// 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.