Jhilam Chattaraj, a poet and academic, critic based in Hyderabad, recently returned to her hometown, Durgapur, West Bengal. Through her visit, you feel the city’s timelessness and its quiet struggle to keep pace with the demands of a changing world. Her micro-poems weave memory, nostalgia, and personal pain into a reflection of a place caught between past and present.
Driving through the steel township, you see smooth roads stretching beneath layers of green trees, their leaves glowing softly in the sunlight. The familiar shades of green wrap around like a gentle embrace, holding memories and moments lost. In this calm, you realize that home isn’t just a place — it’s a “living memory.”
For Jhilam Chattaraj poetry is an expression of lived memories more so in this new collection – Durgapur Cinquains
Green gods
perch on flushed boughs —
a town’s summer glory —
we return — tarways conjoin kins —
childhood.
Mudpaths
ignite old aches.
I search for household thorns —
shadowed silence swallows my wrath —
noon walk.
Steel lips
hold solid turns —
men slip from empty homes —
children claim paper origins —
tree lines.
Inked moon
carries her black —
fire-tongued — all devouring —
she wraps the earth in sacred gold —
Kali.
Safe hands
cradle baba —
his fragrant soul returns —
we float songs on Damodar’s swell—
light boats.
