Written piece
For the love of patchwork
Pousali Bhar
India
About this piece
"For the love of patchwork" is a poem born from a place of both grief and moving on. Growing up in West Bengal, I have seen how the Partition continues to affect people, even 75 years later. It is a poem about how threads, of handwoven textiles and invisible, connect us together.
For the love of patchwork
Rushdie calls us translated men
Speaking many tongues since Babbel.
Yet one tastes sweeter among the rest
The syllables easy to roll over on my tongue,
Soft and round, homely, adorably plump,
Like mother's lap- smelling of some variation of winter greens.
We wage wars for homes,
Leave behind houses, hearths, hearts, a patchwork blanket.
O, that patchwork blanket!
Dida wove it over a lazy winter.
In India, winters are allowed to be lazy (though harvesting is hard work),
In Bengal, winters are spent with oranges from Darjeeling.
Summers seem scorching— at times unbearable,
Yet we wage wars as much for summers as for winters.
The nets make it possible for a Sylheti folk song
To win millions of hearts, here, in India—
Or were there always connecting threads,
The invisible kind,
Heartstrings that Radcliffe was too giant to feel?
We no longer seem to go at each other's throats
Like we used to
At least, in this part of the world.
The "refugees" remember their left behind homes, of course,
They (or their children) are proper citizens now
Of another homeland.
They go back as tourists
(Sometimes through a particularly eye-watering mustard hilsa),
Their homelands seem strange as if yellowed with time (or with mustard).
Buzzing Sealdah, thank God, is no more that pilgrimage.
A patchwork blanket!
Abandoned by the side of the road.
Buzzing flies, rubble, limbs that have no owner.
Some swear the beach has turned red.
Satellites disprove the rumour.
A rumour of blood seeps through the nets—
Like an absurd game of telephone.
A drum beats in the heart of all who have ever left behind a home.
Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub...
I piece together a great patchwork and sew it up with thread that has no recorded past.
I present it, foolishly, to your future bride,
Not knowing how—
A patchwork blanket!
how does a lazy winter's work survive exile?