The Seed from Bengal...
I came not with sword, nor plague,
but with whispers stitched in time.
To warn a land of golden grain
of hunger’s quiet death.
In Bengal’s womb, the monsoon wept,
but harvests vanished.
Promises kept by none
who ruled from distant thrones.
The boats were full, the markets loud.
The priests sang hymns to rising sun.
I walked through lanes of woven silk,
a stranger, seen by none.
I found the poet, the merchant’s wife,
the child who danced with threadbare feet.
I spoke of silence, creeping slow,
of girl dressed in heat.
“War is far,” the King said,
“Bengal shall feast, as it has done.”
Yet still I placed a seed of truth
in the hearts that beat like drum.
And when the grain betrayed the soil,
& coins grew sharp, and mouths grew dry.
Stomachs bloated, mothers wept,
with no breast milk left to cry.
One boy listened with eyes like dusk,
He held my hand and asked me how.
I gave him maps, a path to flee,
Before the rice turned ash somehow.
Now decades pass like drifting smoke,
& still I walk through time’s grieve.
A traveler with no home or face,
who saved one soul.
But still dreaming the terror
of starvation in his eyes..
Vipul Arwade
06-11-2025
P. S. A time traveller, Bengal famine of 1943
