Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 8, Number 1. May 2025. ISSN: 2581-7094
--- Aparajita De
“Why don’t you leave? When are you
going back? Why are you still here? Why can't you go?” 2002.
“LEAVE AMERICA.” 2003.
Random windows
rolled down with the wind hissing out the words. Cars that usually carried a
bumper sticker. As a pedestrian scouting down the streets, cars with “God Bless
America” were the ones I most noticed. When did it all change?
Leave America. 2003.
Who
will leave, I wondered in my head. God? Wait, are they saying this to me?
Am I…This was the land of the wild and wonderful West Virginia. Except for the
wildness that came to hunt me.
“Hey, Osama,
still here?” “Hey, I know why you’re here.” 2012. A piece of stone. There is a
red dot somewhere. Blankness afterward. The bookstore, off the corner from
Broadway, New York City.
A decade later.
Another city. Another home. A sudden threat in a city bursting with people, a
loud, off-key snarl, with a ferocity that bombs out my sense of being a person
in a place. I turn around. Slowly. I am the threat. Still.
A blur later. Who are we becoming?
Is there a WE?
I ran away. “I
am so sorry. Are you okay?” Dazzled by the love and the hate that comes in
abundance. “It is a package,” remarks one stranger in the subway. On my way
back. A band-aid to my forehead. I often think of the scar, vanished now, but
not yet.
“You are a sand
ni%#er, you know. Skin the color of gold, you snot-faced foreigner. Why don’t
you go.” 2014. Bus Number B1. 9 pm. Tuesday. Headed home to my studio.
In a video call,
I only show my parents the décor; I gleam at them brightly; eight thousand
miles away, I have made a home, and they smile and nod at my declaration. The
bus runs by its wheels, grinding the sound of my laughter in my head. I revel
later at my performance. The scars run crimson. How much does it bleed to hate?
To be angry all the time? Hate that was misplaced, too. What could I do? How?
So
hated.
The studio
apartment had become home after Hurricane Sandy. My seaside apartment condemned
by the City of New York. Oct. 22, 2012. The 27-feet wave ate it away. My home
made it to the front page after a short video
covered the news of the devastation. A childhood classic, Jaws, played
in my mind. Were there also sharks? A wandering mind like the rest of the Sea
Gate community, suddenly unanchored.
Unhomed in a big city. The salt waters carried away my difference
when we stood together homeless, drying up ourselves, bent over, taking slow
steps excavating for gemstones like children, except we were really hunting for
the remnants of our lives amidst the destruction, sometimes nodding at the
freshly looted grocery stores and gas stations, and wondering about the sand
that covered the streets, ankle-deep, and effortlessly burying our belongings.
Burying our borders. Spilling our desperation into one big glob of sand, dust,
and debris. When we sat down, each on the phone with a relief and aid
representative, some on hold, some others waiting in line to be fed. Hot dogs
cooking out of the sudden erupting grills. Soaking in everything that had a
moment of WE. Ocean Parkway and W 37th Street, Brooklyn, New York City.
Another bus
ride, blurry eyes from the crying at the havoc and destruction. A plastic bag
holding everything I had in that apartment. Everything. A torn picture. A few
pages from my journal. A picture from kindergarten. I was indeed snot-nosed
then. I ran my fingers near my nose, checking for more. Not yet. Not then.
The story of the
damage occupied my head. Stark. “Come and stay with me.” A hand gesture, no
language. “Come and stay with me until you find a place.” Another stranger.
Another bus. Same city.
I left the city
three years later, battered, broken, and scared of coffee shops and oceans.
Seeking refuge and thinking of the other city I often dreamt of. The City of
Joy. Kolkata. Eight thousand miles away, so much like the streets of New York,
winds that take you elsewhere, the homeless under the bridge, the highrise 42
that competes with the nearby Trump Towers, sudden stranger love, foods cooked
out in the open and generously distributed, buses bursting at the seams with
people, subway stations alive at night, I make my way through labyrinthine
lanes and traffic. Thinking that the maze would blur out my inability to fit
into place.
Thinking there was a smothering
embrace far away.
“We don’t eat
raw vegetables.” “You cannot wear those capris when you visit your uncle.” “We
don’t have a table knife for you. You’d have to use a spoon.” “We drink water
everywhere. We don’t buy water like you foreigners do.” “See how
crinkly-nosed ‘these foreigners’ are?! Get used to Us. And
we don’t go to war in a heartbeat.” I stand quietly, isolated. My voice chokes
in a strange longing.
A home I have
left behind. In a city that wants to clean itself, washing me out of it.
Tightening its circles. I have sensed another departure from another dot on a
map that located me. The community had carried on. I leave without feeling the
cling of the sand. Washed out. Away.
My parents, frail and confused, do
not wave back. I get ambushed by my not mattering anywhere. When did that
happen?
As the airplane
spits us out into Immigration & Customs, I am greeted back to reality.
“Welcome back home,” the customs officer smiles back. His starched shirt is
slightly crimpled as he bends over to hand me back my passport. I smile inside.
Thinking of the bridge, I will always walk to a Home that will forever be
elusive.
Welcome. Back.
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