Category: Uncategorized

No.
Don’t come back.
Don’t make it come back.
Let it stay.
Let it stay, tucked away on the shelf.
Carefully kept, one small piece
of heartbreak.
What need is there anymore
to bind ourselves in promises
of romance or love
and carry the burden
of staying chained!
Rather, never
go looking for it,
nor will I
go looking anymore
for the crossing of our messages.
Just let it be known.
We were something to each other, once,
once, of love.

Or
that hand of Suhana’s,
quietly, like Rakhi’s hand,
had held mine in the silent study-room,
drawn by forbidden love’s fruit.
Or
Popi, Rakhi, Bonna, or Ananya.
One by one, all my beloveds, or
lovers with dream-showing eyes
drawn in the grief of their beloveds’ gaze,
today come knocking
at memory’s enchanted harbour.
Like a rudderless ship.
Or
Anindita’s hand, drawn in imagination’s paper lantern.
It comes back even now, even now, as real
as reality itself.
Or
Susmita’s hand comes back to me.
Saying I would hold it
one day, in a poem.
In poems have passed
countless sleepless nights.
Or
I keep staring, unblinking, at a photograph,
believing that one day it will come true —
your hand, held in mine.

That hand of Rakhi’s, from so long ago,
slipped from my hand, and yet,
it comes back to me. Comes back, recalling
how many, how many moonless nights have passed.

Let a thousand years flow on, after this.
Let the Jamuna flow on,
let there be an ocean of lotuses.
Carrying the lost basket of wonder,
let another thousand years pass,
let forbidden love and pure love
flow on across the earth.
Let it flow.
Let it flow, a thousand years’
machine, a pool of anguish.
Let the fathers die,
the grandfathers and great-grandfathers.
Into their world of wonder let flow
sorrow, or hideous stars.

And yet
when evening comes,
I remember.
I remember.
Of Anindita.
Anindita.
Because she never wanted a share of the blame,
all her fondness,
her love,
her secret romance,
her secret rendezvous —
she carefully avoided.
And yet
when evening comes,
I remember
of Anindita.
Anindita.
Who was my beloved.
Never was.
Or
I too was never
her beloved.
And yet
when evening comes,
I remember
of Anindita.
Anindita.
Who worried about my children, my wife and family,
or my past and future —
worried about everything.
Worried
more than I did myself.
And yet.
Day after day,
many days have passed.
Anindita and I no longer speak,
we no longer know each other.
We don’t know
how the other is doing!
And yet
when evening comes,
I remember
of Anindita.
Of my unattained
love.

You —
because you live in a forbidden city —

I
took my first lesson in being made whole
from your hand.

I went
to open new doors and windows
of a fugitive life,
to open up life itself.

You —
because you live in a forbidden city —
I took an oath
in your name.

I swore
by those seven heavens
and by the hypocrite god
of this whole earthly sphere.

Yet
if you, and the touch of your body,
should swallow me
in sin carried from birth to birth,

a sin
written into me at birth itself,
become
a lifelong curse.

Yet
for the sake of this flowing life,
to purify this life,
I had gone to you.

Only
between us there was
the free coming and going of words.
And
perhaps there was some forbidden traffic too.

The hypocrite god
of the heavens —
was he watching,
I do not know.

I only
came to know
that we
had no god.

And
I —

even today
am not made whole.

Not purified either.

I only
stand
at the door of your forbidden city,
rooted.
Still.

The door
does not open.
The window
does not open.

Never fulfilled
is my lifelong longing
to be purified.

When your countless, endless loves
at last come to an end, let me know.
In love or out of it,
when your tired body
longs for a little rest,
let me know.
Like the last train at the station,
I will stand there,
waiting only for you.