Interrogation Cell

Interrogation Cell
If you can no longer recognise
one day from another,
say, Monday from Sunday
leave that room and step out.
“It is a good thing starvation is a reality”
They think battered with cruel true statements you will be jolted out
of whatever town you inhabit inside
You wade into water when you wake
You’ve ran out of buckets to be placed strategically under the leaky roof
Smoke and contemplate for sometime
if there is a way to balance a bucket
at the edge of the bed
You think you will be unlucky in death too,
for instance, yesterday there was a murder, in a high security area,
surveillanced by CCTVs
All seven cameras failed
to do the only task it was to do
You are told you write depressing poetry
You answered “The trick is to read newspapers incessantly”
You didn’t tell them “The trick is to feel every death in your bone”
The familiar blackout is not because of load shedding, now it is your choice because electricity is prepaid.
In another time I am sure
they’ll treat you with electricity
coursing your skin or maybe they did.
I heard you were talking to your overgrown fence.
You keep answering
even outside the interrogation room.
The possibility of pain
in everyday objects is revealed anew.
You shudder at light sockets
and your own lighted cigarette.
Who could know the truths of those dark rooms, sound-proofed from the world. Otherwise the shrieks would have rose to a crescendo.
Every now and then a single truth escapes but lies in a warehouse because no decision is made yet.
Reportage
The screen is primitive, savage and 24/7.
The reportage shames itself, 
only shame doesn’t exist,
except when summoned to tie around a woman’s neck. 
Myopia is a rampant affliction. 
The radicals throw their wholesome abuses to all 
but worry about a cut in their share.
The needle points to every direction, including you 
(and let me not congratulate myself) and me. 
The concluding day of the conference on AFSPA
Booze flows freely
from the army canteen
so, over dinner the nuances of the argument is further elaborated. 
There is hope that
in the season of mangoes
the parrots will be done parroting memorised lines  
 
This is no poem of apocalypse. 
This is merely reportage.

 

Raiot

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Soibam Haripriya Written by:

Soibam Haripriya's poems have appeared in Samyukta: A Journal of Gender and Culture; 40 under 40: An Anthology of Post-Globalisation Poetry: Poetrywala, Guftugu, Indian Cultural Forum. Most recently her work appeared in Indian Literature’s issue on 21st Century Indian Poetry in English. She currently teaches at TISS Guwahati.

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