This is a story, they say I'm a character.
Can you tell me the ending, I'm asking
Because I don't know where I'm going,
Are we just simply showing an adventure?
One man's struggle left unmentioned,
Always seen blurry due to the world's hurry.

Is this it? Existing in the subtitles,
I thought I was surviving to perform accolades.
Instead, I feel mostly in the way
While they perform accolades.
I don't want to pass away but,
Why did you keep me here?
Just for everyone to pass my way?
I was built for greatness, I know it.
I feel it like you feel the wind blowing.
If I'm a character, show me what path to take!
No? It's three a.m. I lay awake,
Hoping for anything to say.

This is a story, anyone have an ear for lending?
I know the truth but, I won't ruin the ending.

By- Neelabh Sourav.
Translated from Assamese by: Bibekananda Choudhury.


I saw a variegated face on your hands
I saw a chequered venomous snake
Eyes bulging
Cheek nose swelled up like the character
in the painting of Van Gogh
Coughing intermittently
I saw an amazing sight on your palms
Magical actor fingers
I got startled on reading
What have you written

How dare you
Making a mincemeat of people
What an astonishing devilish pen I saw
On your hands

In a world of many Nations
With different forms of emotions
Rated in it's own notions

Mood rule  Perception
Misconception dresses  perfection
Choices draw in the innervation

My feeling is my happiness
In my world of openness
full of peacefulness

Toast to the guinea pigs
for extinguishing my fear of being alone

Toast to the moon
for being the substitute of street lamps

Toast to the car parked on the driveway
for indicating the presence of my family

Toast to the guitars
for remembering the way they tune

Toast to the fridge in the kitchen
for keeping our food fresh

Toast to the walls of the house
for absorbing the noises I rather not hear

Toast to the paintings
for reminding me of what I’m artistically capable of

Toast to the bed in the room
for keeping my body comfortable at night

Toast to the lights
for providing my room personality

Toast to the tapestries hanging on the ceiling
for maintaining my privacy

Toast to the dreamcatchers
for giving me hope of a good night's dream

Toast to the pictures on the wall
for reminding me of who I am with people I love

The first time my third eye opened, the world was horrifying to view.
I could see my entire life, each mistake glaring at me and pounding against my psyche.
Every good moment collided with the bad,
The future turned inside out and bathed me in a gory downpour of the viscera of moments to come.

Now, each time the sparks and fires start in my brain, it reopens
And with this golden eye of the blind gods, I'll stare into everyone's souls.
I'll watch all of you and judge you by the contents of your very essence.

I'll see you in the way you refuse to see yourself.
Because if people see what they want to see,
I've made it my duty to see the truth in all of it's slithering glory
As it encircles the apple, and beckons me forward.

if I'm being honest, it was with virulence.
what did i do to myself that may have
caused the relationship to change?
well, she stopped doing.
most things.
well, what did i stop doing?
and did i stop doing?
i can't expect many things to make
any sense at all as a ******.

Blessed from birth,
knowing the grit of dirt
between my teeth,
Living the dream
where money means
everything.
Is it a paper cup, today?
Is it a ****** there
in the dirt with ***** in it?
My mom says if I could save,
I could make it work, easily -
but she's using my name
to evade her debts,
and when I finally
get gone, to get electricity,
I have to implicate
her as a criminal.
Shame.

Dive deep.
And push down
til you reach the dark.
Dust off the sea bed
and take hold of your bedrock.

If you don't
you'll sink anyway,
but without a tether
and without a way back.

So take a breath.
Dive deep.
And once you've got hold of
what lies there,
bring it to the surface,
scrape it off,
so it can be seen
and noone need wonder
what's down there.

Dive deep.
What choice do you have?