The Fish and the River

You say it with a smile on your face

Eyes teasing and bright

You Bengalis and your fish

I roll my eyes at the words I’ve heard all my life

And pretend to only pretend to be angry

You wouldn’t understand it, I almost say

But you wouldn’t understand it

My father’s only constant sets up shop across the city

Sunlight bouncing off scales every morning

No matter taxes and market crashes and other nitty gritties

The cart does not move

He respects my father, despite his bideshi ways and the English on his tongue

He knows love when he sees it

It’s why, every Sunday, at thirty minutes past ten

He rearranges his bounty, and the fresh ones fall to the front

My father respects him too, but for different reasons

He reminds him of his mother’s restaurant, and warm afternoons

Now all hours are rush hour

The stink makes him feel thirteen again

And he thinks of home.

We Bengalis and our love

It is not your fault

You see the fish but not the river

Carrying prayers through the burning ghats

Not the hands that dig into mud

Rooting through history and past

All that we’ve had and lost

This is a people shaped by water

We are a delta, our history is fluid

We flood, we recede, we leave behind rich silt

And in that silt, we grow our rice, we sing our songs

And yes, we pull our silver harvest from the net

This is how we remember.

This is how we find our way home.

Vedika Sengupta