Me

Don’t dig me up

Roots are still wet

Fresh leaves of Spring

Had enough sunshine

Rain I love, the weeping tales

Of dove beneath grey eyebrows.

Don’t dig me up

The pearl is yet to shine

Moments to walk long

Rustles of brown leaves

Strewn on pavement of life

Undusted for so many years

Don’t dig me up

Down to the stairs still

Childhood gestures

An inseparable illusion

Of me, my tree, my seed

Of memories neatly painted.

Sound of silence !!

It was a noiseless path….in a leisurely afternoon of early lockdown phase. The Red Road of Kolkata was utterly desolate….not a single car visible till the end….not a single human figure or shadow of life anywhere. I drove through the silence of the soul after the day’s work. The Club Houses, The Eden, Fort William were all so silently arrayed on the western sky while the Maidan was sleeping on the east….slipping under a green sheet of gentleness. The Nor’wester clouds had engulfed the wide sky from all over leaving only a tuft of blue over the crown of sacred while Victoria Memorial. Upon the verdant expanse of Maidan, I came across the first sign of life—painted like a surreal image—a little before the turn of the Queen’s Way….one black, some piebald, a few more brown and a lone dazzling white…the horses were unbridled, wantonly grazing upon… elegantly painted upon the dark canvas of sky, so softly spread over the lush green meadow.

I got off….…walked down a little farther to get out of the shades of those giant trees and sat on the floor of grass of the city after so many years. I kept on observing them endlessly while darkness got encouraged and strong wind started blowing. They had no obligation to pull the ornamental carts in dusk….good or bad luck…..to toil in carrying the sightseers around the Memorial and garden….they had freedom for the days frozen in the catastrophe….yet, they continued to confine themselves only to the patch of the field they had been used to…..perhaps, they knew nothing more.

The silence of freedom was evident. The shadows of reality…the existence…was revealing and fulfilling. I let my  dreams walking through the caves of Plato….the prisoners chained to the dark wall for life with the fire lighted behind and counting and naming the shadows—coming and going….the shadows were the reality….the perception of reality….the impression of liberty….in oblivion of anything better known to them than that. The drama of nature had lost all meaning to senses…..no bondage of souls….freezing eyes and ears to the impression were taught to keep the silence….it was all about counting the shadows and attaining the sense of liberty through the eventuality….not to disturb the sound of silence.

The soul seemed sunken to the happiness of surviving the dread of the death so long it was affecting the shadows…the other shadows……without knowing if it was mine or else….counting and naming them as it wished……a perfect tribute to life and the indifference to it….and whispering the sound of silence. The freedom was sleeping in the other world…..up above in the heaven or in the unfathomable depth of the hell….accessible, perhaps, only when the silence would be broken.

The horses were fortunate….they learned it quick….the cave would wait for the prisoners to see the Sun….maybe, at the end of the cosmos…till then it would be an enjoyable, delightful and satisfying soul drowned deeply in the sound of silence.

Destiny

Dreams breaking into memories

Passions destining …keeping some,

Some not….why?…perhaps,

Only seashells know

O rain, sweet rain

O rain, sweet rain !

Keep falling like laughter

Weep alone through my pen.

Youth

For years they have been there--stoically oblivious
To the world slipping out of time--caged in the dungeon of
Down-shelves in my library; perchance I met an old diary there--
Tucked into a torn coat staring deep down at my heart.
Whispered, "Remember me?"
"No" was hesitantly unstripped between my lips.
"Old you are! Ugly and broken!"
"You are old too--forsaken and deadened"
"No, look at me, I am your youth;
I am your love, inspiration, aspiration and dream"
My thought travelled through forests and meadows
Of years, months, hours and moments;
Slowly it took me inside--burrying me
Between the pages that still bears my own odour--
Kissed upon my temple and whispered again,
"Goodbye"
Through the mellowing dirge, I closed my eyes,
I felt dying, then died, then opened my eyes again,
Before closing it finally and whispered,
"Goodbye".

Destiny !!

Destiny reigns; silent and ageless in the

Mortuary of passions and thoughts;

An indisputable certainty in the vacuity  

Of an eternal flow of senses—within and without,

For a deadened soul to reprieve and reproach.



Life denies life and death derides death;

Delight and sorrow walk away—hand in hand;

The proximity of the present erases the face

Of the past—the moments, hours and years;

Shrivelled eyes fail to mirror a path unbroken.



Time smudges the image of a decent moon

Painted upon a dark face of young night;

Jacob and Esau battles within her womb

With promises of two distinct futures;

Never knowing which will shine the dawn.



From the vacuity it rises and dies within;

The margin between the fortune and misfortune

Is wiped up in the hollowness of events;

Enduring a greater fall to attain a loftier ascent—

Oblivious of the certainty scripted for the End.



Destiny defines; the present is of sheer suspense

Secreted within the bankruptcy of a dead past,

And the prospects of an unborn future;

As night is stifled between the legacy of a day spent

And the certainty of a fresh dawn.

Freedom

Where moist clouds are ginned upon wide floor of an azure sky

Where a mirthful forktail dances with an unnamed stream

Where the newborn Sun showers an orange smile upon grazing fields

Where fires of colours paint rainbow upon mountain crests

Where life walks on holding warm palms of joy and sorrow

Where expressions turn into whispers inside the soul

Where the finest tunes of the world take refuge in silence

There lies my freedom

Freedom !

In an environment insured with freedom of speech, words will often fly from mouth to mouth, streets to alleyways, rivers to oceans, villages to cities, but, seldom it speaks the heart or comforts it. It gets enormously occupied by whirring expressions of freedom while thoughts silently weep in the dungeon of soul.
Liberation of confined speech has, perhaps, been bargained for freedom of thought. Only hopes can offer some flickering shines upon those dark cells.