MATCHBOX

Kolkata, Longing & Belonging

(In memory of Pritish Nandy)

January the eighth, twenty twenty-five.
I wake up early,
go for a long walk in cell phone light before the sunrise.
I see refugees
sleeping at the edge of crooked tramlines,
breathing the scent of poppies and prophets,
and beggars reading unsold editions of newspapers.

Suddenly a rebellion ensues—
the city turns into a holy stone, a mirror and a language of surprise.
Strange coppery words ripen inside our muslin bodies,
we shiver in pain and prayer and slowly fuse into each other like
tomorrow and yesterday.
We dig deep into unclaimed manuscripts of Banalata Sen from Natore,
strike each other’s breasts and thighs with the ferocity of primitive fantasies.
“Isn’t that enough?” she says, panting!

I decide to walk a bit longer,
see leopards unload the cargos of raw meat,
smelling like freshly harvested paddy, and notice
corners of blue painted sky filled with my teeth marks.
I have no idea how it happened because
last night was a lunar eclipse, and
there was no light in the Chowringhee lane.

I realise the road slowly turns into a tunnel
of rotten oranges and nylon frocks.
I am now in the middle of Sonagachi—
All brothels are closed here and
Marilyn Monroe is busy making idols of Durga.

I return home—
meagre daylight peering through the attic-windows.
a fat dragonfly is waiting for me.
I gently brush aside my grey-silver curls
from my forehead and say to him
goodbye the second time, and I write in my dusty diary:
‘You must not exile him!’

(dedicated to Ashis Nandy, elder brother of Pritish Nandy

Saraswati Puja

filled with golden stalks of grain,
the intoxicating spring winds
hover in the afternoon harvest of desires.
I smell of earth,
escaping from the corridors of ancestral memories,
offering flowers to celestial effigies
of Brahma’s daughter.

I see her,
sitting with folded hands in the pink marbled light,
consumed by itself.
remember me like a child who knows nothing—
I melt at the edge of blossoming spring,
weaving threads of my own pastoral body,
anticipating the ecstasies of seasons,
age after age.

beams of floral sunlight shiver
in the shifting flame of joys like young lovers,
stealthily studying scripts of flowering botanical love
in the crowded pandals.
I slowly breathe the molten afterglow,
surrendering to autumnal rapture
between her eyelashes.

I wait for the night—
a girl in a black satin dress,
smudges of turmeric on her brow,
silently vanishing into my luminous dusky skin!

( for Bina Sarkar di and her memories of Saraswati Puja)

Teaching Bioethics 

( for  poet Arun Kamal)

Longevity is a longing for an unknown biological future—
at first glance, our ethical choices are like
seers and sinners singing together on the ghat of holy river.
Some things are intrinsically good—
like the raging storm’s gentle disposition or the turbulence of the sea.
Sunrise and sunset are stains of our suffering—
physician-assisted cloned experiences of false health and happiness.

What do you do when faced with
terminal starvation or glamorous senility?
I often turn and burn within the hygienic geometry of moral order,
a series of broken skylines linked by underground tunnels of lies.

I don’t know if you know science is a pure cruelty,
and plants, flowers, and trees spread the germs
of our imaginary fears of extinction.

A full moon- an anarchy of delight,
sinks into the silver basement of opulent decay.
She and I thrust each other’s linen flesh for predatory pleasure
as if beneficence and maleficence are close relatives.

Is evolution a wild, untamed creature?
I know nothing of survival of the fittest—
only the few odd alphabets from the Ice Age.
Am I guilty of teaching bioethics?

Fingerprints of Rain

(for Jeet Thayil and his ‘Book of Chocolate Saints’)

A tall, naked, salmon-pink butterfly
shivers in brazen moonlit air,
blazing with colourless silky smell of her carnivorous youth.
Her breasts are smeared with myrrh and cinnamon,
and thighs dotted with blossoms of silver.
As soon as I touch her
like a hermit cleanses his narcissistic soul—
ants begin to crawl across my bare sesame skin,
ravaged by rugged sins of civilization.

I perform a sacrifice at the edge of sunrise
a magic rite—
burning every desire in a bonfire of bougainvillea,
but the hunger returns the next morning
like powdered lacquer and she
runs away with caravans of wild-horned grasshoppers,
selling perfumes to poets and pilgrims.

Suddenly, a fire breaks out in the cloud-dusted sky.
all the cactus owls fly away—
I walk back again on the salt land,
searching for fading fingerprints of rain.

Love at the Railway Station

(for Shinjini)

The chaos—
the crush of bodies,
like torn pages from a long, unread novel, piled up in junk.

She leans into the tall, handsome clock tower,
kisses the cold stone,
stained with clumsily applied lipstick.

Stroking, caressing, licking—
a dark, grieving tunnel opens,
a frozen glacier melting inside me.

Choking in the lonely depths of nothingness,
we speak in a secret sign language,
a rite of passage, a homeward journey,
a soundless harmony with destiny.

Vultures circle overhead,
feasting on the leftovers of failing sunlight.
Slowly, the clock starts breaking apart
as if a holy rock remembering its own pulsating flesh.

Prowling plastic tigers,
sun-soaked almond-eyed dolls,
chipped porcelain saints throb in anticipation
at fancy stalls lined with forgotten memories of orchids.

Her fingers—shy and sly—trace his aging wrinkled spine,
like ancient scripture,
and one by one all gods arrive,
amused and surprised in the station master’s cabin.

Wilting in the waiting room after hours of delay,
starved and exhausted like the dying mother tongue,
she can’t breathe now, can’t whisper—
yet she begins to love him again at the railway station…