Assam poet Barshashree Buragohain.
| Photo Credit: The Hindu
The 17 syllables of a haiku or the 14 traces of a sonnet satisfied Barshashree Buragohain way back that poetry is mathematical. Two months in jail now makes her do the maths earlier than giving in to her poetic urge.
The police had picked up Ms. Buragohain from a buddy’s home in jap Assam’s Uriamghat on May 17, 2022 for posting an “objectionable poem” on Facebook. The poem, titled ‘ Akou korim rashtradroh’ (‘Will rebel against the nation again’) was seen as supporting the United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent), a banned extremist organisation.
Charged beneath the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), she was despatched to a jail in Jorhat city the next day. She was launched on bail two months later and acquitted of all prices of sedition on March 16.
“I think twice before using certain words or phrases that I thought were quite normal to be in the armoury of a poet who is passionate about what is happening around her. But there’s no joy in checking for words that someone might find offensive, and that could be the reason I don’t write poems as often as I did earlier,” Ms. Buragohain, 19, instructed The Hindu from her residence in Kawoimari, a village close to Teok in Jorhat district.
It is not solely the regulation that has stemmed the circulation of her creativity. Her mother and father, too, have been advising her to tone down and never put up her verses on social media.
“The germ within, I guess, is difficult to kill. I am penning my thoughts in verses but not as often as I did earlier. Besides, I am focussing more on mathematics as I did not do well in two second semester papers I wrote from jail,” she mentioned.
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Ms. Buragohain will repeat these papers — actual evaluation and calculus — along with her fourth-semester examination at Jorhat’s Devi Charan Baruah Girls College. She is pursuing her undergraduate course in arithmetic from this faculty affiliated to Dibrugarh University.
She took to arithmetic as simply as she did to poetry whereas learning in Kawoimari High School. More than 80% marks in Class 10 made her go for science on the Teok Girls’ Higher Secondary School. The alternative of arithmetic was primarily based on an analogous rating within the Class 12 Board examination.
“Assamese literature attracted me at a very young age and I yearned to write like my favourite poets, novelists and essayists, including Nilmani Phookan and Parag Kumar Das. With age, the theme of my poems changed from flowers and trees to love and pain and to socio-political issues,” Ms. Buragohain mentioned.
The socio-political poems quickly started exuding protest.
“Had I posted the entire poem I was jailed for, I would probably not have been punished. I used only two lines on my Facebook bio and it was construed as being supportive of a banned organisation,” she mentioned.
“I am tired of explaining to people that I did not have any terror group in mind when I wrote the poem. I was perhaps too naïve or too passionate in using certain words. Those who know me, understand,” she added.
Ms. Buragohain wished she might erase the 62 days she spent in jail from her life, however the recollections maintain haunting her. She did put up on social media two factional items on her expertise behind bars however these have been “heavily self-edited” accounts.
“I may put those 62 days — the thoughts on my present maimed, the fear of my future destroyed, my career on the line, whether I could pick up the pieces of my life — into a book someday. But the way things are with the world around me, I would rather take my time as I want my six-member family to be at ease,” she mentioned.
It has been troublesome for her and her household to recover from the ordeal. The discuss in her village invariably veers round to the “ jailot thoka suwali” (Assamese for ‘girl who was in jail’).
“You cannot stop people from talking. Thankfully, there are many besides my family members who are helping me stay strong. They include my college teachers and some friends,” Ms. Buragohain mentioned.
