The poet closes her eyes and dreams flames up resistance. She pens, 바카라˜The shafts of the sunlight are setting /all the detention centres on fire.바카라™
Do you have lights in the cell?
We don't have lights here.
In my grandmother's fairy tales
The ghosts didn't have shadows.
My grandmother warned us-
To know ghosts you must look
for the shadows.
They don't have shadows either.
Now I search for the shadows everywhere.
And I see somewhere in a distant prison cell
a shadow is growing large.
It's taking the shape of a rising sun.
I see the sun raising its fist
and shouting,Â
"No NRC, No CAA."
The shafts of the sunlight are settingÂ
all the detention centres on fire.
Is that You, Umar?
Can a prison ever incarcerate a sun?
(Moumita Alam is a poet from West Bengal. Â Her poetry collection The Musings of the Dark is available on Amazon.)
