The art of poetry.

I do not compose poems
on white sheets of paper
with blue black ink

Poetry happens
when I take off your glasses
and render you powerless
and lean down on your lips
to live off your breath.

A Conversation.

You: thousands of them...

The Whore: but never, never a face!

You: a thousand weaknesses...

The Whore: the strength that were you!

Sleepless in Sealdah????

     I have had my share of sleepless nights-- be it pouring over term paper submission dead-lines, or whiling away the night in lazy dazed young dreams of love, or boozing and puking my brains out with equally notorious friends, or the worst of all, missing a certain 'somebody' sorely when sleeplessness transcended the eyes and attacked the very flesh and veins....or so i thought.........
     Thursday, January 07, 2010, 4:17 PM: I had gone into hysterics and weeped when the public announcement system made my blood crawl by announcing that my Rajdhani Express From New Delhi to Sealdah (West bengal) was late by  7 hours. I sulked through the whole journey as the lateness got stretched by an incredible 17 hours. My train reached Sealdah at an awefuly chilly 03:30 hours, ruining my sleep and making me grumpy and irritated with the whole world. The prospect of another 7 hour journey to my home-town without reservation, jostling for a seat in the general compartment amidst an utterly disgusting, ogling and gawking crowd made me wanna collapse. "Why does this happen to me? WHY WHY WHY?" Silly old reiterations.
      Saturday, January 09, 2010, 4:00 AM:  I started wandering the station aimlessly (yeah, i travel very very light) to keep myself warm and while away the 2 hours before my next train. And this is what I encountered-- an everyday scene in the 6000 odd stations across India. The irony lay in the normality of the scene. It did no more than shut me up.

 5:36:50 AM

        And just to add to the insanity and the irony of it, I did not have to battle the disgusting, ogling, gawking crowd ultimately. I occupied 3 seats in the practically empty 'ladies compartment' and slept through the 7 hours. I guess, I had abused God enough for not taking care of me.

Un-poemed

Random regrets….

Did I fail u?

Was there a river in the path that I did not wade through?

How great would it have been if I had chased those crickets around that corner?

Did I choose to walk alone?

Was there a swinging black tire hanging from an old banyan tree by that road?

Was there somewhere a sprig I that dried up because I stopped shedding tears?

Could I have opened the window and watched the reflections melt away?

Was there fire enough on the Sun to burn my frozen gaze?

Had I stopped for a moment and looked up….

Would that have spared me the embarrassment of scribbling on white pages tonight?

Of trying to fill up an empty world with hollow words?

Was there goose-bump in the air?

What if I had spread my arms?

Valentine's Day Eve.

I saw a car today with two pink and three red balloons flying out of its window. i missed the way my heart would have ballooned up.

Ten steps ahead of me i saw two pairs of feet, awkwardly jostling the busy crowd, in perfect harmony. i missed the street-unsmart me.

I took the stairs through a card shop to reach the book-store on the 2nd-floor. i missed the love-you-or-forever-yours dilemma. and the green-ink-or-red-ink one too.

I saw a man lying dead on the road. i debated and then dialed the emergency number. i shivered. i missed you.


Oh!!!! somebody told me, its a gig created by the market.
I nodded in agreement. and missed you all over again.

 Phosphorus

যতই তুমি ঠাঠ্ঠা করো

যতই কেন দাও না ফাঁকি

রোজ রাতের ওই অন্ধকারে

ঢেউ সাগরের নোনা জলে

চোখ ধাঁধিয়ে ধরা দিয়ে যায়

ভালবাসার তুমি-আমি ।।

Oh! Calcutta...

The Carnage

All I want is peace--
Silent peace.
Is that too much to ask for?

I had my dreams
I had my expectations
Unbridled and unaware
Brimming and spilling over….

But love’s young dream
Had to grow up.
They grew up into illusions!
My acre of grass
Stretched into monstrous palaces!
Ur chocolate brown eyes
Turned into an oasis….
Or was it a mirage?

And then the carnage started….

Shhh….
When u sing, a thousand bells
Ring in my head
It makes me wanna scream my lungs out--
Don’t break me over and over….

Silence
Is that too much to ask for?

The Duck

this is the translation of a poem by Joy Goswami, from his Sahitya Academy Award (2000) winning collection, পাগলী, তোমার সঙ্গে titled হাঁস.

Did u not know, serenity is in fact a season of rain?

Nobody did tell u, such a season he is

Who can throughout the year, soar across at his will

Soars across the sky

Today, it rains here a little, and tomorrow, the sky there is overcast

Accompanying that, blizzard and storms keep blowing

I close my eyes and I see, soon as it starts pouring

Kids all sprint towards the fields, and leaning by the mud-walls

And tubewells, the village women, whisltle out to their ducks,

From the gullies and the gutters: choi-choi, choi-choi,

Choi-choi…. in the Bengal of a century back,

A childhood friend of yours, used to whistle to you, choi-choi

And tease you, do you remember?

Today, in this life, u are the duck of a cold country, from seas unknown

to unknown seas u swim— across ocean after ocean

u soar away to distant lands….

But this time, even in this life,

Someone is calling out to you, by that hundred years old

Neak-name of yours, in complete silence is he calling you! Choi-choi,

Choi-choi, choi-choi, — and maybe u hear nothing,

Nothing at all, isn’t it?