Refugee Colony of 1970’s
By Deep Kumar Dey

My grandfather has come from East:

A refugee from Jessore;

A land of ancient Buddhists and 

The rebel poet Michel Madhusudan, 

Everything has broken like the Tower of Babel!

My grandfather was a doctor and had an ancient name,

The scent of Greek on his face: 

With a long white beard, 

A column of ancient flesh and blood had grown 

from the white cloud of rivers - Jessore.

My grandmother is a double-outcast-refugee

from the land of rivers,

like Behula, she crossed the river with Lakhinder 

and took shelter into the exiled forest of King Virat, 

and lived her un-known recognitions in harmony with nature:

In the land of Mahadev, near Gola Gokarannath;

where ancient Buddhists temples of terracotta were situated on the high moulds!

And the fragile river UL like my grander mother used to flow- dried 

and my grandmother also died 

in the swarm land:

A refugee colony of nineteen-seventies;

a village without name!

Deep Kumar Dey is a Ph.D. Research scholar in the University Department of English and Modern European Language, Lucknow University, Lucknow. His research interests include theology, post-war European Literature, refugee literature, films and politics, with a particular focus on Italian post-fascist literature. His doctoral research, titled “The Negative Theology of Pier Paolo Pasolini: Select Writings and Films in Post -War Italy”, explores the new “linguistic turn” in literature and language. He is currently assistant professor of soft skills and technical communication in Babu Banarasi Das Northern India Institute of Technology, Lucknow, U. P.