Lina Krishnan

Lina Krishnan is a poet and abstract artist in Auroville. Census was written in 2016, when citizens in Assam were just beginning to be questioned on their roots, identities, and ethnic affinities. The spiral from then to Manipur seven years later, has taken the region not only into unrest but also fostered mutual distrust between communities. For the old order, this has been particularly hard to bear. This poem was first printed in Brown Critique’s Home anthology, in 2022. We thank the editors Gayatri Majumdar, Sekhar Banerjee and Gopal Lahiri, for letting us share it here.