Editor's Note
There is much that stands out in Brishti Roy’s ‘Ladies Compartment’, but most striking for me is a rare and powerful choice: the use of the first-person plural pronoun ‘we’. This wielding of a collective energy catapults the poem into the space of ‘5:46, Andheri Local’ by Arundhathi Subramaniam or ‘Bowl’ by Diane Seuss.
The osmotic action of ‘we breathe each other’s hard days at work’ is more than an exchange of breath. It suggests a constant interaction with a hive of other selves. For anyone who’s travelled in a local train that is jam-packed with co-passengers, this feeling rings true. Roy’s speaker, then, is not a solo traveler but a communal entity, traveling with others, sensorially open to being affected and in turn, affecting others.
This use of ‘we’ is not a random lumping of identity or a dissolution of differences, no. It’s a recognition of the interconnected experiences of women all over. It is instinctively choral. It seeks to un-alienate and ‘bind us in overlapping stories’.
— Kunjana Parashar
The Bombay Literary Magazine
Ladies Compartment
We breathe each other’s hard days at work,
Hold each other’s bags, babies,
Gazes droopy from looking all day behind our backs.
Maashies by the door lean on their baskets
Playing ludo, birds take off from their aanchal
And crash on window panes.
We are ribbon wrapped by the world outside.
Day by day we sway among familiar
Faces stuffing moong daal fry and freedom
And for a minute we forget…
We look at each other. Laughter rings.
The sparkle in our earrings blinds us,
Binds us in overlapping stories.
Sit here, we say.
No wisp of cloud will ever be the colour of us.
The setting sun limns our chests, our cheeks.
We come and go, no Michelangelo could
Paint us as we arrive home.
An Afternoon at Sealdah Station
I broke away from the crowd with eyes glued
To the time table. My train was late. And something else.
At the bottom, on the sand, it lay dead. A fish—
Coal black, fairy wing fins, its body glistening
Like Mary’s veil. A child, and a very old man, also stared.
The time table blinked. Trains arrived. Mine, not yet.
But the child’s. And his. A white fish just discovered
Its fallen friend. Or so it seemed. It dived like a suicide
And crashed into its friend. There was a sandstorm
For a fraction of a second. The dead one floated
And went back to sleep. What did I just see? Grief?
Or the terror of mistimed prophecies? This tank
Of tragedy, and three more are installed near platforms
One to four. Finally, my train arrived on three.
I missed the blink. My feet took me away.
I am going home now. My mother will make me tea.
Someday, she’ll stop. And I’ll never know which it is
Terror or grief, or both.
River Dog
You sleep on beds of marigold and vermillion dust
Bathed in a trillion little mud-waves.
The river, she tells you things, she babbles.
You flick your ear and nod, only you
Have seen the leafcutter ants carry their dead
You wag a little prayer over their heads.
Senile trees wobble over you,
They speak to the river.
She giggles- their roots tickle her belly.
Only you saw them bend over their knees
Jump into the river to die.
It wasn’t the storm, you sighed, it was time to go.
Your blessings float in hyacinth folds.
You keep the boatmen safe
Rich men rob their songs
You sigh
You say you’re only a river god,
God of ants, bees, dead leaves,
Sometimes of crows
Who eat the drifting dead who
Someday, shall eat you.
Years roll.
You curl up on the sandstone step
In ways of a minor god who answers small prayers.
Acknowledgments
Image credits: scene from Ladies Only trailer. The documentary was made by Rebana Liz John.
Author | BRISHTI ROY
BRISHTI ROY is an aspiring poet based in a suburb by the Hooghly river. She has a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in English Literature from Jadavpur University, Kolkata. Her poems have appeared in Orangepeel magazine and Dhoopbisscuit zines.