Can You Hear Me, or Do You Fear Me?

I was not born with a funeral in my throat.
But I learned to speak like I was mourning something.
Maybe myself. Maybe the country that names me,
but only when convenient.

My mother said I was too loud as a child,
too soft now.
I’ve always been too dark for the spotlight
when the light hit other skins like benediction,
but burned mine like a warning.

They never said it directly.
They said things like:
“We just picked who fit the aesthetic.”
“Maybe next time, sweetheart.”
“You should smile more.”

When I was five, I auditioned for the school dance.
My feet knew the rhythm of every monsoon.
My limbs, the choreography of ancestry.
But they saw only skin —
like dust.
They picked the boy who looked like milk..

I carry the rejection like an heirloom now.
Like something carved into my name
in a language the colonizers taught us
to forget ourselves with.

This is not a poem,
it is sermon of fire,
an inventory of silence.

Looker there, looker there now—
the good obedient son,
the future engineer.
The one who doesn’t speak back.
The one who learns to spell his name
in someone else’s alphabet.

I wasn’t built for rebellion.
But my body revolts on its own.
My hands shake under fluorescent lights.
My tongue stiffens during roll call.
I have learned to make myself smaller
than the question mark that follows my name.

I say my name,
and watch it die in their mouths.

Like a wound they don’t want to tend.
They push it away with a laugh —
“I can’t pronounce it,” they say,
as if unfamiliarity is a valid form of erasure.

Do you hear me?
Or do you fear me?

The answer is always yes.

They fear this boy.
They fear the hands that don’t fit into prayer.
They fear the flicker of something
not yet confessed.

Even I am afraid to speak it.
But I carry it.
It sings in my breath.
A subtle flame beneath the skin.

If I scream too loud, will I be punished?
If I stay too quiet, will I vanish?
If I speak at all,
will you call it sedition?

My father gave me silence as a gift.
And shame as a language.
I was supposed to inherit legacy.
Instead I inherited restraint,
And all I am is my last name.
My family wants me to succeed
but not in the ways that matter.
Not in the ways that free me.

Everyone I have loved
has wanted me to lose a little.
To keep me digestible.
To dull me down to
“appropriate.”

They clip your wings,
then call you grounded.

I have carried centuries
in the space between my shoulder blades.
The smell of sandalwood and smog.
The sound of sirens and wedding drums.

They say we are a contradiction —
but they only mean colonized.
We are sorted like spices.
Labelled and stacked.
Mild. Exotic. Alien.
Broken.

Can you stand me?
Can you?
Can you stand the version of me
that does not smile for you?
That does not tuck his truth
behind pleasantries?

Can you handle the flame I keep
between my teeth?
The poetry I write in blood?
The rage that walks like religion
inside my veins?

This is a requiem.
For the pretty house we never lived in.
For the acceptance that never arrived.
For the history we were told
to bury with our tongues.

Amen.
Amen to the ancestors
whose names were never recorded.
Amen to the lovers who held us
but never claimed us.
Amen to the children who danced
but were never seen.

You say identity like it’s a costume.
You want me to pick a side —
Straight or not.
Indian or not.
Palatable or not.

But you cannot edit rain.
I am not a checkbox.
I am the reason you’re uncomfortable.
I am the question you don’t want to answer.

I was five when I learned:
They will always choose
what makes them comfortable.

I should let the fire
burn the sins they handed down like heirlooms.

Do you hear me,
or do you fear me?

I’m not asking for a seat at the table.
I will not translate my sorrow
into something you can clap for.
This is hunger.

I want your guilt to blister.
I want your history to confess.
I want your comfort to rupture.

Hello, my old friend —
mourning.
You’ve always known the contours of my throat,
the hush I mistake for peace.
You come dressed in every name I’ve lost,
every tongue that flinched to hold me.

Can you hear me?
Or do you fear me?
That’s the only gospel I have left.
That’s the sermon they couldn’t silence.

Rudrangshu Sengupta is a poet in a physicist’s body, a lover with a scientist’s precision. But beyond the lab and lecture hall, Rudrangshu is a deeply feeling, sharply observant soul. His writing—cinematic, confessional, and lyrically obsessive—blurs the boundary between memory and invention.