Follow the Banshee's Wails! Join the Tribe of Ghosts, Vampires, Banshees, Witches!

Follow the Banshee's Wails! Join the Tribe of Ghosts, Vampires, Banshees, Witches!

  This is my new blog. My earlier one, dormant now, with my juvenilia and a bit beyond that is over at Heartstrings on blogspot.  Meraki-- g...

Tuesday, 4 August 2026

'Guwahati: Childlike Innocence in Five Frames' in Monograph Mag

 

So this actually came out earlier, before the Stephens interview and the Dickinson meeting, but the banshee was so busy wailing and crying and being petrified by life in general that she never knew. Monograph Mag is a student-led mag from Kolkata, and the poem was initially originally written as three frams before it kept getting expanded and became 'Guwahati: Childlike Innocence in Five Frames. You can read it here at serial number 22 and the pages of my ages, that's 39-40. I am also pasting it below. oh by the way, it should be flyover instead of bridge in the poem, okay??? I know I know, but I didn't know when I wrote the poem and I forgot to change it and even forgot to ask the mag editors to do so. The Riverview Guest House continues charging exorbitant prices but there is no Riverview anymore so perhaps they should consider changing their name to No Riverview Guest House or else start a Riverview Movement. 


In other news, speaking of Assam, I have been doing some good deeds. Actually just helping in others' good deeds. So this Queer-e-Junglers group which has just turned two, started in Assam and spread to Delhi and I just got to know about them a month ago but now I'm taking part in their activities and meets and they're awesome and they have this barter mutual aid thing too-- the ultimate antidote to a hypercapitalist society. So as the banshee is a poor little rich girl with toooo much stuff which gets dirtier and dirtier cos she never cleans cos she's always wailing moaning crying paining dying I told you-- so finally the banshee is doing a bit of giving and sharing and passing on her stuff to others. The other good service the banshee is doing is that she's giving away piles and mounds of clothes she doesn't use for the Assam flood-affected people via some collection and donation drives by other good people. 



Guwahati: Childlike Innocence in Five Frames 

The guard who stopped me
 near the riverfront in uzan bazar 
where the bridge is being built
saw I was peeved. 
"kharab mat pana, baidew. Don't mind, sister", he said.
 They will scold me if I let you go there." 



Entering Don Bosco university, Tapesia, 
for an interview, the guards at the gate stopped me. 
What did they want? Not my photo id.
These two boys wanted me to click a photo of them. 
It made me laugh. 



At the airport, they asked me curiously:
what is this moringa powder? 
They made me remove the hair oil
 from my hand baggage.
Keep it elsewhere, they said. I asked how.
 Cabin baggage was already checked-in. 
 Then they apologised.
 I have never ever witnessed this in any other airport. 


Next time round at the airport
It wasn't hair oil. It was my spice jars. 
Raw spices bought from Assam.
Not in hand baggage. Go run to cabin baggage
they said. Cabin baggage was already checked in. 
They brought it out for my spice jars. 
Extra weight? I whispered. No-no ma'am, it's fine, they said. 
I have never ever witnessed this in any other airport.

A rickshaw boy 
I hand him a hundred-rupee note
"Please give me a new note", he cries
"Why?", I ask. "What's wrong with this one?" 
"I like the colour", he says, eyes brightening. 



Endearing, unsophisticated
The person, and the emotion here

surpasses the role or mask.   

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