Red Kerchief Poem by Madhabi Banerjee

The girl is happy today
Today her birth day
She enters at the threshold of sixteen.
Mother has given her a piece of cloth for a kerchief
And had dyed it red.
Mother is hanging it on the fence to dry
The girl had a red kerchief
She will go to the village pond to swim with her friends
Seeing the kerchief her friends will also admire it.
But mother forbids her not to go to the pond today
Due to surroundings are not s uitable
There is an agitation commissioned between two adjacent villages
A combat between two coloured flags.
The girl cannot understand
Why they fight each other for.
So she decided to go to the pond through forest
She stops and has trembled
There is a young man groaning
A dark blotch on his fore head above his brows
And a pool of blood under his head.
She looks at him bewildering
She runs through to the pond and wetted her kerchief
She pour drops of water to the wounded man
He gulps the drop of water, smiles and try to tell her ‘thanks'
Then droops down.
The girl wails once but she shuts her mouth
She bent down to the man and
covered his face with her red kerchief.