The Banyan Tree, Auroville
A poem by Jhilam Chattaraj

The Banyan Tree, Auroville

This wind is over a hundred years old—
it has woven petals from the sun

to teach silence under a Banyan tree.
Root is trunk; trunk is root.

The world withers away
but broad, thick leaves keep growing;

they laugh like parrots
in the morning sky.

I sit still. A tutored attempt
to learn the loneliness of the tongue.

Sound precedes speech— 
yet all the rude words

of a teacher who lost
her burnished throne,

remain wet with the night’s dew.
Tiny adults— their designed apathy

occupy my mind.
I learn to let go.

They say, the tree
is a body of miracles.

It will etch
my solitary path to service.

I try and try— I kind of begin
to love this numbness.

It’s not ‘what’ but ‘how’—
there are ‘takers’ more than ‘givers’.

I sit and expand;
better to be wider than taller.

About the Author:

Jhilam Chattaraj is an academic and poet based in Hyderabad, India. She has authored the books, Noise Cancellation (poetry), Corporate Fiction: Popular Culture and the New Writers and When Lovers Leave and Poetry Stays (poetry). Her works have been published in Mekong Review, Calyx, Ariel (Johns Hopkins University), Colorado Review, World Literature Today Room, Porridge, Not Very Quiet, Queen Mob’s Tea House, and Asian Cha among others.

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