Horinsamay (Time Is a Deer)
Amina Shelly
Poetry · Memory · Roots · Bangla
People leave the land, but the land never leaves the people.
At a Glance
Fifty-two poems of childhood, roots, ancestral land and the longing to return to a lost time.
About the Book
Horinsamay is a collection of poems about looking back at one’s own soil from a distance. The village here is not a landscape seen from the outside. It lives in memory. In the body. In the experience of growing up. Paddy fields, earthen roads, ponds, wetlands, bamboo groves, tin-roofed houses, mustard fields and the waters of the Kushiyara river are more than parts of a landscape. Slowly, they become part of a person’s sense of self.
Childhood lives in memory. There is hardship. Labour and joy. Stitching paper together to make exercise books, following the ice-cream seller with a four-anna coin in hand, lighting a wood-fired stove—through these small things, a time left behind returns. With time the village changes. Nature and ways of living changes. New maps are drawn over old ones.
Distance returns throughout these poems too. A mustard field in another country brings back the fields of home. White kash flowers appear within another season. One geography settles over another. Things that once seemed ordinary begin, from far away, to look like signs of one’s roots.
Soil, too, becomes more than soil. Its smell remains in the body. Rivers, trees, fields, ponds and the road home carry memories of people and family.
There is a desire to return. But is return really possible? Horinsamay is an attempt to hold the village of memory and the village of the present on the same map.
Author’s Note
Sometimes I think I have forgotten many things from my childhood. But no. While writing these poems I discovered I have forgotten nothing. In fact as I get older I remember things more clear and vivid. Some places can't be left behind, even after we leave them. My village is one of those places.
Over the years, I have realised that the village I remember and the village that exists now are not quite the same. A lot have changed. Many people I knew are no longer alive. Some have moved away. I have changed too. But in me remains another village. Another time.
Sometimes that time feels very close. As if I could reach out and touch it. But I can’t. The moment I try to hold on to it, it slips away. Like the elusive golden deer. Horinsamay - Time Is a Deer.
This collection has 52 poems.
— Amina Shelly
Book Details
Book: Horinsamay
Author: Amina Shelly
Genre: Poetry · Memory · Roots
Language: Bangla
Poems: 52
Pages: 112
Binding: Paperback
Edition: First Edition
Publication Date: August 2025
Publisher: Ghas Prakashan
Cover Design: Al Noman
ISBN: 978-984-97661-4-8
Price: BDT 320
Get the Book
Available from Rokomari - Horinsamay (Time Is a Deer)