Godhuli gogone meghe

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJWsrqN5TFI


Sometimes the dusk smells like the past that cannot be brought back,
Of a breeze that ruffled your hair and ravaged your heart
After it had a frolicking intercourse with the early monsoon rain.

Sometimes the dusk sounds like the melody you have been waiting for
But never heard;
The tune you continue to look for among all the din of a city in a hurry to go nowhere.

Sometimes the dusk looks like the face that came in your dreams
In a room lit by oil lamps, in a land not very far from your heart,but
Hundred years ago.

Then you realize you haven’t been watching dusk for a very very long time,
And you don’t know if that absence preserved your sanity
Or just left you desolate in an insane world.

Oda a la nariz (An Ode to my nose)

(with due tribute to Pablo N)

I have ignored you for long
my dear friend.
You have been with me all this while,
walked with me through the garden
and the cesspool.
Up in the hills, the thin air
burnt you dry but you loved it;
and then deep in the womb of mother earth,
you were choked with sulphur and tears
but you did not close yourself for my sake.

Often you protested
when I fell unduly asleep and others heard you;
but not me.
You could not wake me up. I wish you did.
I grudge you that my dear friend.

I thank you for your undying service of 44 years 9 months and 2 days.
But I grudge you that.You do not talk to me.

Sometime,
when I should set my eyes free
over an unending pasture rolling to meet the horizon,
I can’t see beyond you.

And then
there are moments,
when I can’t see what’s lying there just under you
for me to see, acknowledge and embrace.

You do not talk to me,
do not show me the direction to look at
with the index finger that you do not have.
You sulk for being ignored;
you are hurt assuming that I hate you,
for your obscene rotundity,
for your telltale signage of my mysterious hilly ancestry.

But how can I not love you?
You are my mother’s biggest gift to me,
you are what I have passed on to my daughter.
What am I without you?
Who am I without you?
Who will they remember when my photographs fade,
and virus hacks the .jpg files?
You or me?

Don’t envy the eyes for their power of distraction.
Don’t envy my tongue for its dual rein on me,
one that robs my health in exchange of pleasure, and
the other that makes me a fool while I think it gives me greatness.
Don’t envy my ears as I pay too much attention to all the noise that comes through them.
And don’t envy the all encasing leather that teases, pleases, cuts, burns, and hurts
but also protects me.
He’s the one who is less loved than you.

Don’t envy them my dear friend.
I promise I will pay more attention to you,
but please talk to me.

Next time please show me where to look,
tell me how to smell chance,
teach me how to smell rejection, deception and hurt,
send signals to me through your short passage
when love comes and goes,
and,
as they say, “last but not the least”,
give me the gift of smelling the lucre.

Stay where you are,
ahead of me,
right in the middle
and show me the unwavering way forward.

I bow to thee my nose.
tat twam asi.

smriti-r rong

বিস্মৃতি যদি ধুসর হয়,
মনে পড়ার রঙ কি তবে আকাশী নীল?

যে শব্দগুলো হারিয়ে গেছে,
     সাদা পাতার থেকে খসে পড়েছে
     নোনা ধরা distemper এর মতো
সকালের চায়ের কাপে,
বৃষ্টি-তে ঝাপসা ফরাসী জানলার কাচে,
সেই শব্দগুলো যখন আবছা দেখা দিয়ে মিলিয়ে যায়,
Sternum এর পিছন থেকে উঠে আসা যে আর্দ্রতা
চোখের কোনে থমকে যায়,
সে কি বর্ণহীন?

না কি স্মৃতি-র রঙ শোণিত লাল?
--------------------------------------------------

bismriti jodi dhoosaur hoy,
mone poRAr raung ki taube AkAshi neel?

je shobdogulo hAriye gyachhe,
     shAdA pAtAr theke khose porechhe
     nona dhaura distemper-er moto
ShaukAler chAyer kApe,
brishti-te jhApsA faurAsee jAnlAr kAch-e,
shei shobdogulo jokhon AbchhA dekhA diye miliye jAy,
sternum-er pichhon theke uthe AsA je ardrotA,
chokher kone thomke jAy,
she ki bornoheen?

Na ki smriti-r raung shonit laal?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

If oblivion is grey,
is the color of remembrance sky blue?

The words that got lost,
that peeled off from the white pages
     like damp-destroyed distempered wall,
     When those words appear hazily to fade away
In the morning cup of tea,
On the rain washed misty French window,
The moisture that comes from behind the sternum
And stops at the corner of my eyes,
Is it colorless?

Or, is memory the color of blood?

Novocain

Beauty
Like a needle
Pricks its pictures in ruby blood

You'd wonder
How
More than half of this world
Die without knowing
The pain
       The love
             The beauty
That life
Drips endlessly
Like a leaky tap
On our crowded days.

A world
On a megadose
Of Novocain

Numb.

Endlessly

Between the storm of desire
And the calm abyss of renunciation
My boat rocks endlessly