The whole courtroom held their breath, waiting to hear Nizam's answer. As he nodded in affirmation, the enraged audience got off their seats to beat up the accused.

Bury your feet where its green And when the air is thin you will see 

His five sons/ Were killed and the books...

The beast bellowed below Mushfiq’s bedroom window, propelling rushes of tingles within him. He smiled.

My love affair with spectacles has long been regarded by my mother as nothing but a symptom of my dramatic nature.

I’m not sure when I first realised that we’d met before. In the beginning, you were just the elderly man I often noticed pottering around our communal rooftop.

She’s as real as my meandering/ As tangible as tinkering.

Seven feet of mud swept water, /Bodies under rubble.

She doesn’t need an alarm For the last hour of the night.

Her Kohl-rimmed eyes, dangling earrings,/ The chiffon scarf, the satin silk shirt

The monsoons have passed. Moti has grown so healthy, so strong and so big that no other cocks even dare to be near him.

“It’s a type of Brazilian music, this elevator is playing The Girl From Ipanema.”

What makes You a boy, me a girl; Me a popper, you an Earl?

Crimson blood splattered amongst the ravaged lands

She walked, entranced, into the water until it reached her chin, the wing of her little pink butterfly stuck out like a shark fin.

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Ratan Da walked away, waddling the way he came from, whispering, “Don’t let it go to waste, don’t let it go to waste.”

We’re still alive/ but they wanted to die a natural death

Being a woman comes to me naturally If not me, then who? I was never asked to be one I was never asked to cook

This is a translation by Md. Abu Zafor of Bimal Guha’s “Kalo Biral” from the collection ‘E Kon Matal Nritya' (first published in 2022).