Requiem for Jayanta Dada

I (28 th August 2023)
I feel your absence like an earthquake. The way
an earth-hugging invertebrate does, sensing
the shake with un-mouthed keening.
The tremors rising and subsiding.
The ripple-spread of shockwaves. The cracks
erupting on the erstwhile smooth surfaces
of my heart. There is no respite.
Not that I am asking for one. For I
do not wish to scatter my grief like day-old rice
to crows on the terrace. I have loved you always
as one loves the taken-for-granted deity
in a corner of the house, in its solitary altar.
I keep that space within.
At certain hours, the incense of my pain swells
like ash from the lit-end of a joss-stick.
Another evidence of your benevolence to me,
each time I inhale the scent of bereavement.
II (30 th August 2023)
Three days Dada. Three days after you left
a plump full moon hung above the horizon watching
the bustle of people as they prepared
for the night. It took the moon three days
to come visiting in her glorious light. Your body
by then had turned to ash. The ash you wrote of.
Grey and warm. Then white and cold. And dry
as the soil on the moon.
A long time ago, and it seems that long to me now,
I used to knock on your door
with letters scrawled by an untidy hand, and
you would respond, as if welcoming a wandering child.
You kept your doors, all of them, wide open. You let us in
as you did the bees and potter wasps, dead flowers come loose
from their stems, the elusive scent of the bamboos swaying
in your garden. All wafted in. None stayed for long.
They say your solitude saddened you in the end.
I say that is how you gifted your poetry to the world.
Like this year’s super blue moon. Rising, holding
her mysteries close. Casting her radiance with
carefree generosity over the expanses of our nights.
On the morning of the fourth day, I saw the moon again.
A perfect disc of cold white ash smeared
on the sky’s forehead. What did the moon know
that I did not? But I can remember. This much I
am allowed. So, I press your memories
between the leaves of books. Sometimes,
like flowers with too thick petals, they bleed
into the pages and the words become blurred.
III (1 st September 2023)
September is for the white of Kash flowers.
Feathery fingers susurrating.
Torment to come.
Nights of cicadas and frog throngs. Of lament too.
The hush beat of a hunting owl.
Terrified squeak of mouse.
On your rocking chair beneath the bamboos
That you had planted scores of years ago
Ash borne on errant wind now sings to their roots.
Mynahs on your sills. Grudging
Eyes of yellow kohl. In a moment
They will raise their chorus cloud ward.
I see you. You are listening in your garden.
Contemplative and waiting.
Life atremble, in your fingertips.
The Koel repeats his notes
Slicing the silence open
The bamboos, you told me,
Have flowered this year. They were
Loyal to you in the end.
Grief begins like a ripple,
Grows in concentric circles.
Rocking the body,
Bending the mind in prayer.
But not towards God or any almighty.
Nor to the universe that sings.
But to the smallest, most fragile of things –
Fronds of Kash in the fields
Shy bamboo flowers
A sparrow’s dusty wing
– Fleeting. All fleeting, but
You knew this. And you kept poetry
flowing while you were waiting.