Anjum Hasan Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

I saw her from a distance
And recognized her
That it is none
But Anjum Hasan,
An Assamese
From Shillong, Meghalaya,
A convent educated guy,
A novelist and poet
And an essayist
From the northeast.

Her persona is a modern man
The protagonist
From the hilly terrains
Exotic and impregnable
Speaking the Tibeto-Chinese dialects
Of the seven sisterly states,
Sometimes traversing into
Through the passes,
Opening the gates of the borders.

Now she looks she a Bangalorean
As is in Bangalore
A girl from the northeast,
A fictionist and poet
And a criticism-writer,
A modern girl from
The northeast in Bangalore,
But not so in entity
With the roots of nativity left somewhere.

Leaving the roots,
Why not to look to
Where she grew up,
Turned into a woman
Jane Austenian not,
Hardyian too not,
But a convent-ian
From the northeast,
A writer in the making,
Going cosmopolitan.