This isn't the one

That’s a different poem that hums in my head

but this the one now I’ve got to write
don’t start that again, that dispossessed
wannabe swansong full stream midflight
that gets nowhere popsickles iced dead
between mighty maybes limp oversights
stick to now, stick to what’s got to be said
see to the other if everything’s alright
when the final dream’s cut, spliced and shed
like a reptile tail, pulsed, convulsed tight
in circles, looping the loops on itself
the animal tucked away out of sight.
Who gives a damn what can or can’t be helped
what plays out gently against the lobes of nights
the drumbeats in blood, the restless fevered bed
the sudden sobs in thin veins of light?
that’s a different poem, different its mesh
of rhymes and words cut free from black and white.

Moving

The soul clothed in the folds of skin and flesh

the flesh housed in concrete walls and cells;
the soul switches its costumes and that’s death
what’s it when flesh changes housings, travels?

 

The shapes of shadows morph, the leaves, the street

names change to strange foreign tongues, can life then
be same in differently fashioned concrete?
where absent fig tree shade shocks the garden;

 

the same silver but different the anklets

on the feet of passing women, the wells
few and far between, even the planet
changes her outfit, different here her veils.

 

You carry too much, you can’t take enough

this must be thrown off, it's outlived its use
no place perhaps to string mango leaves up
different the rules there, different charms, taboos;

 

get over the longings for a certain

size of courtyard, a blooming branch, a view
from a fixed window, casual, sudden
prints of careless altaa’d feet which stepped few

 

minutes too soon before the red had dried.

It’s not written - the altaa and anklets,
familiar jingling metals inside and outside;
workday sounds. That’s not for you, so forget

 

being rooted in the same courtyard and walls;

for rice paste painted wavy ears of  grain.
The body’s housing changes faster than the soul’s
the path stumbles on the rocky terrain.

RFW May Challenge - Letters

When I saw the prompt - Letters – for this month’s challenge at Romantic Friday Writers, it seemed a perfect fit for some characters/lives I dreamed up a few years ago.  I wrote a triad of Bengali short stories sometime back – Chithhi (“The letter”), Ashtamangala (“The return of the bride”) and Seemaheen Bidesh (“Borderlessly Foreign”), and you can read a synopsis of all three stories here, if you have the time. 

 

The mc is Abin Bhaduri,  a middle-aged widowed man, living in early-nineties Kolkata, Bharati is the name of his wife.  The others are Chhuti, his step-daughter and her husband Tareq, the couple live abroad; and Abin's long time companion-come-helper Ramcharan, and Ramcharan’s wife, Namita, though they have no role in the current story.

My first response to the prompt was an abridged and translated version of the first story.  But it felt a little lame to let go of the prompt with a tweak of an old idea.  So I sat down and wrote afresh, directly in English no translations involved, about the same characters.  I also used the challenge to write a separate story in verse form,  in a series of sonnets, so all in all I have exploited the prompt quite fully, thank you RFW :)

I write in two languages, and what I write in my mother tongue has always felt untranslatable to me, even though the cultural context for what I write in English is much the same and I hope, smoothly interchangeable.  I have always kept my Bengali and English writing separated, I have always thought the emotions evoked, the settings, the dialogues in Bengali can’t be seamlessly transposed to English.  But this prompt made me want to try. It will be interesting to see if I have been able to prove myself wrong.

Looking forward to your views!

 

 

The Guardian of Letters

 

Abin looks out of the window into the garden briefly, before he bends to open the cabinet under its sill.  He lifts up the pile of old newspapers and gropes the concrete surface gently – nothing.  A little flutter of panic and he kneels laboriously to look closer, and ah, there it is.

“The thing to say is – of course I’ll always be with you, in everything, everywhere, don’t grieve.  But that’s a lie.  I’m tired of lies.  The truth is, I will be nowhere when you read this.  But I was.  I was with you. Everywhere.  I must remember that till the end.  So must you.”

A flake of paint falls into his teacup from the ceiling as Abin straightens up. Early morning, there is no-one in the garden, just the birds with their frenzied news exchange.  He tries to remove the floating flake, but it leads him a chase and crumbles.  A crow sits on the gatepost and croaks a single warning caw as a taxi turns in at the far end of the block.

Abin heaves a long sigh.  The house, Bharati’s house, needs repainting.   When she died, his household help and companions, Ramcharan and Namita saw him through that loss; Bharati’s own daughter Chhuti left her mother’s house at a marathon run soon after, didn’t stop till she crossed an ocean and settled into a foreign land and faith. Quite some time since she married her Arab husband Tareq. 

Then Ramcharan died, and his son claimed the mother; so Namita too left, and all that remains here to see him through all his losses are the letters.  Bits of paper that Bharati wrote as she got ready to die.   Two years she’d had to prepare, and she had used them to make pickles, rows and rows of jars, and to scribble those odd conversational notes, an instruction manual for coping; straight talk tucked into desks and closets, messages in bottles and jars.  Well, the pickles had finished a long time ago. But her letters are there still, in the empty jars, inside the closets and cabinets; read and reread.  Bharati’s voice still echoes around him in this house; he can access that comfort whenever he wants.  Though he hasn’t quite made out till now what she meant by “So must you” – what? Remember that they were together till her death, or remember it till his?  He’s chosen to till his end, not that it’s a choice.  One can’t remember or forget on demand. She was absurd sometimes.  Abin smiles a little and looks down again at the note in his hand.

It’s all still exactly as Bharati had planned.  The house, the garden.  A gardener still comes to tend it part-time, though Ramcharan is not there to supervise anymore.  Few houses with patches of garden left now, the older ones remade into high rises, often with only potted plants in the lobby.  Houses have changed hands in this street itself.  Sutapa, Abin’s long time neighbour and Bharati’s friend, has sold and moved out recently.  He misses his old neighbours, Sutapa used to make him pickles; sometimes he used to play chess with her husband.  Another link with the past snapped. 

“Everything needn’t be filed away in triplicate.  Leave this note where you found it, you’ll see you’ll forget, and come upon me suddenly some other day, and it will be like a fresh discovery again. Isn’t that better?”

He knows some of the notes by heart, and still, the specific details of contents and locations do slip his mind sometimes; so when he comes upon one suddenly, it still gives him an aching thrill. 

“No-one can spend a lifetime rambling around alone.  One must find someone to share a laugh with, a shoulder to cry on, to talk to.  It’s easy to find shoulders, but to bring oneself to rest one’s own head on a different living body and let the tears soak it, now that’s never going to be easy.”

She never wrote any salutations or signed off anywhere, he had thought he’ll find one headed “Dearest” or ended with the customary phrases of undying affection, but nothing had ever been found.  In retrospect, it made sense, she wasn’t the type to write in predetermined formats.  He’d never found that shoulder anyway, and doesn’t particularly want to.  He stays here, the guardian of her letters and garden.  He is content enough alone, shadowed by his own grief, an outcome Bharati hadn’t foreseen. 

The taxi meanwhile makes its way round and now stops at the gate, to his surprise.  Which redoubles when Tareq gets off it.  They have just spoken last week, nothing mentioned then.  Tareq has dropped in unannounced before, and that didn’t bode too well for Abin.   He leaves his seat, walks swiftly out onto the patio.

“Salaam aleikum!”

“Peace to you too, Tareq! Everything well?”

“Oh yes, all fine. Chhuti would have come, but she isn’t allowed travel. You are going to be a grandpa, Sir! I thought you’ll want to be with her, a woman needs her parents such times. And we didn’t want to tell you on phone.  There are other things too -,” he hoists his bag.

It strikes Abin again, this easy-going gravity with which Tareq affords him the respect due to a father; of a step-daughter’s father.  He is delighted, but all change, even good ones have a bitter-sweetness about the core.

“That’s great news, Tareq! Congratulations! But how will I leave now? Before, Ramcharan was here.  But now –“

“You leave that to us.  This might be a good time for the repairs. We could get a contractor, make a turnkey job of it –“

Abin interrupts horrified, “No, no, that would mean all the letters – . Everything in the house will be upended, disorganised—“

Abin can’t quite explain the dilemma, why he avoids all maintenance work like the plague.

” Let’s talk it over,” Tareq says as he steps inside.

 

WC- 996

FCA

 

Read more about RFW and the May challenge here.  Membership isn’t mandatory for participating, so go on over if you enjoy writing.

 

 

 

 

 

The last commute

You know the extreme edges of evenings

          somewhere plumed smoke rises, elsewhere wires dip
          a mongrel barks in fits, the minute slips   
into the sleeves of night; swift pigeon wings
fan my face in a sudden rush of nothing
          the ground sways once and stops; the concrete strip
          fills with commuters; the signalmen whip
out their red and green lanterns, slow lizard-blinks.
            You know it’s the same wherever I am
                       this rough cleaving of the night from the day
                        without my knowledge on the last platform
             I take my usual seat; the doors slam
                   the train throbs through darkness; far away
                             you too must be making your way back home.       

 

It’s said you take the ruins of your life

          wherever you run to, so I repair
          the broken parts circling the same old squares
and parks, the works, no change in routes and rides
just a little tweaking of the pinstripes
          you hated so.  The spotted mirror glares
          back every morning, there is a layer
of fine dust on it, bit hard to describe
            The train sobs through dark, I try not to think
                   of your face in the mirror, your left eyebrow
                             level with the crack in its pockmarked skin
            lonely rides in crammed trains, semaphore inks
                   well, that is the only place I allow
                                     smokiness to rise and dip, to waft in.

 

Is each and every connect predestined

          to spin to some dizzy meteoric height
          then fall spectacularly? froth of light
coats each wave of mundane, each careless wind
that musses sand and soil into the glints
            of metal tracks that trail off out of sight
            the long, loaded train shudders through the night
the flash of suburbs muted through its filmed
            glass windows, stick figure men all around
                      small stations, the sale of tea, hand-shined boots
                          goes on as it did when you sat beside
            me; you claimed the window seat always, frowned
                   slightly as you read your mail; this commute
                                contains nothing now, mails read or replied.

 

Garbage piled high below, a crescent moon

          above quick-sharpens its pointy blade
          on the run, as the earth bound journey’s made
the wheels cranking up their fast, whiny tune
the cirrus clouds a shimmer, faint festoons
          on the whetstone of the sky, overlaid
          by the moth-wings of stars and the huge braid
of the milky way.  The coach here is strewn
          with remnants – of card games, talk small and big
                   broken terracotta beakers of tea. You would
                             ignore the whole, a minimal disdain
          unconsciously expressed in one clean flick
                   of hair tossed away from eyes, you were good
                             at compartmentalising even then.

 

The train unzips the industrial zones

          untidy shacks of slums, along the grooves
          of right and wrong sides of tracks as it moves
invisibly in the dark. I must own
you too part the same way this unknown
          mundane life into two, nothing improves
          by this pulling apart, and even love’s
cleaved to this side and that. The train goes on
          whining through the darkness in fits and starts.
                        You would unzip, slowly read, segregate
                                 and I’d read them in the lines of your face
             which mail you’d answer straight off, which discard,
                      and which of them left to evaluate
                              some other time, away from this rat-race.

 

Some commotion’s outside, the wheels have screeched

          to a complete and known, unscheduled halt
          peering out, there’s just the million volt
towers and wires, dimmed red lights, we have reached
nowhere, no level crossing, still unbridged
          the river chortles child-like, some odd fault
          in the system, the coach pulled up with a jolt
and inside, things are quiet, the daily glitch
          is too threadbare to coax much remark;
                   you, like them, wouldn’t look up or peer out
                             if sometimes you did, half a shrug-and-smile
          at most.  The train shudders once in the dark
                   unwilling wheels start again, turn in doubt
                             all keenness leached at this eleventh mile.

 

The last but one stop passes, a blind man

          comes by and sings in a rich baritone
          of insights into gods and hearts of stone
I toss a coin into that rusty can
his son holds out.  My attention span
          constantly shortens, patience can’t be grown
          suddenly white and staunch. But you’d have shown
greater compassion, lifting your eyes to scan
          the lyrics and their irony, and shake
                       your head and casually plop in a note
                              when the jingle of small change would have done.
              But then it’s always difficult to make
                     you out, what stirred that calm head, those remote
                            eyes out of the mail and into action.

                            

The fruit vendor takes his chance, the last swing

          through the cars, his sales pitches, acid wit
          as sharp as knives, “Shall I skin, flay and slit
and spray this flesh with salt, sir? No, nothing
veggie,  sir, this piece of fruit, as sterling
          as that moon, sure your missus will love it!”
          He makes a sale, and moves towards the exit.
In the distance, the station, old buildings
          sit and softly twinkle in the darkness.
                   You would put the cell phone away, and yawn
                             behind finicky fingers, maybe tear
             up a few papers, then swipe up the mess.
                      But now the last signal is past and gone;
                               and your routes now lie far away elsewhere.

 

Terminal stop. The coach spews its contents

          out through the inadequate oblong doors
          they grind open, and the commuters pour
out in dark, exhausted human torrents
but you and I, we’d wait till they all went
          then we’d get off, walk to the corner store
          sometimes a wider sweep, longer detour
shopped for bread and wine by common consent;
          now I wait till both the coach and platform
                   empty out, and then I make my slow way -
                             walk the last lap of lanes in the dark, through
          hazy mazes of dim streetlights back home,
                   there are no letters now, just bills to pay
                             and home’s no more a refuge without you.

 

                  

 

Also me

When the western sky is unsure of its blue

and the dusk slowly curdles the shadows;
when darkness gently drizzles and falls through,
and curls up in a spot somewhere close,
then my leave from my life is curtailed;
the dragonfly dreams, the phrases that I’ve nailed,
the febrile bubbles that I’ve carefully held
are dropped and silver-shattered on the floors;
and I come back and quietly sit by you.

 

When the beach has tiptoed for miles along the thin,

transparent waters of the ocean edge;
and failed to find its end, or where it begins
and stopped a moment beside a rocky ledge,
there my life is recalled to itself.
On a millennia old continental shelf
like a necklace set with a thousand seashells.
You strip me slow of all my need for language
and you open your arms and calmly fold me in.

 

When the foam leaps over the waves better to see

the sunset framed between the crystal hills.
And kites are flown till darkness cuts them free
and they lose themselves in the twilight chills.
Then my life is shaken out of its trance.
Where the cliffs retreat as the waves advance
and signal sternly, and the sea returns.
And I too am home. And things are the same still.
Just that you are still you, but somehow also me.



 

9th of May

 

I.

 

She slips into mind, every year, about this time

when spring hesitates to get to summer, dithers;
a dancing graph, light of dawn, in one straight line
from the sun over the water, she too shivers

 

just like that; the sunrise reflects on the man-made pond

like her smile, and I am more mindful, notice then
without knowing why.  They tell me some unnamed bond
ties me still, ties me fast, closer than tight apron

strings. I can’t believe in soul-aprons, dust and ash
the only ends, the cosmic chasm the last vessel.
They tell me she’s a better place, they know it’s trash -
the feel good chants, cosy hype, raised snug levels.

 

It doesn’t matter where she’s gone.  She was here.

That’s what counts. And that quiver.  This time of year.

 

II.

 

Did I tell you how soft she was? How soft her lap

and what she wore slung over her back? always white
but stained with my finger-marks, turmeric mishaps;
did I tell you that her smile was like the first sunlight

 

filtered through leaves, slanted on streams, dappled glee;

that taut peace of the needle when north is found?
the high-noon ice-cool solace of the filigree
shade of trees? that flock of birds overhead homeward bound?

 

Did I tell you how frail her arms, and yet how wide

their love, how strong their resolve, how tender their touch?
all floated into oceans now on countless tides,
whatever remained after the fire, and that’s not much.

 

As I can’t lay petals on cold tongues of headstones

I lay words here, writing blind, not knowing whereon.

 

 

III.

 

It’s no use now telling me that the earth still bends

magnetic lines from south to north as it always did
and if I held my compass up the needle ends
would still align; but there’s no peace left in the grid.

 

Never again the same refuge in an unstitched cloth,

never again her fingers on my hair and brow.
Let all needles point always to the axis north
what difference can it make to anyone now?

 

It’s a barefaced lie that I said she comes to mind

once a year, on occasion, when the seasons cusp;
I haven’t kept an exact count - how many times
I’ve thought of her since she turned to ashes and dust.

 

But still sunlight’s on the pond, a sudden flicker

about this time every year. When seasons dither.

 

 

IV.

 

One by one the reference points change their spots

from living homes to burning ghats and then nowhere;
not a cordoned off mourning zone, just nothing, nought!
just an immense gulf, a cosmic gulp of ash and air.

 

The deepest loneliness is born of crippling grief

the more they chant the placebos, the deeper it gets
a flicker of light on a wave brings little relief
from this music of lies the myths of light around death.

 

Where are the new cardinal points, where do I go?

now that those wrists have no more an earthly address
no coordinates to mourn at and pent-up sorrow
doesn’t light the way out of any loneliness.

 

Maybe this is all there is to navigate it with:

loneliness, and flickers of light; music and myth.