A Pahari Selling the Stories of Hills

I have been married to the stories of Hills
as i am a pahari from the hills in the East
Now let me sell my stories to the city dwellers
if you call those Hills a dot in India
Let me sell some of the AK47s
that my mother found while collecting fire woods.
Let me read my poetry of rape
at India Gate and Gateway of India

In the stories of hills
Poetry fails poets, dead ones are the heroes
Curfew walks the streets with its companion silence
folk tales evolve to fuck tales of ministers and revolutionaries
And people like me who love such fables
are high day and night trying to narrate the stories
in some corner of a city with words like rape, death,bullet.

I know this city is loud
but its youth lack stories to get high
they have not sun bathed in the bank of any river
they have not heard of stories of men
 who painted the streets with red stars
before they succumbed to their bullet injuries
They have not heard of Yumlembam Ibomcha screaming;
"
if grapes are bullets
Shoot me again and again"

they have not heard of extortionists' struggle
for the right to self determination
they have not heard of folk tales
in which the wife gets raped in front of her husband
I must sell my stories now calling it them "sea of  puppies"
 or " the white Liars" or "One night at Whore centre"

Come Jayanta, lets sell the revolver
you found underneath your pillow in your poetry
Come get the 9mms too that you stole from a corpse
pretending to be a dead poet standing behind the coffin
Come Priya, bring your own death
away from the "men in uniform"
Let the city bleeds too
with "your pen that bleeds blue"
let's march with our bandwagon
let the city's loudness dies
and the city shrinks to a hut in our hills
Come, my love, help me selling my stories
We will marry when we get divorced with our stories of hills.

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