Bina Sarkar Ellias


Is Something Lost?

this furious digging,
this ceaseless unearthing
of our streets,
is something lost?
are they seeking something...
something lost?
he asked,
his helpless hands
thrown to the winds
of indifference.

old brave heart,
frail skin,
infrangible mind,
he plies
the debris of
urban streets
in his weathered
yellow-black,
ferrying commuters,
ferrying pulsating
nerves that gallop
with the beat
of a city heart racing
on the fast-track
of degeneration.

this furious digging,
this ceaseless unearthing,
this excavation of our souls
is something lost?






The Catacomb

it was not until
the dawn of midnight
when I chanced
upon a catacomb,

a fictional space
I did sight
with layers and layers
of paper tombs.

shreds of thoughts
and wastes of words
languished in
its desolate womb...

i scooped them up
those dead, dead words
glued their wings
and gave them flight.

they flew into
a herd of nerds
and dazzled them
with poetic light.








Blind Instruments
Of Providence
In memory of Gerardo Sangiorgio

you said
they were blind instruments of Providence
they are blind still, but not instruments of Providence
as war is of their making
deliberate, mapped, schemed for raking
what is not theirs––
land,  people, memory,
eons of zigzagging history
what is not theirs––
is claimed across the seas
in fragile and wounded territories.

they march as angels of deliverance
angels of a certain providence
they come with human robots and drones
they kill and ravage people’s homes
they are mercenaries, those little men
huddled in the conspirators’ den
to seed the dream of a “new world order”
with global wealth snatched as fodder
so they may rule, control our destiny
ah, the honeyed venom in their insecurity…

you said,
they were blind instruments of Providence
they are blind still, and deaf in essence.


Bina Sarkar Ellias


Bina Sarkar Ellias is poet, founder, editor, designer and publisher of International Gallerie, an award-winning publication since 1997. Besides, she is a fiction writer and an art curator in India and overseas. Her books of poems include “The Room”, “Fuse” and “When Seeing Is Believing”. She received a Fellowship from the Asia Leadership Fellow Program 2007,  towards the project, Unity in Diversity, the Times Group Yami Women Achievers’ award, 2008, and the FICCI/FLO 2013 award for excellence in her work. She lives and works from Bombay, India.