Onsra Quotes

there exists a word, onsra, in Bodo, a language spoken by the Bodo people in parts of northeastern India, that is used to describe the poignant emotion a person experiences when that person realizes that the love they have been sharing with another is destined not to endure.

I have learned that there exist a word, onsra, in Bodo, a language spoken by the Bodo people in parts of northeastern India, that is used to describe the poignant emotion a person experiences when that person realizes that the love they have been sharing with another is destined not to endure. This word, which has no equivalent in English, has been translated as "to love for the last time." Misleading. Most English-speaking people would probably take "to love for the last time" to mean to have at long last found one's true love, enduring love. For example, in a song composed by Carole King called "Love for the Last Time." But when I first learned this translation of onsra I thought it meant something else entirely. I thought it meant to have experienced a love so overwhelming, so fierce and deep, that you could never ever ever love again.

BUNAHAN When the last speaker of Boro falls silent, who will notice the first-grown feather of a bird’s wing? (gansuthi) or feel how far pretending to love (onsay) is from loving for the last time (onsra)? Quiet and uneasy, in an unfamiliar place (asusu) no one sees her, or listens; there is less of her than there was. The last speaker feels Boro’s world fall apart, knowledge unravels: healing plants go unseen; the bodies of animals are unreadable. With a last thought, onguboy (to love it all, from the heart), she leaves fragments of the world she held in place. We touch their husks, about to speak and about not to speak (bunhan, bunahan); awash in loss, incomplete. Note: The italicized words are from Boro, an endangered language still spoken in parts of northern India. For more on this story, see Mark Abley’s Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages.