Kushiara and Other Poems is Rimi Nath’s debut collection of poetry. Named after the River Kushiara, flowing through Karimganj town and separating Assam from Bangladesh, the collection comprises 60 poems of rare musical quality. I first read it in 2021. I did not plan to write about it.
But after reading it the first time, I found myself going back to it again and again: a poem here, a poem there now and then. I was intrigued. What was it in this book that drew me into its world this way? I decided to find out by having one more careful reading.
The first thing that strikes me about this collection is its unpretentiousness. This impression is heightened by the book’s epigraph, a quotation from Rabindranath Tagore: “These paper boats of mine are meant to dance on the ripples of hours, and not reach any destination.”
As I read on, I realise that this is, in fact, the reigning spirit of Kushiara. There is no attempt to impress, no attempt to make any claim about anything. The very first poem will bear this out:
‘That is not our country,’ the father says
Pointing his finger across the River Kushiara
The child, in her anxiety and wonder, utters
‘Are the foreigners on the other side…Read more