Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 9, Number 1. May 2026. ISSN: 2581-7094
Four Poems on My Mother Tongue and
Her Ways
--- Lungmying Lepcha
I
Mong Kyong, a recurring vision
During my childhood, we used to sleep together with
my aunts, and whenever someone got disturbed by
nightmares, one of my aunts would superstitiously
blame the person who had dinner in the bedroom
because of the droppings of
their food pieces, which had led to bad dreams.
She called this “Mong Kyong shyo”, a word to
depict
how the food droppings
attract negative energies for nightmares.
A Mong Kyong consists of a series of unfinished dreams
each having its part played in different shifts of
sleep.
tccording to the experienced ones,
this would haunt mostly during dawn.
to me, Mong Kyong has been all about
JCBs filled with coal toppling down our village,
the reverse version of a village fair with
spinning ferris wheel of fear,
ghosts and silhouettes peeping from the room’s
ventilator
only to be pulled back;
half-seen,
not ready for the next episode.
II
Instead of remembering Culture
through Stories, I write poems
As I sit in front of my laptop
late, on a Sunday night,
the only thing that buzzes through my mind
is to discover and unearth my folklores
and rewrite it into a story
for the world.
But the very
lengthy process of editing and proofreading
haunts out the sweat as it takes months
for an individual to collect the dying folklores
and meet the deadline, yet my very first priority
is to translate the stories
in our schoolbooks.
But slowly I
realise
that now the resources are being limited
so before the stories get dried up
in the last of tongues in our community
the thought of preserving and archiving kicks in.
Ever since I was in the sixth grade
I was always interested in the stories about my roots
for it planted a seed of home and comfort.
Every story foretold a plea through the
cheap pages of my language textbook.
While for many, the subject was boring and difficult
to interpret,
maybe because somewhere, unlike other heavily
researched subjects
this had no future, for there were fewer participants.
As for me, the godly fairies, the mystic mountains,
our brothers- the
mighty rivers and the ogrish mischief demons of the
forest never seemed to
ignore me, for they visit me in my dreams as they tell
me their wishes
to write their stories and voices of survival.
Yet on this Sunday evening, I think of my culture and
kicking off my demotivation, I write this poem for them.
III
Teesta Aamu and her Song
Aamu runs down the valley
children follow her
gush gush goes the water
against the rocks
Splash splash
the children's footsteps sound
IV
The Rage Of Aamu(Mother)
We had asked you to
stop hurting our mother.
with all the strength of her child,
we protect her to the best of our ability.
yet the cries went silent through the corridors
Her holy body was interrupted by the
greed of pride
But she was a mother,
A mother who has all the power to bear.
It wasn't until
she could not stand more
So,
She flowed,
flowed with all her might,
she swept away her children along with her
She still flowed uncontrollably
With the mind of being free,
she couldn't look back
And all we can do is
let her calm down
Oh Wait
And let her flow freely.
*These poems are about a major river in Sikkim, from
freely moving to being tied by human actions and how ultimately nature breaks
free.
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Bio:
Lungmying
Lepcha is a B.Tech student at NIT Sikkim who believes she can extract
literary works from her culture and translate them into English to share them
with the world. Lungmying's writings are largely ethnographic, revolving around
the myths and culture of the Lepchas. She uses mostly poetry and creative
nonfiction forms of writing.
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