The stories of our hills

I have been married to the stories of our hills
I am a pahari from the hills in the east
Now let me sell my stories to the citydwellers

Let me sell some of the AK-47s
That my mother found while collecting firewood.
Let me read my poetry of rape
At India Gate and the Gateway of India.
In the stories of our hills
Poetry fails poets, dead ones are the heroes
Curfew walks the streets, with silence its companion
Folktales have evolved into tales of revolutionaries.
And people like me, who love such fables,
Are high day and night, trying to narrate stories
In some corner of a city,
With words like rape, death, bullet…