Union

A pair of
Eyes
Large, liquid
Envelops
My early morning frown
In liquid
Tenderness

My Grandma

My grandmother, granny
Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon old
Is the strongest woman on earth
My grandmother, granny
With eyes like tender, dew wet
Grass on winter mornings
Like a dark overcast sky
Eyes, liquid and placid
With untold tales
Only she herself knew
Is the strongest woman on earth
Her long, flowing hair
Now washed on alternate days
With shampoo and later doused
In Cantheridine
Is not as old as her
It was cut, forcibly
When two and a half summers ago
The doctor, with a constipated face
Had clicked his tongue, and predicted
The unimaginable

Her hair, white as the fresh snow
Which formed,on the tops
Of the tea-trees
In the tea-gardens
Where she lived with Grandpa
Would wash her hair, herself
With a generous dousing of Cantheridine
Is still the strongest woman on the earth

Her mind, once a treasure to be mined
From where she had recounted
Age old wisdom to her grandson
Of things interesting, of things unkown
Now lies looted and empty, widowed
Like her
Like the middle
Of her forehead
Which she’d once adorn
With a big, red bindi
Perhaps she’d concentrated
Her indulgent self, all of it
Into grandpa’s pyre
And sacrifices all
To the flames which engulfed him
My grandma, who now sits
In a permanent stupor
Is still the strongest woman
Who cannot be shaken out of her rut
Like six springs back
When she had to watch
Her younger son
Consecrated to flames

My grandma Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon-old
Is the strongest woman
Who is not afraid
Of the holocaust wind
That sings a perennial dirge
Of burglars on the prowl
Of economic recession
Rising price of essentials
And all petty matters
Which worry, and make
Her progeny sweat
Their foreheads, dotted
With beads of sweat
As they discuss strategies
And counter strategies
To fulfil their earthy existence

While all the while
My grandma Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon old
Sits there, in no hurry
And contemplates
The glass of water
On the table

Believe me, my grandma
Eighty-summers-and-half-a-monsoon old

Is indeed

The strongest woman
On earth

She is
My hero

P.S : This poem is dedicated to my grandma, who has turned totally blank and mute, thanks to schizophrenia.

This is her story.

An Untold Tale

Me and my room-mate
Buddies
Sometimes share
A moment of silence
Together

Sometimes
When we’re not
Teasing passing women
Making lewd remarks
All the while
Conscious of being seen
Like to enjoy together
An endless moment of silence
An endless moment of silence
When the sound of our breaths
Shout out loud
Betray our senses
And mourn the silence
Stripped of our pretensions
Of sad civility, shame
When the shirts hanging
In our cupboards
Struggle to cry out
And invade our moment
And the holocaust wind
Tries desperately
To shatter the silence
Into bits

Sometimes
The eerie silence
Can get to your nerves
And you try frantically
Desperately
To find a topic, suitable
To break the fucking silence

But otherwise
It is
The most comfortable
Moment on the earth
The moment
When me and my roommate, strangers
Share
A moment of silence
Together.

P.S : Dedicated to my ex-roomie Shamim...miss you dude!

The Fourth Dimension

Did you know?
The wet windshield
Of my car
My smooth and sleek car
Can show me things
You can’t see

The wet windshield
Of my car
Smooth and sleek car
Can show me
The distorted face
Of the peanut vendor
His face, leather face
Bears the brunt
Of fifty scathing summers
And nineteen thousand
Odd meals
Poor and tasteless
Nineteen thousand
Odd meals
Prepared by his wife
Old, gaunt and frail
In his dilapidated shack
Where every night
After getting drunk
On a bottle of rice beer
He beats his wife
Following the rituals
The tradition
And then sleeps, tries
With his old wife
The empty spaces
Filled with the permanent scent
Of children who grew
Too old to stay
The dilapidated shack
Host to the wind
Which mocks the host’s
Fragile, full-of-ribs frame
And the morning sun
Reeks havoc on his old
Bald head
Red and itchy
But his face
His distorted leather face
Bearing the brunt
Of fifty scathing summers
Does not submit

Didn’t I say?
The wet windshield
Of my car
My smooth and sleek car
Can show me things
You can’t see

A Second Glance

But we won’t meet again-
At the corner of Panbazar
In some obscure joint
With prying eyes, trying
To interpret your yawns
The walls captured
By celebrities, gods, kids
The paint coming off
Crumbling, flaking.

But we won’t meet again-
Pretending it was an accident
Just another déjà vu day
Shake hands, and share
A steaming cup of tea
In shining steel tumblers

We won’t meet again
Over a plate of cheap fare
Raunchy numbers playing in the air
As you scan the menu
The various offerings,
Lined in neat, spaced rows
Like whores on a filthy street

It’s been a long long time
Twenty five Sundays have passed
Since we’d last met
Your lips trembling, a smile
Falling over, the corner
Of your lips, red and lustful
Twenty five Sundays have passed
And the incessant rain
Of time, my dear
Has washed away the castle
We’d built on the Banks of the Brahmaputra
Brahma, the progenitor of creation...
Is he responsible....
For us not meeting?

But we won’t meet again!
I would gladly give up
My stubborn gait,
My early morning frown, if-
We happened to meet, and
We could go
For one last time; this time
In a fancy place
But I’m pretty sure
We won’t meet again
Maybe we had forgotten
The last time we met
To extract a small, insignificant
Promise...from each other.

Time Travel

An old, rickety bus
The old rickety bus
Drab and destitute
Too old to run
Forsaken, left
In the old junkyard
By Amir’s house
Across her school
Could take you places
We had learnt
In childhood
From someone
Who had learnt it
The hard way
The old rickety thing
Bare and dirty
Fillthy
Useless
Like an old whore
Like her grandma
Left slone to rot
In a bare, open road
The old rickety bus
Can take you places
Anik da told
He was the older one
And therefore
Wiser and he had:
A thin line of black forming.
Thin and sparse
Above his cracked Lips
With pockmarks all over
His bloody, red face
He was the older one
And therefore
Wiser, surer
And he said
“Come Come, chalo!!”
Speaking those words
With a british accent
With a bree-teesh-ac-cent
And we shouted
Shrivelling, trembling
And he shouted back
“Get in you bastards!”
And we boarded the old
Rickety thing.

We were proud
And courageous
Gallant, restless
We were excited


To go to places
Unsung, unheard of
Finding a seat
To sit on was
The only
The solitary
Problem

We were ready to go

Those were the days
When childhood
Was not a cud
To be mulled over
Fags, girls and coffee
Today, I know
An old rickety bus
Could take you places
And I am proud
I learnt it
The hard way

A pleasant discovery

Discovered a translation of Bengali Poets today in my bookshelf. In particular, liked one poem by Sunil Gangopadhyay , one of my favourite Bengali poets, actually one of the few Bengali poets I've read. Have a look :

For Neera

Neera, take the purity of the moon
Take the distance of the night
Take the sandalwood breeze
The soothing simplicity of the virgin oil on the rivershore

The lemon-odour within the fist
Neera, turn your face towards me
I’ve preserved the most colourful sunset of the year
For you

Take the smile of the beggar boy
The fresh verdure of the Deodhar tree
The marvel of the green-beetle’s eyes
The whirlwind at a lonely afternoon
The tinkling chime of buffaloes in the woods
Take the silent tears
The wakeful loneliness at midnight
Neera, let the fog coated shiuli shower on you
Let a solitary nightbird whistle
For you