tonight the pen..

   tonight the pen refuses to write.
not me.
it's never me.
i am always the
obedient one.
i always do what
i tell myself.
it is the pen that is
deviant.
clutching
one arm
with the other
does not help
either.
neither does,
  feeling sad do the trick.
mostly,
it does.
you see,
sadness
helps one be a
poet.
poet, indeed !
self-flattery is
usually the
preferred
path, to
happiness.
  neither does being a voyeur
help.
peeking at
the girl next
door
take off her
shirt,
through
the curtains
at the
window-
i don't feel
cheap
enough tonight.
  nothing. none of it brings
out the
words.
they behave,
like an
expensive whore
and i am
no moneyed
person.
the pen,
refuses
to
write.

kalyani.

this is a quiet town.
a town so quiet  that 
you can hear the sound
of an axe skinning away
at a piece of wood.
the sound of a singular 
bell 
on a hero cycle, when
the cyclist slowly trails
along an even slower road,
that leads to the blacksmith's
shop at the end of the road.
the blacksmith's hammer's
clank-clank-clank, punctuate
the drowsy town.


at 2 o'clock on an ordinary
afternoon, if you walk towards
Central Park, taposh-da will
be pulling down the shutters
of his grocery store--
his wife has just drained the
starch from an earthen pot
she has boiled rice in for
the last 25 years.
further down,
biren-da would be brewing tea
and selling biscuits and other
such eats,  for the bank
officials,  when they step
out for their hour-long
lunch break.

later on, perhaps towards
5 o'clock when you are
walking back home,
the boy at kamal furniture
store, will be sprinkling
water from an old pepsi
bottle, on the floors
of the shop--
the afternoon dust will
then settle down, giving
way
to a lesser quiet evening.
winding down the lane by
the lake, which leads up
right till the gates of your
home,
you see amal-dadu sitting
at his doorstep smoking
a biri. . "kire? kamon achis?
kobe asli?"  you smile at
him and comment on the
weather, and refuse an
invitation to a cup of tea.
"nah.. aaj jai."


you will reach home, open
the gates that creak with
the sound of years of
coming and going, solitary
footsteps
and bags--
you will sit in your room,
switch on the fan and hear
the pages of your diary
flutter--
it is the sound of a
slumbering sadness of a quiet town
you will know. 

h a n d s.

brown, holding an orange flower
between two fingers
and the other, holding
an incense stick that gave the
shillong air, a touch of the south.
your hands, when i touched for the
first time that day, reminded me
of an old bent willow tree that
i'd seen in bodh gaya.
lines- coarse, hard, etched deep
into your skin almost as if
every year that you had lived
your hands had been the only
witness of them.  witness to,
some eight decades of hills, and
streams that run down to cup at
your hands.
and some lesser years, of ganja
seven children, a dead lover,
wrinkled memories, wrinkled clothes
and wrinkled skin.    
these hands, i know
have caressed several of us
who have stopped at your inn
for a night and sat by you-
a bottle of rum, a smouldering fire
and your stories. to me, you told a story
of a time when a man from across the
seas came for a week and said
he would hold your hand to take
you away, to a far far land.  you
of course knew, that fairytales were
just that, fairytales. and so these hands
some fifty years later were not holding
a strong, white hand but were tying
the hair on the head of a nineteen year old
girl who left you with promises of
coming back to you by the fire with
a glass of rum.  you, of course knew
that fairytales...
now, some years later sitting in place
that would laugh at stories of
hills and hands, i wonder
where are you ?
those brown hands that could
lovingly
sweep across hills, rivers and
a million dreams-
do they still breathe ? do they
at night light up a joint, and
talk to strangers as if they were
born to tell stories ?
your hands, when i first saw them
reminded me of an old willow in
bodh gaya.

Sohor Kolikata

charlam ghar bichana

charlam songsar o' bhalobasha

sudhu parlam na ekhono

charte tomar haath-ta

amar sohor kolikata

jano tomar saathe

nadi-r taan,

jano tumi-i amar maa

sitting by the ganga at princep ghat, watching the sun disappear beyond the horizon as if intimidated by the sound of ships leaving and entering port, was a weekly ritual. sunday evenings were spent like that- melancholic, alone, by the river. i would go back home as the traffic began to quiet down on the streets and find baba at the table reading raag darbari, and ma working on a her college journal. i would sit at the table for a few minutes, during which no one had spoken, i would quietly get up and tiptoe into my room. why i'd tiptoe, i never knew. it always seemed as though someone was sleeping inside the room.. the room smelt of sleep. i'd go into the balcony, gaze out at the skyline and eventually, find my cheeks wet. sunday was always the day to cry. to cry, and beg Cal to hold me close to her bosom and never let me go.

it has been many sundays since then. and now sundays are spent in ways that are rather.. delhi-ish. sundays are no longer spent drinking 8, 10 cups of tea, smoking cigarettes and talking to the river. there is no house to go back to, no, balcony, no invisible person sleeping in a room that smelt of slumber.

there is no longer a ghat, no longer a girl sitting by that ghat.

it is almost as if a shadow has left the place, without a sound and the city doesn't know of it yet. when it does, it will rain.