Reminiscences of a Tribal Teacher from Arunachal Pradesh
He would walk alone through the marshes to become one with the setting sun;and walkedto his village beyond the hills of hills.
But we waited for him every morning believing that the sun would rise again and ever again.
He came back every day with a bag full of green walnuts and filled light into our dull, expressionless faces with his comedy of our serious mannerisms.
Between alphabets, he showed us how to wink at the goats grazing outside the shutterless windows,
And spell non-human names of the birds, on the oak trees outside, brooding quietly about the consonants that swarmed inside the thin and long bamboo walls and thatched roof of the school.
The butterflies flew inand up under the roof and zoomed past our eyes. He calmed us down and demonstrated how to whistle a magical tune to make them our friends.
One evening he walked beyond into the clouds, towards the sun, alone again, and did not come back.
We waited morning, day and night with the goats and the oak trees fearing there was never going to be that light again. He did not come; he never came back again.
The birds were gone, the butterflies were gone. Our hands were no longer green. We winked and squeaked at the sky, like a group of penguins under a lightless sun.
The Poet and the One Who Knows All
A wall of wild silence,
This side a cry of agony,
That side a puff of arrogance.
The river of silence that
separates the poet and the one who knows all.
The two living in me
like two boats on a sea going mad day by day.
On Father, A Farmer
A farther memory
Of father,
A farmer–
Who barely lived,
Merely died.
And he always lifted the plough on his strong shoulders.
