//friend//

What is our end?

You are always in my bag
along with other papers like

identity proof
bank papers and
other important papers
which I hardly
recognize and remember

I acclaim I carry you
always
in my impressive cells of memory
and in fact I do
pushing you in the dark hole
of the bag
important as my life
and tie you
within a fold,
zip up for security.

Believe me,
You are as important as my bag
that much resembles with
a waste paper basket
where I placed you carefully
along the spectacle cover
and the old pen
for my signature.

neither you nor my bag
will ever leave me
until my successor takes up the
flag for its new government
until I am reduces to a
squire inside an album
or a sound for them.

A promise I made to carry you
neither your face nor your body
neither your memory nor your name
but you, only you
till tomorrow
before a sunrise.

//SPIDER//

The spider always webs its net

for me

everywhere

 

includes the woman

 

who only presented pain

in a box

whom I too presented pain

in a box

that looked like mind.

 

the spider

included the woman

in its net

that netted me  since

child lisped

first time a vowel

until the vowel lisped out

from the toothless mounds

continue to claw my time

along with the woman

webbed with me

clattering love.

 

 

The woman whispered a pain

into me

 

the very day

that spider followed the woman

before the  last’s last’s last winter

knitting her child’s knickers

spinning  round and around me

a fence was made out

barring me from mine

my affair

included the woman

suffering

the suffocations of life

 

she nailed a sigh

somewhere

below the bosom

 

smiled bemoaning her

like the nail stuck her as struggle.

 

 

The spider webbed me

and webbing me

with woman

in every corner

where it hatches its

household geometry

for a generation’s

unsolved dilemma

in the dart and dust

called family

 

//you//

With sincerity
I can’t express my love for you


May Be I could never let you feel
How much I store my desire for you.
How much shrills my body stored for you.
How many beats my heart can drum seeing you.
How much silences can chaos the noisy world of yours.

Who am I?
Who are you to me?
My body reacts a pleasurable pain
My chemistry reacts to a painful pleasure

In your name
With your being
For it would take a decade to say
My love for you

//Beyond//

I do sit to write up
my future
with a few strokes on the white
and over leaf 
where you always descend upon
as a distorting image
questioning a faith
over mind 
over matter
over the year long exercise
over an image
I’m n’t able to draw as mine

you always 
crawl at my faithful essence.

then my clock tickles 
in your throbbing heart
sickening whatever 
as my tranquility


I don’t rely on my words
Which once promised me a pyramid?
I don’t rely on my pen or my fingers
Who always drag me towards you.
 

Are they all made to serve you?

The Third Wish

(Translated from Oriya story "Trutiya Ichha" by Abhash Kumar Boral)

A certain beautiful nymph was granted with a boon by an invisible source of power to fulfill any of her three wishes in her life span. And was also applied with a condition that her wishes could be fulfilled if she asked for them only looking at the sky. 

One day while drifting out the sea-beach, the nymph came across a blind. She felt as if the blind had been unhappy for years. Over a question to know the reason for his melancholy she came to know that the blind was sincerely searching a girl like her to make his life-partner and promised her to show the things, which were discovered at all. Pleased with this declaration, the nymph wished him a beautiful pair of eyes. 
The next day she, in the same place, encountered a dumb sitting all-alone in a pensive mood. When asked the reason for his sadness the girl came to know that the dumb was unsettled due to the absence of a mate in his life. Making some wild gesticulations, he clarified that if he got a beautiful spouse like her he would make her listen the most surprising sound of the world. Being happy with this assurance, the girl returned home and prayed for the activation of his speech organ. 
Time flew away like anything. The nymph was in search of these two anticipating any one of them to make her repository. And one day she met the first man(the blind) sitting in the same familiar place and asked him why he sat there. The man attested that he had been blind the previous days and had promised a girl who had once come to him to make his better half. The girl revealed her identity and claimed to be the girl whom he desired for. Interestingly the man cancelled the claim with a note of refusal asserting that she could never be the heroine of his imagination. The nymph returned with a heavy head and met the second man for the same. 
As usual she asked him the cause of his sadness. The man depicted the fact that he had come across a girl with a sweet-sounding voice and had assured her to make his life-partner .Now her absence made him sad. 
Interestingly enough, the man did not agree with the girl when she published her identity laying down the history happened some days back with a view to being the girl the man wanted. She was then put with a doubt questioning her credibility and was asked to refrain from comparing her with his would-be mate as they were drastically different. 
The nymph returned with an agonized anger; looking at the sky, opted for the fulfillment of the third but the last wish which was aimed at making the first man into blind and the second into dumb simultaneously. Suddenly she felt a strange spell over her body; she herself failed to see and to speak. The world around her became black and silent. 
Since then perhaps certain beautiful females react like the blind and the dumb. 

(Translated by Susanta Mahapatra from original Odia)

//postman//

Wait here!

In this empty field

or watch flying birds
until I return a sky
to roof the field
and
sheltering the freedom

Wait here!

At this bus stop
At least for three minutes
Or
until I return from Inferno
carrying a bagful of love.

// Cadaver //

I heard a story 
Once
A man used to carry his own dead body
During the day 
until night 
telling him lies.
And drops him on the bad
till morning.


One day 

the man died

the family fuffered

from his dead body.

The man is but a bundle of stories.

// ma //

//M’a//

When my muzzle pressed on the 
Plain surface of the world
I yelled for escape
M’a opened the window

A patch of rays rushed in 
from the outside rain
I was born.

I clung to grab 
her only wild beauty
and satisfied my survival hunger
I crawled to fist my shelter
Under her unconscious cloth 
which carried many abstract paintings
with my nose stuff
Which wiped many prickly pimples off my body
And put my existential pages under a tent.

M’a had a mirror 
Cremated on her wall
Sometimes revealing a face
with a vermilion signature of her sex mate
in-between her eyes
She changed her colour like an old book
Much used and much abused
Metamorphosed her body 
That has sucked many pains and virus in it
absorbed mutely the noises in and around.

Reduced to a clay bulk
one day,
M’a’s absence realized 
in her presence
in her absence
but
she looked and looked for a void
and expressed her reluctance
to stretch her lips
like an archly moon and
feared that her remaing teeth might fall off.
When a photographer asked her to smile
 for family pension

She withdrew 
and loved her only life

The mirror lost an image.



 

//Cry//

Slowly 
When the silence muttered noise
 
She cried like
a music 
blend of
old notes
often heard at sea shore
or with serpentine harp.

Happiness has no speech
Sadness groans sobbing pain
One could never outline a
Lie or cry

She but cried 
with a few words galloped
 I could neither understand nor escape
A world that remained in why

She cried a cry
through time
through space

but

the world has no time to listen
the sound of love
the sound of pain
the sound of hunger
the sound of nothingness

The night rolled on. 

//Truth//

Once I met 
Once I met truth
I met once,
the truth under a roadside tree
standing under an umbrella
half visible
and face hidden..

A tryst I wasn’t sure of
or an encounter with a lost word?

He was wearing a black coat 
tattered cloth, of course!

A bunch of rays appeared
behind an object
a silhouette of 
ribs of the darkness spread like geometry
‘an aura’ he whispered

‘I have to catch the train 
for the funeral of one of the lost Gods’,

he added and 
ran towards the vanishing spot.

I know he lied. . 

//Room//

Am I a necessity?

Within a four cornered squire 
a three days past news paper 
lying on the bed
that subscribe rotten food!

It only allows light and darkness
To bring a fight 
 Contrasts and contradictions
through three curtained 
windows and a door
to let the things come and go.

The world has given me room
To decorate my passions
And breathe some status and pride
And the things I have been 
taught to say beautiful.
For years and years.

I roomed an alligator
Along with a dancing calendar
And few crucified photographs 
Where the alligator sneaks in to the darkness
And the memory
Being reflected at
And reflected for

I still ponder whether 
Am I among the necessities?

The future will take off my picture
 replace me from the frame

one day.

Just before the room
stuffed with whispers
and shadow of an existence
pasted on a room’s wall..

//Words//

Bubble up and vanished
Informing a distorted image.
Can I translate my self in to words?
Can I symbolize me  
for some silly streaks and circles of geometry? 

At a low ebb
Squatted on another’s ego
People talk of disbeliefs 
And God 
or what so ever
Squabble on the soul as an essence.

Once I saw a man standing with a cell phone
Chanting slokas 
To breath life to a snake bitten poisoned
Ages have been paid to purchase 
the meanings of a life
from a grocery shop.

Life is a bigger game played by
Silent workers.

// friend-2//

I saw a man
Or the man saw me
In the darkness of a fear,
Strangely out of the arena of 
silent noise,
he appeared,
as if came out of the age-old oil painting.

I was alone in the room
Surrounded by many of 
my important garbage
I was puffing off with a half-brunt cigarette,
the moments that slipped off my clutch
Most usefully
as the tender palm of a beloved.

He was speechless
And I was trying to swim across
heavy traffic of words puzzled.
With the eyes of a dog,
he stood there in a mirror, 
opposite to me
barring me from a world
that I wanted to see through the reflection.

I didn’t want a fight 
for 
I don’t like fighting with a warrior
though 
winning is everything for me.

I turned my back on him
Winked at him in the mirror
To give a last touch to a smoke drawing

I heard him moving,
Turned and winked like me
threw the ending pain with a smile and sigh
and emerged in the world reflected the mirror.

He was like a helpless snake,
helpless with his poison.

//Cylinder//

The world has become so tired
After a long travel through time and space
It appeared lying on the grassy meadow
Like a maid servant grind, reaming
Pasting her skinny corpse with a rotten mat 
Which is spread like a summer body 
While her flesh plastered on the skin.

The newspapers announced:
A havoc would stop the 
mankind from dreaming,
the annalists wasted pages 
for the world, might destroy 
the minimum thread
break up with family,


skipping off the orbit and
the world might roll under 
rich neighbour’s gate.
that is what I understood or imagined 
or would bend his head 
nodding on the window like a bus conductor.

Still I never believed them,
Never believed that one day 
People would drop me off the bus 
and run away to life,
Never believed that
the world would stop me or is stopped,
never dreamt even that 
the police man would 
ask me to sing the national anthem at the station.

I then wished the world stopped
And it stopped.

When the child who shares his alphabets 
with me everyday,
stole my purse and 
ditched me with his great personality.

I picked up a bus towards the graveyard 
of few past photographs 
to travel for a definite pain.

***************

//Friend//

I lost a friend
Where the road turns
Towards the city
And hides a declining Sun.

This friend is not first to be puffed off
With the cigarette
Since I begun smoking 
with the young boy 
who served in our family 
and taught me woman.

He taught me the triangle
Showing his finger at the barren field
Where hardly a milkman could count a grass patch.
Still I lost him 
Under the window shade of 
our newly married neighbour.

Amongst the war of 
promises, oaths and tears
I have a list of thousands of 
those who died of effeminacy.
I have a list of thousands of
those who die in search of a voice.

Yet I lost him
Among the ashes 
and the burnt-out ends in a tray,
there, the silhouette 
plays hide and seek with me,
with the bending photograph in a frame.

She was in a white frock that day
Yet I lost her in a Thursday
Or in a Friday of a week
I don’t remember exactly when,
She joined them,
Accompanied them
Or followed for a pilgrimage 
of a family.

I don’t remember when I lost her.
When I lost another friend.

***************

//Shoes//

Last time I visited seashore
I decided to change my shoes
As the swelling foam of the 
last returned waves dusted off the shoes
and cleaned off tiny stars
twinkling as a result of water spits
since I attended than last marriage reception.

Probably I have polished it 
regularly the first month of its
Journey from the showcase
to my shoe stand,
including the soles.

But the story is two years old.

I never imagined then that I would
One day completely try to remove the shoes 
from my mind. Even when,
two toad -couple tenants have made it their igloo
since the winter.

I knew the shoes are the better index of a man
than the man’s face.
It is what the homosexual class teacher 
taught us in the class room in the pre-schooling.

For last couple of months
A few days before the salary is received 
I usually make an unseen miscellaneous 
Calculation over the theme and tone of my sized shoes
I have seen form the other side of transparent glass
At a shoe house;
And strike out the whole note book
Right from the time some notes are pocketed as salary.

The bare needs to keep a home safe and intact
And the expenses to let m child grow
To a responsible citizen,
And the womanish perspectives of the spouse
Paint my shoes for a dream.

I still insist,
the shoe is a necessity,
Especially for an
Underground geography.
*******

//An Envelope//

Slowly and slowly 

A pain revolved in my body,
One day 
When, an envelope blew off few words
Painfully.

It traveled a long distance of time
And remained unopened for years
Under the thick bed of the old lady
Called grandmother,
Under the cover which wasn’t since
She occupied the room behind ever rooms
Being affected by a disease 
Doctors named as age.
She never went to coma
Nor her aging infections were fatal yet
She was removed the day she 
Stopped and could fight with generation.

She was declared old and useless
As her eyes and body could not 
jump over the modern household and
pillars of modern syntax.
As her smell dominated the aroma
Of room spray and in- scent -sticks 
that let the god take a good smell.

She remained there coughing,
Alarming like a chimed clock,
Least proof of her existence
For some ten months
For sometimes on the lap of her official son
For some times looking at the spider’s web
Which she noticed as a rope form the sky
Until she 
Lost her vision,
Lost her organs.
Until she gasped her last sigh
And became motionless,
Until she was carried and buried
Like an old unused chair in the corner of the house,
Until the room was cleaned
And until 

I found the envelope stuck in a line gap of her 
Reaming reminiscences.
carried her handwriting to her son.

The pain started revolving in me.
*******

//face//

I need a face
for society,
and identity.

That was the derivation made 
When father wanted that I must resemble him,
But Maa silently wished I’m like her brother
Who was a rich police officer 
who always mouth costly cigarette.

Both the parents have an internal fight
on my face.
Many times after the literal dissection 
Made on my facial anatomy,
I knew my eyes, nose, chin and every part
Including the waves on the hair on head
Belongs to some or some of the ancestries.

For twenty years they waited
To let my face grow with relevant changes,
they waited for my face should have the
twenty year’s harvest done land look
to see exactly whom do I represent.

Fortunately, my mirror never reflected anybody
Other than a cover of a pornographic book cover
And resembled with 
a tiny land of microscopic volcanoes.

For these years
I tried to look and look through the mirrors,
put my face hidden under the faces 
of statues , erected propagating their greatness
to contrast with values and ethics of the present
I appeared void with expressions.

Being a center 
Encircled sighs
Encircled pocketed economy
Encircled with speed and noise of the traffic
Encircled with the rings of the concrete trees,
Encircled with the voices in isms
The face tuned and turned for nothingness.

I woke up to a terrible dream.
********

//Plateau//

Silly streaks on the planes of a palm becomes 
Sometimes our life's plateau

After a forty eight years of tiresome useless work
To make our barren land fertile
And motherly
A flower came to one of those stems
With an awful declaration of perspective harvest

When it had already drawn many valleys on 
Our family faces,
Many folds manifested on
like the morning bed cover showing 
the registration of a soundless sleep
the ribs in body that had spoken of poverty
Because of our timeless expectations 
We were having upon the land.

Following the flower dry smiles 
blushed the pass port size photographs
attached to their the body 
As the report card at the end of years examinations,
We celebrated the out come of a labour.

Before this we had been to a man
To get the geometry of our future read,
And before that I had already accompanied father 
to a roadside man sitting with
three or four life long imprisoned parrots
who, 
much before father could ask about the fate of his land,
read a paper taking from the parrot’s beak
That one day I would king a dynasty.

We returned that day.

Until a my father transferred the land to my name 
Under the spell of one palmist
To change the fate of land
To change the fate of the family
Until the pain of my family faces were wiped out
From their colorless masks,

A plant in the barren land gave birth a flower.

//Night//

A night once came crawling like
The old serpent in our back yard 
Which has stopped hissing and stinging
being inspired by the guru who made it his disciple
and mingled in the nonsense of our household.

It was just after the dust and dusk of the dawn
Illuminated the low radiant light here and there
Scattered mica dust, 
It was just when the mother moved through the whole house
Protecting the new born light for Puja,
It was just after the father made his cycle stood 
in a side of our entrance , 
Returning from office as a responsible school master
to talk of his designs for the construction of a human.
It was just when a speedy bird flew over the sky facing yard.
It was just when mothers chorus on the theme of their children’s’ education
And the child’s medicated slang’s prayed to withdraw alphabets.

The evening came as an unwanted guest
As a tired wanderer unable to move out 
due to darkness
due to forty plus spectacle.

That whole day I was protesting against 
the evening’s arrival and departure 
holding a with a stick,
for the stupid tutor who always 
regulates me for Math and Grammar
until the night rubs the nozzle at window bar.

The teacher came and left
Days after days
Evenings after evenings
Till I became a teacher.


But I still couldn’t discriminate
the Grammar from Mathematics.

//Memory//

You stretch your arms
shadow my dreams,
you talk of the moon
a darkness smells.
Oaths and promises bestow upon
the constrasting human predicaments
an identity carried with another's name
whirling the globe on the student's table.

The calender declares that 
your name written on the book cover,
your scribbles calls signature 
gradually fades away into future.
People gossip the 
Granny would naver voice in radio
for the tide has started waiting
some body to appear in the scribble.


You remember the black board
where the chalk underlines history.
( To Mita......)

// stories//

When a bagful of slumber made my eyes red
When the old teacher questions the tables 
at the neighbour's mud-coated varenda
A lurking cane spells me stammering with usual mistakes. 
A lantern throws my forty-five drgree bending shadow towards an uneven darkness.

I was poor in mathematics
thats what the teacher said
when the crab like me from the old maid's innumerable folds, 
tried hard to drive away
the pleasure of sleep 
and the burden-some promises to be picturised in the book,

The old maid said many a times
under the blanket of her fables
that there is a 'me' with me.
the inner one is demonic
when another has the God's stolen mask.

years after ..I turned to stories.

My short story -II

My short story -II

My Short Story -II

Mu short story I