Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 9, Number 1. May 2026. ISSN: 2581-7094
Lianchhiari
--- Lalnunsanga Ralte
Should the wind carry this voice?
Should the wind carry this voice?
At the edge of the rock she stands,
beckons me close,
"Come sit, come sit with me and sing."
"Will they hear?" I ask her.
"I don't know," she answers.
"To what end then?" I ask her.
"I don't know," she answers.
"But come sit, come sit.
We'll drown this emptiness,
drown it out, drown it out,
and pretend echoes are answers."
So there, in the still of night,
by mountain's side, by mountain's side,
there we sat,
singing songs of lovers
in a strange land.
Her voice rises
with the lilt of soft breeze,
notes sway, sway to cadence
of cliffs rising, cliffs falling,
dirges of bitter reverie,
bitter, bitter reverie.
Every word she punctuates with longing deep,
every strain she thrusts with living's urgency—
or is it death? or is it death?—
calling him home:
"Come back, come back
to where you belong."
Till her voice starts to tire,
she turns to me
with eyes pleading through a film of water,
begging me not to let the silence take over,
"He forgets me! He forgets me!"
She screams,
"Sing me back to memory!
Sing me back to memory!"
So I raise my voice, stammering,
to flowers pollinating, blooming
from melancholic cherry tree.
Dispersed to uncertain wind, she smiles:
"Let it fall, let it fall all over, all apart,
near and far, near and far.
Let it reach them anywhere,
anywhere they are."
Closer, closer to the edge
she dances wild, dances wild,
but always, before the fall,
dawn breaks, dawn breaks,
and I ask her again:
"Will they hear?"
"I don't know," she says.
"But better than emptiness,
better than emptiness,
and we'll pretend echoes are answers."
So there, in the still of night,
by mountain's side, by mountain's side,
there we sat,
singing songs of lovers
in a strange land.
Man Hlan
--- Lalnunsanga Ralte
Man Hlan is Man Hlan,
two syllabled, divided into
"man" as in the end part of
"human"
and "hlan", rhymed with the
first syllable.
As if you want to know what it is,
what it signifies,
I will sit with you and explain
patiently
about its importance as a tradition
in ensuring the respect and dignity
of the bride.
We process in numbers to the palai of
the groom,
showing she is loved, and honoured,
and that we part with her with
reluctance.
"Palai?" Now that's another
conversation.
What I will not do, however,
is call it "bride-price"
or some inadequate, anglicised horror
to make it palatable for your tongue.
Even the closest translation
can never carry the weight
of responsibility and duty
to those that have been chosen
and named protectors and refuge
from cruel spouses and in-laws.
I will not belittle it to something
you dismiss simply as native
tradition.
If I can arrange the air from my lips
to make the sound "choir"
with little closeness to how it is
spelled,
then you can say Man Hlan.
Walks with Pupu
--- Lalnunsanga Ralte
Walks with Pupu meant stories
Of places that seem half real, half
dreamt
He spoke of rocks lazing with trees
Among busy grass and curious wild
flowers
He spoke of streams and waterfalls
cascading
Like a maiden's hair,
With wild, shifting, curled ends
now razored bald by blades of
concrete
He'd remind me: how we treat our land
is how we treat our soul.
As a young man, he'd sleep
to the crickets' song.
These days he wrestles with jostling
machines,
determined to keep everyone awake.
Someday, he says, he will sleep again
to the singing of crickets—
and he will wake no more.
Half real and half dreamt,
I listen to his stories now through
a timber in the chirping,
a dew in the grass and wildflowers,
a curl in the cascade.
The land, his soul.
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Bio:
Lalnunsanga Ralte lives in Shillong, Meghalaya where he works as an
Assoc. Professor at Martin Luther Christian University. He has a PhD in
Literature from NEHU, Shillong. He is a member of the North East Writer's Forum
and has participated in various literary events all around the country. His
poems have been published in collections, magazines, journals and anthologies
such as Eastern Muse, Poetry of Dissent, Indian Quaterly, the Indian Yearbook
and The Red Hen Anthology of Contemporary Indian Writing. He was also part of
the Poets Translating Poets project organised by the Goethe-Insitut, Mumbai and
was invited to read his poems in a poetry festival in Germany.
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