Hills That Make My Home #PoetryMonday

Hey lovess,

Today, I simply want to wish you two things: Ayyy – A week of healthy great laughter(s). Beee – A better morning everyday.

Most of you know that I’m from India. But what you don’t know is that I’m from a small state of India called Nagaland. I grew up strongly rooted in my culture, and love every bit of my identity as a tribal person. This Monday’s poem is about how as a young girl who is away from home, I want to keep up with the generation and learn new things, and then there is this part of me that is equally over protective of my roots and identity. Mostly, it is an apologetic fear that me and my peers are already losing touch with our roots.

Hills that make my home

I walk on plastic shoes,
Over rubber grounds
I’m covered in clothes,
My grandma would never wear
I paint my lips
With paints
I conceal my skin
With color.
All these-
Manufactured and created from lands I’ve never been to.

I carry machines in my pocket
Commute with science
I write in a foreign language
Speak not in my mother tongue,
Who am I?

Am I the girl who comes to your rescue,
Am I the woman my mother used to be
Or am I my father’s young soul.
Who am I?

I am the 16,579 square km of hills and plains.
I am The fresh river water my grandma loved.
I am my mother’s son,
My father’s daughter.

What a son should not be, I became.
What a daughter must not do, I loved.
But you see, I’m not a rebel
For I need not fight.
I’m simply the mass of what I am to become.

The hills that make my home
Comes to my dream once in a while
The sound of grandpa’s calling
Tickles my ear once in a while
And the love of my great grandmother
I never was able to meet
Comforts me all the while.

The music in me is all of me
I sing songs of warriors
I sing songs of love
I sing songs of harvest
For I come from the land of hills.
I am the music I dream of.

We sing in tears
We sing in laughter
We sing as we work.
As we sing the birds sing along
The trees hum to the beat
The rivers burble
The ground stands still to give serenity
The flowers whistle.
We sing.
I wish we still sang.
We lost our voices.
We lost our voices to the haunting melody of modernity.
We lost our voices.
I dream of voices.
We still sing.
We still sing in our dreams.
And as we sing
We find ourselves.