overwhelming as they have a physical chemistry. She is widely published with a huge body of work to her credit. She has a numerous book to her credit. She has 12 collections of poems, 1 anthology of short stories, 3 translated works from Bangla and 13 translated works from Assamese. A relentless traveller, she has with her the might of the Brahmaputra and the name of Sankaradeva! Vasudhaiva Kutumbakum is the very root of her being.

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