I have grown up where faiths entwine,
Where yours and mine both intertwine.
I know the days, the rites, the prayers,
The whispered hopes, the answered stares.

I know when Koonday must be laid,
About offerings placed and vows repaid.
And how our neighbors turn away,
Refusing what our hands convey.

When Moharram knocks, I veil in black,
Grief draped firm upon my back.
Yet, when my mother’s hands take form,
Shab-e-Baraat’s halwa stays warm.

Boundaries rise, walls stand tall,
But love lingers despite it all:
She stirs, she shapes, she kneads, she molds,
Through scents of sugar, faith unfolds.

“You’re not one of us,” the echoes say,
And I’m twelve again, cast away,
A child with features they scrutinize,
An accent carved from severed ties.

“You smell of fish,” their laughter rings,
No perfume drowns what exile brings.
I scrub, I mask, I try in vain,
Yet my name still sings of Bengal’s rain.

They mock my ma’s soft lullabies,
The mishti doi and saffron skies.
My tongue twists words they fail to trace,
A dialect lost in borrowed space.

Between me and them, a border stands,
Drawn not by maps, but by their hands.
Yet roots rebel, and rivers roam,
And I, too, have learned to call this home.

Some lines are laws, some lines are scars,
Some hold us back, some take us far.
But who decides which ones remain –
Which must be crossed, and which engrain?