Bruises Without a Country
Sanatan borders bruised me
In caste societies.
Left Ideologies crushed me
In European societies.
Sharia societies
Erased my skin.

The Face I Never Showed
When I called you from Dimapur,
You asked me, "What have you seen in me?"
I did not recognise your mask until
You attacked me with iron rods,
With words and humiliation,
With insults and violence.

When I called you from Delhi,
You said, "I should not show my face to you
If I truly love you."

So I did not show my face to you
For twenty-four years.

What would you call it
Love or lust?

Borders Against My Skin
Do you know our philosopher of justice,
John Rawls,
Who took an African woman as his bride,
Raised four children by her side,
And never cast her hand away
For pride, for race, or worldly sway?

Yet never have my eyes beheld
An Indian scholar, wise and learned,
A poet, artist, sage, or seer,
Who loved a Pariah woman/man dark as me
Without the chains of caste and colour.

Had you chosen me in love,
You too might have walked through history's door,
Another Rawls in justice crowned,
Whose heart made equal what the world
Had long condemned and trampled down.

But you
You clothed me in humiliation,
Fed me insult in place of grace,
Reduced my Dalit skin to something lesser,
A thing without a human face.

You forgot the noble way:
Dialogue, debate, discussion
The gentle art of democracy.

Again and yet again you proved
No place was kept for me in Nagalim;
No path was opened through your guarded lands,
No pass allowed my footsteps in.

For India's borders and Nagalim's gates
Stand wide for every shade of skin
Except this Untouchable and Black body
I carry like an ancient wound.

Dalit Love in the Rear-Legroom Grave
Do you remember
how I touched your Naga foot
after you dumped me
in your rear legroom,
buried me
in that small
rear-legroom grave
in Dimapur?

Do you remember
how you reclined your seat
over my Dalit body,
my Black body,
my proletarian body
making a coffin
out of your car?

Your casteists, your antisemites
speak the same language
the language of persecution,
the life of a Muslim,
the religion of Islam,
the life of a Hindu,
the grammar of India,
the language of South Asia,
the sameness of Europe.

Even as we create
the ideas of knowledge
you consume.

Dancing Like Europe
Do you remember how I touched your foot
when you dumped me in the rear legroom?

Such a small floor,
that gap between the backseat and the front,
yet your brown legs still managed
to sandwich my Dalit body
into that narrow wedge of carpet and plastic.

You were in the front seat,
eyes on the road,
while from the darkness at your feet
I reached forward and touched you.

I was asking you for protection,
but you moved like Europe
dancing through the massacre
of six million Jews,
dancing through the massacre of October 7
unshaken,
untouched.

I stayed there,
caught between your brown legs
and the hard back of your seat.

What words are left
for this minefield of humiliation?

Inner Land Permit
Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra
crossed the Inner Land.
It admitted everyone
except my
black Dalit skin.

It admits its violators,
but excludes
its lovers.