How To View The Northeast Literature? Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Instead of searching for new poets in English,
Who are beginning to write
And who not,
It will be better
If translate we the native literature available into English
To have an idea
Of the history, art and culture of the lands,
Unfurrowed and unknown
Rather than delving into the things in the making,
There will be poets in English
And we shall read them.

From the Santhal Parganas of the Jharkhand pleateau
To Darjeeling and Kalimpong
To Assam, Tripura, Arunachal, Meghalaya, Manipur,
Nagaland, Mizoram,
What to say about,
A vast tract of land,
Full of dense forests and hills,
The mountainous ranges,
The treacherous Himlayan ranges
Bewildering and baffling indeed,
Where the ways get lost,
What to say it more?

Multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multi-lingual,
Tribal and aboriginal northeast is different
From the rest of India
And the theme of Indo-Aryan culture
As the phraseology, syntax, vocabulary
And the pronunciation
Unintelligible, not understandable at all
Barring a few of
Assam, Tripura
And the rest we don’t know.

Buddha and Buddhism seem to engage the space
And take to Burma, Tibet, Bhutan,
China, Japan and Mangolia,
Slipping through the passé
Into the borders leading to know
More about them,
Their life and culture,
Thought and tradition.