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My sister is winging a sharp eyeliner

She paces frantically back and forth in between —

Brushing her hair, caressing and ironing the black floral wrap dress

The one with the little white peonies engraved on, that she loves so much

She tells me she’s not to put on a lot of blush

Upon enquiring, she says her fiancé doesn’t like it—though she does.

The paradise of love, in its adorn bliss,

In its decor of grandeur, remains through the day.

These cherry tree flowers have bloomed, charmed and irresistible—

Their distinguishing dress so beautifully displayed.

The cherries adorn themselves in fitting attire,

Along with the gentle autumn breezes,

Which yield to winter's cold embrace.

There's no cadence 

in morning rush hours—

as anger burst like atomic bombs

and words splattered 

like spilt tea on a white sheet;

What of the child,
so pure and young,
the family's breadwinner, 
whose old mother, ever vigilant
listens for his return.

This cruel maniac has crept in our town,

Wreaking havoc from the corners of our street

To the utmost glorious sanatorium of our time;

Young leaves littered our street on borrowed time,

As they sniffed plume of sacrilege powdery mildew.

Who will be vigilant to console the Inconsolable?

As precious soul shimmers in this crazy hallucination—

Our homes have become a mournful dwelling sanctuary.

The evening air is quiet,
a silence that is warm, not empty.
I sit beside Papa,
the glow of the TV flickering across his face—
an old Bollywood movie, familiar, soft.
We do not talk much,
but we do not need to.
Some silences are not hollow;
they settle, like an old song—
comforting, known.

The winds had come, uprooting the trees, the ageing bamboo fences, and even the roofs of some houses. It signalled the end of winter, but the rain hadn’t arrived yet - the rain that would rejuvenate Sibo-Korong into a stream again. At times, the stream would eat into the fields on its periphery, moving humongous boulders from the mountains and rolling them so vigorously that they turned into small, smooth pebbles and scattered the rocks in its path. The stream originated in the lofty hills and ended its rocky trail at the mouth where it met the Siang - a name the locals of Pasighat know the Brahmaputra by. 

It has now been four months since my mother passed away, all the relatives and friends like migratory birds have returned back to their own world. In my family of two older brothers and my father, no one talks about her anymore. The verbal denial of her death now stages our everyday interactions, as acknowledging her absence would bring about a cathartic pain of grief that is slowly unfurling and recoiling, underneath the shroud of willful amnesia. 

I have not been able to process her passing, and with each passing day, the tentacles of grief seem to now rapidly subsume the comfortable facade of denial. Over time, the grief has now cemented itself around the periphery of my throat, making me unable to utter words without bursting into tears. I can feel it swirling inside my stomach, screaming with pain and indignation, aching to be released from the confines of my body. I had to come to terms and face the new reality. 

She was riding pillion, and I was aware of her knees brushing against the sides of my thighs at every bump and every turn. She was holding onto my shirt; I told her to circle them all the way around my waist. The road to safety was long and rocky, and it felt like there could be an ambush at every turn, either by her kindred or mine. We were only sixteen, but we were in love, and we were above the divide—Kuki, Zomi; none of that mattered to us.

When we were little, my sister and I 

had a small, cardboard box

filled with stickers. 

Treasure chest, we would call it.

Of glittering stars and tiny flowers,

cartoon faces grinning up at us.

Nestled within the embrace of ancient mountains, their peaks adorned with clouds and where thick forests weave a tapestry of green lies my hometown like a wildflower, the home of the Aos - one of the tribes amongst the Nagas. Here, the air is thin, life is monotonous, time is slow and the mountains bring a sense of peace. In this Naga Hill at India’s periphery, the memory of our headhunting past lurks in every corner and because of this, I am a curiosity, an ethnic specimen for those beyond the borders of North-East.

What does it mean to travel? Is it as simple as going from point A to point B? For some, it’s just movement - a mundane act, a means to an end. But for others, it is a quiet, relentless struggle. A reminder that displacement is not always about exile; sometimes, it’s about the invisible lines that turn familiar paths into battlegrounds.

For the Kuki-Zo people of Manipur, movement itself has become an act of survival. Since the escalation of ethnic clashes between the Meitei and Kuki communities in May of 2023, the Imphal airport has remained inhospitable ground for the Kuki Zo population. This is not a legal order or a political mandate, but it is common knowledge for all of us from the community. For us, the Imphal airport is a risk. 

At a dinner table conversation with my father, he tells me how he’s recently started feeding a lot of birds back home. Half listening to him go on about how the Hadeeth mentions that birds can earn you a lot of grace, bless their helpless little hearts, I think of how poetic it is that his love for animals finds religious sanction so he can now serve them joyfully, without it being a necessity of his profession (he's a vet), or an attack on his masculinity.