Poetry

Postcards From Ziro

Prarthana Banikya

December 04, 2018

This poem is wonderfully written and is very evocative. Like all good poetry, it has multiple interpretations. When we read it, we were also split in what we thought it conveyed, but then that is the beauty of a good poem. On one hand, it is a poem about love and longing- a yearning for a friend or lover who lives far away- how the excitement and desperation to hear from them affects us. On the other hand, through its descriptive phrases and use of scenery, this poem is an ode to the beauty of Ziro- a place in Arunachal Pradesh. Read it, and see what you make of it.

Meet me when evening touches nightfall
where hummingbirds fly over smoke
swallowed chimneys, grey and tall.

Fly over these green hills (will you please?)
with flowers growing by the street
and misty forests of oak and teak.

When I don’t hear from you for a week,
a dozen mundane things I quietly seek
so days without you don’t seem so bleak.

Your postcard written in blue ink
is a view of a shrinking sky,
light fading as the day goes by.

I imagine windy fields of rye,
and you standing at our porch
with a stubble and a crooked grey tie.

I watch rain pour from clouds of grey
while you hunch over a postcard
scribbling words at a Persian café.

Prarthana Banikya is a graduate in Sociology from Miranda House with a certificate in poetry. She spent her formative years in the valleys of Northeastern India from where she draws inspiration for most of her writing. Her work has been featured in several journals including Aaduna, Asia Writes, Aerogram, Danse Macabre, Poetry Super Highway, Namnai, and Pratilipi. In 2016, she was nominated for the Pushcart Prize for poetry and in 2018, was the recipient of the Orange Flower Award for poetry. She blogs at prarthanabanikya.blogspot.in.

You can read her articles here. 

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