Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 8, Number 1. May 2025. ISSN: 2581-7094
Silchar: A City of Subtle Rebellion
--- Suchhandam Paul
Silchar,
my city, where the Barak bends like an old widow’s back,
bearing
stories stitched in jute and loss,
where each
street hums with syllables of survival,
and the
air smells of rain-soaked pages from forgotten diaries.
The
streets wear silence like a shawl,
woven with
the breath of exiles
and the
echo of names
never
returned at home.
Here,
every house leans gently into the past,
walls
whispering in Bangla,
each brick
a syllable of loss,
each crack
a lullaby for the lost.
The rain
doesn’t fall here, it remembers.
Each drop
a postcard
from
Sylhet, from forgotten gardens,
from the
trembling lips of letters never posted.
Silchar
walks barefoot,
over ashes
of tongues burnt in protest,
over
railway lines that once ran
like veins
to a motherland
now
severed by the cartographer’s blade.
The wind
carries the weight
of mothers
who named their children
after
rivers, after revolutions,
after
wounds too tender to translate.
Even the
dusk here,
spills
like spilt ink,
as if the
sky too tried
to write
the pain, but broke down
mid-verse.
And yet,
Silchar
sings.
In cycle
bells and rickshaw wheels,
in
tea-stained laughter and bookstalls’ dust,
in Durga’s
clay smile and college debates,
in every
protest that ends with poetry.
A city
born not of stone,
but of
spirit.
Of soil
softened by sorrow,
and sharpened
by song.
Silchar,
a poem
that refuses
to be
forgotten.
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Bio:
Suchhandam Paul
is a doctoral scholar at NIT Silchar, Assam, pursuing research in the
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences. He completed his Master’s degree
from Assam University, Silchar. His academic interests include Indian English
literature, 1947 Partition studies, Memory studies, Oral history and he aspires
to contribute meaningfully to the field through his research.
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