The Immigrant’s Song – Tishani Doshi x Gaurav Ogale

Transfer and spaces to me is about displacement – displacement and movement of emotions and vulnerability. While contributing to this volume, I intuitively resorted to an excerpt from Tishani Doshi’s piece which I had read multiple times at the beginning of last year. The Immigrant’s Song to me in many ways is at once, unsettling and comforting.

An excerpt from ‘The Immigrant’s Song’
by Tishani Doshi

Let us not speak of those days
when coffee beans filled the morning
with hope, when our mothers’ headscarves
hung like white flags on washing lines.
Let us not speak of the long arms of sky
that used to cradle us at dusk.
And the baobabs – let us not trace
the shape of their leaves in our dreams,
or yearn for the noise of those nameless birds
that sang and died in the church’s eaves.
Let us not speak of men,
stolen from their beds at night.
Let us not say the word
                                       disappeared.