Evening

Banshee Sirens fade into oblivion

Genies emerge from Conch shells

You suddenly recall your countless past lives

And a few prisoners escape the reformatory…..

A tear, two or three misdirected prayers, four trembling sighs

Evening is where the camouflage suddenly begins to wane

Evening is where the masks begin to crack

Evening is where alien songs emerge from tea kettles

Evening is where I once gave my favourite jacket to a shivering stranger

Evening is where I heard your name….

The Stars come out of their siesta

Slowly and suspiciously, tenderly and progressively

Like ghosts

Distant thus consecrated

Adroit and yet kind lovers

Stars never force themselves upon you….

Nor does evening….

Evening is where sorcery turns practical

The gaunt and sinewy days all become women

Women who have waited for aeons

For sons, soldiers, fathers

For a placid touch or a kiss on the forehead

Perhaps for a genuine ear

For a sturdy and silent embrace

For ringing stillness….

Lie down, flat on your back….

Look at the sky….

What do you see?

Blue, deep deep blue,

Maybe a bit purple too

Like an Ocean waiting….

Distant islands here and there…

Come hold my hand

Let’s take the plunge together….

(dedicated to Sayantani. Thanks San)

Questions……

Like pitch black scarecrows on fields of green absurdity

One or Two or Three

Here and There

Questions stand…..

Apparently Innocuous, flaccid but truly more potent

Than you and me

Than all of us combined

Than life or death or life and death combined…

Questions will always find their way….

Questions will always demolish frontiers

Sometimes in the guise of a half eaten apple

Sometimes in the form of a rusty old wrecked car

On a corner of a hectic avenue

Questions will shock you

As you walk on paths

Strewn with deceased foliage and plastic bags

Illuminated with measured neon lights

Questions will follow you like fluorescent companions

Questions will never leave you alone

Whether in the air-conditioned hours detained in pigeon coops

Or in disdainful evenings and tea breaks

When you close your eyes and look at the mirror

Only to learn that no image is perfect

Questions will thrive everywhere

Swarms of Questions will cover you

Like Flies

Like Fantasies

As you navigate from Question to Question

You Befriend Questions

You Fight with Questions

You Sleep with Questions

And then….

Questions are born from Questions…..

The Answers have always been there….

It is the Questions that we really seek

(Dedicated to My sisters Goutomi and Sneha, to my friends Biplab, Ayan and Joejo and to my student Aninditaa)

The Rain Came

She was the ground....

Where I stood

Gazing at a catatonic sky

She was also the ground that kept me pinned

And neutral

She hijacked the day

And brought it to the diseased room

My room

She smelled like flavored cobwebs

On the books and the Portraits

Dancing to the rhythm of a prehistoric ceiling fan

Why does flavor always remind me of pink?

Fat pink spiders

And this pink is not the pink of shapely, well toned, jelly filled bubble gums

This pink reminds me of bells and Ferris wheels as well

He came with that pink

An emaciated man wearing a red checkered shirt

He came with a blessing

I was perhaps five or six

And I had squashed a monstrous green chilly between my molars!

This pink

The pink of the spiders

Pink spiders with soft pink fur

Took me to cartons full of old books with no pictures

Sacred pink

Like Snow

I have never seen real snow

Maybe I will never

That means maybe

When we switch fancy dresses

What use would it be?

The rain came at 4'o clock

Such an odd time to come and where?

To my room when she had hidden the day

No, days

She's been doing this for quite sometime

She burst laughing.....

All the pink

Simply Vanished

The rain washed the pink to her T shirt

And I went looking for coffee mugs

31st March, 2010

A Sun full of vengeance,

A lung full of gunpowder,

...Summer's foreplay

Now jeers at this forlorn heart...

That does but vainly beat its course...

Yet

I have had visions..

Emeralds and Sapphire

That now but smart

Under the tyrant of this afternoon sky..

Can Crows be Parents?

Parents that so fondly suffer

Weeks of examinations

That graduate their children to parenthood and rebuke...

I am yet to know..

O look!

Now the unvaccined stray..

Whose throat blazes

Like a building on fire,

Confronts the lonely vendor

Who goes selling eggs

From lane to lane....

And yet I live this unknown term

Only because of my wisdom from these meagre years...

Makes it known

That Mother

And evening...

Come at the end of the day...

The Guardian

Fight the moonless night

Walk the skin of the city

Lick the innocence of the air

With my forked tongue....

But when lizards come rushing

Into the realms of my aura...

I run and hide ...

Like a brave man...

I crouch

I smell the armpits of time...

That reek of ancient sins and caricature

And I howl curses at myself

And at my god

Curses of immortality and cosmos

I smell the armpits of time..

And

Pause

For

A

while

And

Look up

And

I pray for Rain

Someone had asked me once,

What are you good at?

I know the answer now...

I am good at prayers …..

And deciphering signs

That speak of the wrath of gods

And the butterflies of Hell...

What am I good at?... What am I? Something about me?

Come

Seek...

And you shall find....

Come and I'll wrap you in my tentacles

That'll keep you warm...

You can bite into my tentacles

And suck out jelly as much you want...

Come

Let me be your exoskeleton

Because once upon a green time,

I had been the deep eyed guardian of light

But the honey in my blood

Is nothing but Jelly now...

Colorless, tasteless

And yet It'll keep you going for a while...

So when lizards and sewer rats come rushing into your galaxy...

Remember the fallen angel....

Whose only dream is to be a guardian deity

Again.....

Or when shameless floods of decay try to force their way

Through the sacred gates of your heart....

Whisper my name

And I'll roam the diameters of your dream

…..I’ll keep you warm and dreaming

For you see…

I am good at prayers

I am good at war

I am good at surviving

And I’m good at reading signs