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Home > Archives (2006 on) > 2008 > February 23, 2008 > CCU to CCU (Coronary Care Unit to Calcutta)

Mainstream, Vol XLVI No 10

CCU to CCU (Coronary Care Unit to Calcutta)

Sunday 24 February 2008, by Taslima Nasreen

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Away from home,
- Away from my dear cat, my books and papers, my friends,
- Away from my life,
- With my face and head covered in a quilt stinking of uncertainty,
- Lying for days on end
- Lying one knows not where,
- With the heart gnawed and clawed viciously.

Then when the heart stops, the inevitable CCU,
- To draw life somehow back from the edge,
- Back to throbbing, the heart would like to return,
- the sick body seeks home,
- To return to the cat, to friends, to the cherished touch.
- The mind journeys from CCU to CCU . . . !

Who cares to listen to the heart!
- Picked up from the CCU, she is told,
- In a voice severely sombre, that shakes you to the core,
- Go to some other country, leave this land.
- Where can I go? I’ve no other place to go,
- When I die, bury me in this soil,
- You can then tear up the soil to find my roots.

Who cares to look into anything?
- Who cares to be miserable at a human being washed away in her own tears screaming for help?
- From the CCU into exile,
- They flung me once again like dirt into darkness,
- They had washed their hands clean, the distinguished authorities,
- I stood before them, with bowed head, and folded hands.

(Dainik Statesman, February 7, 2008)

Translated from the original Bengali by Samik Bandyopadhyay

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