Jiban Narah’s Yellow Metaphor Brings Assamese Poetry Into English

Jiban Narah is a poet from Assam whose poems have been translated into English by Anindita Kar.

The book is called The Yellow Metaphor.

Many poems use colours, smells, rivers, plants, animals and farming to talk about life.

Yellow is especially important because it can suggest memory, change, pain and hope.

The poems also remember ordinary people and communities whose stories are often overlooked.

Some poems describe sadness, violence and communal troubles without giving simple answers.

One poem imagines an Assamese mother speaking with the writer Virginia Woolf about tradition and modern life.

Another gives an ant the power to carry the world, challenging the idea that humans are always most important.

Together, the poems connect Assamese folk culture with modern poetic ideas.