One day , Love,
We will surely stand under the Tree
Which we had planted out of our magnanimity,
We would look at that fruits,
But would never pluck them,
In their stead we would live amazed
Spoilt by the frutification of our choice,
Apple picking we had not learnt,
For by Frost, we had dipped our fingers,
Our blood had got the bites of ice,
And we will surely live it through, thrice,
Standing right under the Tree, me a wit,
And Your kindness by rhyme unleashed.
Looking out of the window
When I see the strings and stripes and ribbons
Of red, gold, blue, spread out on the canvas
Of dusk,
I think that's where Thou hath left me
To be sunk into thy kindness,
There I find my all rumblings
Gathered like floats of cottony clouds,
Don't know whether they have gone there
And fell as rains upon your roof,
But to me, they are part of my Love
For you.
I would be then
The sleeping child of you
For I got all the time to sleep now
That You hath awakened
In me,
And you,
Plant Love
Your kiss on my forehead
And let me keep empowered,
For there are more awakenings
For us to embrace
Before we sleep
Together
With love in our eyes.
LOVE
As You hath cared to set me free
In wings of Your transparent poesy,
Make me sing for You
My gratitude once more,
Once more let me sit
At Your pious Feet,
And make me find rhymes
There not iambic, not pentameter,
But something that is even beyond that,
Something that could turn me a flower
At your , Your feet forever lowered.
Like a butterfly,
Whence You come to take your seat
Upon my petals trembling in the
Candid evening's breeze,
I send through your colorful wings
Messages of uncompromising, potent
And powerful fire,
Knowing You would make the World
Fragrant,
Knowing you You become
The Soul of buds
Only to make them bloom
In every spring,
With no lust
In them
But only the Love
To beautify
The Uni-verse
Even more.
I will leave
More
life
And pains
More
Will I embrace
For that will unlock all my
Love,
Like the Sun rises,
Loving us,
Every day.
'There...'
She drew attention mine,
To the sky of the night,
'Isn't it beautiful?'
She asked me,.
I looked at her face,
Then the sky,
Then those glow worms
Which came
And sat upon
Our heads,
After that
We embraced
The night.
Come to me Love,
More with Your ethereal splendour
Blinding me to death,
Come Love
More with Your songs of Life,
Enlivening me to accept
Whatever takes place
At every moment of this
so mortal life,
With your eyes
Upon mine
At rest.
If Thou art that courage
That hath risen deep into my heart
By Thine bless,
Keep that bless not momentous
Keep me still
So that i could find the Beauty
Of Peace put at rest
Onto my soul,
For ever
Like an ocean
Like a cliff
Like a birth
And a death.
As the evening closes in
With scent of marigold round my neck
I yield, I surrender, to my Love,
As she downs her feathers too
Upon my weary day,
Till I breathe, my last,
It would continue, I whisper,
As she looks at me, with her eyes
Her happiness often killing me thus
As my weary day comes to pass
And the evening closes in.
If you can, friend,
Stand by the shoulder
And smile at the beauty of Heaven,
That we try to create,
Through absence of violence,
Through peace,
And forgiveness,
Stand erect,
Stand as a human,
Forgetting your race, creed, religion,
Doctrines,
Stand by the shoulder
And not heave a sigh
Stand there just
Where we stand
You and i,
If not,
It would never be your fault,.
The fault would be mine.
Every time I love this life,
This very transient one,
And if you ask me why?
I would just say,
Every time I find people dying,
every time I find death close at heels,
And the more I place my hands on a coffin
Or on the soil where friends and compatriots left their last roses
Beautifully engraved upon their hearts,smiling ,
There more i come back to live,
I come back to Love,
I come back to autumns, winters, and springs and rains,
I come back to make a beautiful world
For only in the face of Beauty, Truth resides
With all its happiness of Peace.
Have I ever made you,
To rise to our morns?
Saying morrows come
And as come the dawns?
Have I ever told you
How You come to me
In pains of Love, the most,
With Your utmost glory?
Have i ever told you
In You i take the sky
As takes an atom
In the molecule of you n i?
Many years after his Death
I found a Julius,
He said
Republicans killed him,
But he asked me,
Democracy
Where are you actually?
I said
I have become light
I can't carry burdens,
He said
All right
Ronza had gone to attend the birthday party. It was a day of spring. Scent of gulal was there in the air.
Scent of nascent dreams that she had escaped from comes back to her with full throttle. She tries to escape. Like the way she tries to escape her own shadows that are created by the movement of the sun above her head. She knows the spring would be coming to her. She knows all the trees in front of their house would break into blossoms. She knows the birds will start singing .
'I am not a bard...I am just human...'
Ronza would try to console herself and by doing so she would try to limit her sky.
She would try not to face her dreams.
So, when spring will come, she will immerse herself more and more into works. She will keep herself busy.
The college has been kept close for some activities.
A conference is taking place there,on poetry.
Ronza having no interest in poetry, has decided to skip the session.
But this stupid season of spring and that stupid boy.
Tirtho...
Few years senior to her in the college when she was herself a student.
How many years had passed?
Some twelve years?
Tirtho...
The name itself evokes a series of slides in her eye's mind.
She finds him walking down the corridor towards the library.
She finds him taking notes in his scrapbook. She finds him sitting under a tree at the playground adjacent to the college main building.
She finds him asking SB about that aspect of Santiago's character required to be discussed which prompted him to imagine Marlin as a friend, in that Hemingway novel, inspite of both Santiago and Marlin being engaged to a rigorous battle for their own survival.
She finds him writing down for her those notes of missing lectures.
Tirtho...
She finds him everywhere in her wakefulness. Even after twelve years!
In her sleep, she finds him more.
Then,
She remembers Tirtho's face the day she went out to party with her friends of their class.
Tirtho...
He said nothing.
Not spent a single word out of his mammoth vocabulary.
He just asked Ronza the next day how did the party go.
Ronza probably showed extra excitement.
She probably wanted to incite a tinge of jealousy in Tirtho.
She flaunted her dresses.
Her attitude.
Her acquired possessions.
Tirtho said nothing.
He never had anything to say.
That made Ronza more obstinate.
After all, she belongs to the most aristocratic family of the town.
After all, the town moves by their family's wish.
Who is that Tirtho?
That she had thought.
Then.
But this spring.
This season should have been banned.
The birds should all be kept shut.
Ronza thought.
The birthday party got over by nine.
Ronza thought of jumping into the car.
The car was about to be started.
Just then,
She thought she saw him.
Tirtho...
Grown fatter.
But his walk had remained the same.
He got all the time to walk.
Ronza came out of the car.
Tirtho?
Tirtho looked at her.
Through his glasses he saw her and at once broke into a smile.
That infectious smile of his.
'You? Here? Thought you had moved to another city...'
Ronza said.
'Yes, came here to attend a workshop.'
'Work shop? What ? Where?'
'At that college nearby...something literary...'
Tirtho said.
Ronza smiled, though her throat went dry.
'Got to get back this evening only...it is really nice to find an old friend...'.saying this Tirtho shook Ronza's hand and started walking away.
Ronza looked at her hands.
She thought she found that scent of gulal there.
Right in her hands.
See Noirita,
Once again I have stopped by that field,
Our fields of love and forgiveness,
See the sky, Noirita,
It has turned the color you wanted it to be,
See,
How our Love had made our roots,
See
Noirita
Once again
I hath cared to stop by thee.
Surabhi upon going out, felt the drizzles on her face.
She remembered how once much like today, a morning, catching a cab, she felt drizzles like that upon her face.
The cabbie then told her,
'Khidki uthayiey madam...'
( pull the window up...)
Surabhi remembered how she asked then the cabbie to take her to that place where
the gandharaj tree had broken into white blossoms. She remembered the aroma of life then.
She remembered how her love once found a mother there.
She could see every bit of that tree,
The Gandharaj
With its white blossoms
And how then winter came down upon her, and how the gandharaj came and told her what life is all about.
What God is.
What Love is.
Surabhi remembered all that.
'Aap ek kam ki jiye...'(do one thing...)
Surabhi told the cabbie this time.
'Take me to that bridge near the port...'
'Ji...'
The cabbie replied.
The drizzle was coming through the window.
Surabhi pulled it half way.
She wanted the drizzle to numb her.
'That tree might not be there, but the land might be there...that land where the tree once stood...'
Surabhi was thinking.
(* The Gandharaj tree , was used as a motif, a symbol, in a novella written by me, my debut one, titled 'Pestilence', which was published in 2009)
Ananya has slept the day, today.
A day for her sleep has arrived so much with peace that while she came home from work, she thought nothing could be more beautiful than a sleep.
And she slept.
After many years she slept encumbered into the songs of Love, that could make oleanders sanguine, that could make her a poem by herself.
And while sleeping, quite curious enough she could hear everything that were supposedly happening around her world.
Her wish to go to the hills to learn flute. Her wish to find Artemis somewhere as the protector of the Ecology. Her wish to find her daughter learning the music of August, whence freedom came without being tampered with malice. Her wish to find her husband taking a day off and playing that song on their old Italian piano- that particular song which once moved even the mountains to weep in silence, after they hath realised how the song permeated their rocks and grew little algae right into their hearts.
Ananya had the day of a sleep.
A sleep only a day of spring could probably provide.
A sleep that told upon her how answers to prayers never go unfulfilled if the queries were not limited by the three spatial and one non spatial dimensions.
A sleep that could make her love that krishnachura on bloom just beside her window.
When she finally woke, she saw her daughter had spread those postcards from Berlin all over floor.
She got down from her sleep and sat beside her daughter.
Her daughter Reshmi was still playing with those postcards.
'Egulo kotha thekey peley tumi?'(where from you discovered these?)
She asked Reshmi.
'Papa gave them to me...'
Reshmi answered.
'Papa? When did he come?'
Ananya was surprised.
Just then, Aniket stepped into the room.
'You so early?'
Ananya asked.
'Bolchi porey, agey dyakho ... eta pochondo?'(going to tell you later, first have a look at this, you like it?)
Aniket asked her as he placed on her hand an artefact.
A prayer wheel made of wood with intricate carvings.
'Kothay peley?'(where did you find it?)
Ananya asked.
'The boss...he got pleased with my works...and he gave that to me...he brought it from Tibet...he had gone there on holidaying...'
Aniket answered.
'But...but...'
Ananya couldn't find words proper to express her bedazzlement.
She looked at the wheel.
She touched the carvings.
"Amakey dao!'
Reshmi suddenly declared.
Ananya gave the wheel to her daughter.
Reshmi started moving it.
There's no end of works for Soudamini. Be in winter, summer or monsoon. She would have to wake up as early as four thirty or five, then would have to go to the shed first. Then she would give grains and straws to her flock of hens, goats.
After that she would start sweeping the yard with broom.
If it is winter or summer her works remain simple, just to broom.
If it is monsoon, there is no need to sweep though.
After that she would have to go wake up her sons and daughters.
They would try to wriggle on the cot.
But Soudamini would never stop from waking them up.
Her husband, Haran, would go to the fields, waking up even before her. His mind was always with his fields and cows.
If he could, he would go and sleep in the paddy field which he owned.
He loved his one acre land of paddy field the most. The mahajans, the zaminders, and now the merchants- they all tried to snatch that land from him. But they could not do that from Haran's father.
They could not take that from him as well.
The one acre land.
Haran's only Love.
Soudamini, on the contrary, had never shown love to anything, barring working till morn to night.
She would gather stray leaves of coconut and twigs to tend fire in the earthen chulla. She would cook rice and lentils.
She would send her children to the primary school some two miles away from their hut. She would, in a small bag, pack puffed rice and a bit of vegetables or grounded flour for her four children.
After sending them to school, she would take the cloths heaped on the floor of their hut, to the nearby pond.
After washing those clothes and bathing, she would come back home with a pitcher of water.
When she would return, her husband, she would find sitting at the dawa.
She would hurriedly serve him the meagre food she had cooked.
Haran would take the food and go away to the field.
An acre land of his love, the paddy fields.
By that time the children, coming home would start playing at the yard.
Soudamini would watch them, sitting at the dawa, resting her body against the bamboo pole that supported the thatched roof.
At dusk Haran would return with his cows.
Soudamini would take the cows to the shed. Feed the cows, tend them, tend the flocks of hens and goats.
At the evening, after tapers would be lighted at the tulsi manch, Soudamini would go near her earthen chulla again.
There she would have to cook food for her children and husband, if there were something to cook.
If not, she would still go there, to boil something. The vegetables or the grains of rice.
She would eat after all were served.
And she would sleep after all would have slept.
That's Soudamini.
The mother.
Soudamini had never expressed her love though.
For anything in her life.
'Ei, ei, shon...'
(You ..you...listen...)
Padmaja was trying to call her grandson Gablu.
Her joys of life. The bubbly spirited one.
Always running around.
And then she heard a sound.
The way a football bounces and hits something.
Then something falling onto the floor and breaking.
'Ei re...'(now you see...)
Padmaja tried to go to the spot.
Her hipbone aches nowadays if she tries to move fast.
Still she tried to walk up to the spot.
Gablu's mother Sruti rushed out of her kitchen where she was trying to arrange the utensils which the maid had left spread.
'O this Malati di, how many times have I told her to keep things tidy...but who listens...'
Saying all these she rushed out.
Morning.
Office time.
Sruti's husband would go out soon.
Now Gablu.
'Must've kicked that football into the tea table...'
Rushing out, she saw Gablu standing there.
Sruti couldn't hold back her angst.
'Khali dhustumi?'(always running and playing?)
She gave a hard slap to Gablu. Right on his cheek.
Gablu was more shocked than surprised.
He looked at his father.
Tathagata was tying his shoelace.
He looked up.
'What? Who slapped Gablu?'
Hearing his father's voice Gablu started crying.
Sruti got more angry.
She was about to give another slap to Gablu when Padmaja intervened and the slap, instead of falling on Gablu, hit Padmaja's arm.
Tathagata stood up.
Padmaja felt her arm to be aching severely.
The muscles were getting numb.
'Oh! I am terribly sorry! Apnar laglo?
Ki je kori?(you got hurt? What now could I do?)
Sruti was highly embarrassed.
Tathagata said nothing.
He took his bag and went out.
Gablu's cries had turned into sobbing.
Sruti got busy tending her mother in law's arm.
Padmaja sat down on a chair.
Gablu was trying to fathom his mother's and granny's reactions.
While Sruti was attending Padmaja, Padmaja just said,
'Have you noticed those fruits at our garden?'
Padmaja was amused.
'Why talking about garden now?'
'Na...just wanted to say, I and your father in law planted a small tree...it had got grown and now borne a fruit after so many years...now if someone would hit the fruit before it would ripen, or try to malign it by using external force, like poking it...I would feel hurt...'
Saying this Padmaja stood up slowly and started walking to her room.
Gablu silently came and held the end of Padmaja's saree.
Sruti stood there, stupefied, for awhile.
Then she smiled.
She realised how anger could only cause hurt to people, to trees, to the whole house.
At least they have given her The State Funeral With tongue cut, She could not have spoken for The rare award, The police have done the th...
