I don’t hate my community of origin–Lotha-Naga
I just hate the patriarchy that suffocated me
I don’t hate my country of origin—India
I just hate how they always made me very small as a tribal woman.
I don’t hate my present home—Europe
I just hate how long years of Colonial Privilege have
blinded many into believing that they are a superior race
I don’t hate—Myself
I just hate how I gave power to all these forces to define my
life for so long

Rōzumarī Samsāra, Nagaland

(Rōzumarī Samsāra is a renowned poet and performance artist from Nagaland. She is the author of Memoriographia, a collection of poems, and is now working on her second poetry book. This poem is from my poetry collection, Memoriographia published by Heritage publishing house (Dimapur))

Native Land

First came the scream of the dying
in a bad dream, then the radio report,
and a newspaper: six shot dead, twenty-five
houses razed, sixteen beheaded with hands tied
behind their backs inside a church . . .
As the days crumbled, and the victors
and their victims grew in number,
I hardened inside my thickening hide,
until I lost my tenuous humanity.

I ceased thinking
of abandoned children inside blazing huts
still waiting for their parents.
If they remembered their grandmother’s tales
of many winter hearths at the hour
of sleeping death, I didn’t want to know,
if they ever learnt the magic of letters.
And the women heavy with seed,
their soft bodies mown down
like grain stalk during their lyric harvests;
if they wore wildflowers in their hair
while they waited for their men,
I didn’t care anymore.

I burnt my truth with them,
and buried uneasy manhood with them.
I did mutter, on some far-off day:
“There are limits”, but when the days
absolved the butchers, I continue to live
as if nothing happened.

—Translated from Manipuri by the poet

Robin S Ngangom, Manipur

(Robin S Ngangom is a bilingual poet and translator who writes in English and Manipuri. He has co-edited two significant anthologies of poetry from Northeast India. His latest book, My Invented Land, appeared in 2023)