A Farewell Note

On a day like today even few days back, I woke up with your call / text in the morning. Half asleep and half irritated, you made an abrupt Sunday plan! I was little hesitated and perplexed, while you smiled all along the way...

And now, its today ! the phone remained mute, it did ring in the morning and I with my sleep starved eyes looked at the mobile and never replied. That is the beginning, the beginning of the time when there will be none who will color my hard-core practicality with a dash of dreamer's eyes! I shall be the same, irritated and hot headed.

There are plenty of time while walking in the smokey alleys, or while humming a song carelessly, you asked me - "Do you ever dream? Is it so bad to fall in love?" then I say, "Grow UP ! *tsk tsk* what would I do with you! " with a deep, sordid sigh! With ever beguiling dimpled smile you say, " Wet paint! You ask me not to sit on the stool but I still sit. Its not bad! Its only wet paint. It will spoil my pants and leave a mark, but its fun...I always fail to understand that even that fossil of dry paint is an unnecessary trouble in life...I know why you shout at me!
promise me, you will never stop shouting at me!"  then we exchange songs, poems and pictures thinking a networking site to be a part of our lives. We remember conversations, we remember the last secret joke that we shared. I never felt that you will leave this city about which I crib the most and you compensate that with your love! you talk about the Mortician, Maya and the heartless Casanova!

Coming back to the same fantasy land you ask your invisible lover, " Can I call you Puspa like Rajesh Khanna and you will call me Ramesh Babu,
Sometimes may be Raj and I will call you Simran....
We will dance on the moving trains; make it in the pouring rains,
Run in the tulip fields, sing on helicopters and make love on fire...
We will sing inside the elevator and live on the roads...
We will name our home Basera..."

I frown and scream at you ! I stop you from drinking the poison called love, I ignore your pain and force you to smile, with those moist dark eyes. I have never been so cruel, may be I want you not to suffer anymore, may be I was too scared to let you go, or may be I was just protecting you from the gnashing ravages of human life! Everything halted as you left. The Sunday mornings, sauntering in the by-lanes with cheap cigarettes, sudden gush of rain or even my eternal conflict with the famous 'Rabindranath Thakur'...

...and then you leave with a note saying, "Many a times we have called each other up complaining about the over cast sky or the traffic on the roads or the hiking up of the prices of cigarettes.And then consoled ourselves with the thought of there is always a tomorrow. It’s just that this time the night would be a little prolonged before tomorrow comes.

I promise to come back as soon as possible. You just promise me to be the same Mortician you always have been to this Dreamer.

Don’t get distressed when I cry, let me sob some and feel sorry for myself... I would just be a phone call away.... and yeah I am sure dirty Santa’s would not sleep switching off their mobiles this Christmas.
love as always :)"

For the Dreamer of my dreams

Yes, with love always and forever, my stupid Dreamer !

Untitled II

When you hear them pack their bags
Their large feet shrinking away through the door
Their hands on the gate

There are
the spaces they leave

Just there
the poem places a last glance back at the window imprinted with ghost thuds of birds
Tiny carcasses already dropped to the purring mouths of quiet cats with long transparent whiskers to move soundlessly through the night
green eyed

Here the sounds wobble as another marches by loudly
measuring a distance with the certainty of numbers noted down
Where their edges are lost in the overlapping

A sharp urgency flounders
behind a dull puckered
These are not sounds
these are words
interrupted by the sharp announcement of the doorbell rising to be heard past the furniture as if unexpected
Hands clench
small pawed in cotton skirted courtesy
Follow the words trailing
As a shrill wind fills the silence left wide open behind them
Heavy lidded you return to the page which shivered blankly beneath a note written then placed in a pocket
A moment stained with the mottled impossibility
of containing an ending in the telling
remains

Untitled

Can I reveal to you my gestures
through this writing.

I want to show you my hand,
As it rests now in my lap,
Fingers softly curled,
Upturned like a cup.

As the other makes these shapes
Which I will later tap tap type
with two stiff fingers.

Read them now and retrace
That path of meaning, back
through keypad, paper, pen
hands, lap, arms

Back to the point
of its conception

Back to this moment
Which was right.

We can adjust the rest
Later.

The Black Rose

For my darling Annie

She held her arms high, toward the moon.
Surrounded by the dark night and its morose presence.
Her hair, woven of moonlight, flows restlessly against her pale skin.
She drowns endlessly and bathes in the angelic light of the moon.

A long lost soul, yearning for liberation.
Breathing for her love, deceased.
This is the lost tale
Of the Black Rose.

She cries tears of blood, marring her beauty.
No longer virginal, but impure.
When will the enticer cease his sins.
And bring her back to true existence.

A crestfallen soul, mourning for deliverance.
Bleeding for her love, lifeless.
This is the lost tale of
Of the Black Rose

Heartless and cold, the enticer persists.
Feeding her hunger for hope and faith.
That one day, her love will commence.
And return to her forlornly arms.

A disheartened soul, longing for love.
Dying for her lover, demised.
This was the lost tale
Of the Black Rose.
That withered without love.

Text Received.

Its almost 5 o'clock in the evening. People around the lake are engaged in their regular evening stroll. They sometimes leave a mark of their own in my insane mind. While I take out the cigarette and light it up from my office's balcony. There's a bench right in front of our office where I've seen endless lovers and their shy kisses.

The color of the sun-set gives a 'mon kharap kora' ( lamentable) feel. As if there will never be a tomorrow. My mobile blinks. Ah! here comes the Casanova's text. I read and take a long puff of the smoke stick. I still don't clearly remember, when/how this careless lover-boy became a part of my life. He talks about heart-aches, his pent-up 'obhimaan' (anger - though not the right term), the thoughts that scare him, the songs that make his eyes moist. At times I wonder, what makes me to connect to this 'probashi' who never stays at one place anymore.

It's evening now. The nearby bench in no time will be filled with these free young 'lovers', who with their trembling shy hands shall discover each others' bodies followed by a sudden kiss. The naive girl shall no longer be the same anymore. Nor be the boy who shall taste the first saliva of passion. Few texts exchanged and I can see the Casanova as a young adolescent who still smells of his first afternoon of  turn on. I smile as I light my last smoke of the evening.

While returning home, I read his another text. " Eei amay chinecho?" ( Don't you know me). I sigh and look at the drizzling sky . I feel like asking him, " Chinbo bollei ki chena jay?" ( Can we really know a person so easily). Another sigh and there I go, to get an auto.

Heartless Love

I

Heartless statues,

Dauntless cowards

Sunshine darkens my empty,

Bruised soul

Silence echoes off the wall...

Desireless passion

and cruel love,

Run away from fear,

Fly like a black dove.

Resentful anger makes you crave

What you can't own.

II

When I close my eyes at night,

I float back into time,

And I reminisce on the days that you were mine.

I hear your voice,

I see your face,

I feel your touch,

But now, I’m out of place.

You don’t want me there

I can see it in your eyes

But you’re nice to me anyway

Covering up your lies.

...and then, 

I start to forget you,

Then I think of you

A broken heart

torn by your annihilating hands

A sweet face

ruined by your vicious kisses

A gentle body

that never wants to be touched again

A mind shattered

by your delusory caring words

A life devastated

when you left without looking back!

Waiting, hoping realizing

Waiting, hoping realizing
It walks alone with nobody to love or nobody to care for it
No-one to trust, No one to hold
It is all out of hope
Waiting for each day to end, for it to crawl back into its hole
It does not want to see anyone
So ashamed of its existence
Its been hurt once, it does not want to be hurt again
Why did he do it

Did he not know the undying love it had for him?
He was the only being it trusted
Now, no-one

He walks past it, ignoring it, not wanting to know it.
Like a vampire which thirsts for blood, it thirsts only for his love.
Did it get his love? No
But only the rejection of its presence

The unwanted soul meanders alone into the dark, deep hole of loneliness
No-one to love it, no one to care for it, no-one to trust and no-one to hold
No, it has nothing but painful memories of its everlasting love for him
It goes back into its hole and curls up feeling too hurt
It never comes out, its heart is wounded - no broken
It lies there to die, doing nothing loving no-one but him...

Slowly, painfully, it comes to its pitiful end
It had waited, it had hoped, it then realized
Waiting, hoping realizing.

P.S. : I have deliberately replaced He/She with It. It gives the strength to go a bit deeper than the usual imagination.

A bloody June

I clearly remember
A time long ago
A bloody month of June
The red-tinted White cloth.

I stayed around
Quite to hear
There was not a sound
But the drop of a tear
As she laid there motionless.

I faintly remember
But can't comprehend
Down into the chamber
All caskets descend

From 6 feet above
The blue flowers fell
Through kindness and love
She rose from this hell

She left and all died.

The 20-minute Interval

The morning was quite like the other days, when she wakes up from her overnight slumber. It was drizzling and giving a grey touch of sombre. With the cup of morning coffee the woman tossed the calendar, very nonchalantly as if she has all the time in the world.

...it is afternoon, she is looking for a taxi on the lazy street of South Kolkata. Suddenly the moist air was added with the smell of 'chatim' ! She looked at her watch and then smiled, Durga Puja was just round the corner. 

Pause. The cab.

Little she knew before entering the office, that the day will not be the same like any other day, in any other agency,  with any other people she meet... 

Snap!

The journey.

A stranger, with a recognized smile. His killer dimples jabbed her throbbing heart. She looked at him, like a blushing virgin wife...time aged her but she was never so young within, like the way she was with the advent of the evening. He opened the cab's door for her  like a true gentleman, alien to the fact how badly she wanted to kiss him. Standing right on the busy street with people all around and the constant honking of the bizarre vehicles. She stood there like a limbo and stared at him.

He called her again, this time a little louder...she retrieved herself in an instant and skidded inside the taxi. They both sat inside the car with damp air for don't know how long. She was looking outside the window while smoking and listening to one of her favorite number 'Rock you like a hurricane'. There was a hurricane, indeed  within her.

He asked for the light and lit another cigarette. They both looked at each other and exchanged few pleasantries. The song in her i-pod now shifted to 'Bedardi Raja' - a popular Hindi number ! With the few speed breakers, their legs were touching each other like two shy lovers in a park. He remained the same, while there was a fire deep down her. She remained the same, as if unaffected, she didn't even utter a word while making out with him thousand times in her head. 

The cab changed into an old mansion, the innocent brushing of two human beings in a vehicle was replaced with flesh. She ripped his shirt and held him close to her naked body, so that he can listen to her fast breaths. So that, he can compete with her savage heart beats, so that he can at least understand her endless insanity. 

Traffic signal. The destination.

The car honked again. She never felt so debauched ever in her life. He was saying something, while she was reaching the climax in her secret imaginary world of rage. She regained conscious and smiled back sheepishly. She desperately wanted the 20 minutes journey to stretch for at least next 20 hours, but all in vain. Her mind was wandering aimlessly all around trying to find out a way to delay the journey. He offered her a smoke and she accepted. they both were talking while travelling to an illusory world. Her urge to kiss him became desperate - a kiss that only lovers can exchange, pure, divine and full of passion ! She knows him just for few hours, but felt as if they know know each other eternally. They laughed at some silly jokes, teased each other like good ol' friends, exchanged glances as if they were meant to be with each other, like this, always.

Good-byes are always painful.

He reached his  terminus and offered to pay. She refused and looked at him as if she is looking at a man for the first time in her life. He looked at her too and whispered, " I've to settle few unfinished business with you.", winked and bid her good-bye.

The End.

She has always been good with men, of any sort, but she never felt connected like this. As the taxi took the flyover overlooking the city lights, she finally smiled with a relief !  Realizing that she now can actually live life, without the unceasing supply of love. She finally learnt to love only for a moment and relishing it like sipping a glass of ice-cold lemonade in the summer heat, drop by drop ! 

While she emanated the smoke, there was an inaudible sigh of relief. She smiled for her new art of love. It was 'Coming back to life' playing in her i-pod.