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No Man's Land

  • Rewritemag
  • Nov 13, 2022
  • 1 min read

by Rituparna Mukherjee

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Image by Chris Anderson via Unsplash


I am a no man’s land

Severed and isolated

Limb to limb

After a contentious treaty

Clutching on to a patch of grass,

Carved out of parents, lovers and a husband.


This plot of land is often disorienting,

The roots clobbered, sharp and knobbly,

Not green, nor sap brown either,

With possibilities of growth.

With water filling my lungs,

From deep slumber, I awaken,

To toxic fumes of shaming,

Of my body and mind.


In this no man’s land I’ll build

Myself a home.

Isn’t that what we all look for?

A home, not a house of

Empty bricks and mortar,

Peopled by ghosts and wisps

Of slippery memories.

I’ll build a home of grass and straw,

At one with nature,

Easily built, easily destroyed,

Suffused with lazy afternoon sun,

Of distant thoughts, and sprawling self-knowledge.



Rituparna Mukherjee is a faculty of English and Communication Studies at Jogamaya Devi College, under the University of Calcutta. Her masters in English Literature is from University of Calcutta and her MPhil on Second Language Acquisition and Strategic Competence in ESL Learners is from Jadavpur University. She is currently pursuing Doctoral degree in Gendered Mobilities in west African and Afro-Diasporic Literature at IIIT Bhubaneswar. Her areas of interest include African and Indian literature and Post-colonial and Feminist theories as well as English Language Teaching, Second Language Acquisition and Communication studies. She works as an ELT consultant, translator and ESL author outside of her work and research schedule.

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