Home remedies

Men who sought the drive pills, with  sin

Written allover, their lips had an impish grin,

Have now stopped coming back

To the chemist, to fix the slack

Now they queue to get a pack of Chowmin.

`The Sigh of an ignored Twin

Five hundred years the river flowed, her pallor

Washed away by the muddy flow,

Five hundred fading springs shed her colour

Each century scrapped her lustrous glow.

The Saraswati River, now dead and seized by man,

Was once her artery of trade,

Through which the saudagars with their fleet

Explored islands in Malacca straits.

Down from Triveni, they sailed to port Betor,

Where the mortal mouth of Saraswati

Sacrificed herself to her would be killer

The River Hugli or Bhagirathi.

They prayed to “Bettro-Chandi” in bet-van

Where the darkness overpowered flambeau

Where vipers crawled and looters prowled

And to the goddess they bade Adieu!

With time and ephemeral flow of luck, the river

Flowed through Bhagirathi, killing her stream

And port Betor lay dead and with awe

She saw her opposite bank draping as a queen.

A port was born in the east, a new sun rose

And in the west sank the other,

Ever since the town’s downfall began-

Like a concubine of a step brother.

Slowly her luxuriant green yielded to mills

of cotton, flour and ropes, where labours

thronged her lanes laden with screeching units

Where carbon bred from metallic clamours.

For years men of lesser occupation and wits

Toiled, littered and committed suicide

In the dingy lanes, and the vendors of politics

licked out life from their worn out bodies.

So up came apartments, builders ruled the roost

Where lakes were filled and outlets chocked,

Where coffers filled and the toxicity spewed

Where freedom felt free in a reddish coat.

Now her distant twin on the opposite bank rejoice

She’d don a dress of western grace,

Her feet would frolic in the river called Thames

Her strands transformed by an enchantress.

And says the worn out city within herself

“To relish the other bank come to me,

Sink your boots in this bog of indifference

And stare at the pseudo prosperity.”

The poem was published in the Festival number of The Statesman-2011

Black Diamond

                                            Never thought that coal was as gold

                                            A glittery gate of treasures untold

                                            Our all white netas

                                            Ensured their betas

                                            “Bada Maal” from the Black Diamond

The Return

Courtesy: kellyyp.blogspot.com

 A poem from my book " So I Used Gray and other poems" ( Published by Writers Workshop, Kolkata)

  

The flicker of her little heart

Or flutter of her fluffy feather,

The dazzle of her quenched eyes

Or cravings to shoot free in air,

And liberate her self from the sighs

And fill her lungs below the foliage

Oh! She has been long within the cage,

So with golden string clutching her claw

One day, atop the golden bar,

She was flown to dreamland afar.

“Go and see the world my dear

And perform the master's Raqs Sharqi* ,

Your lungs breathe the alien air

But your soul under his locks and key

Within the solid walls of piteous prison

Wriggling in rigours of strict discipline,

Be happy, be merry and woefully gay

Deep within the Guantanamo Bay.”

Said her admirer, who soars free

Up above the Chatim tree.

Up and up he rises to hear

If at all he could catch her trill,

If at all some fragmented tune

Overflows down the distant hill,

But alas, the crestfallen admirer-

Hears dry wind, blowing down,

That sucks the blood from his veins;

Crestfallen he plummets down in pains

And picks up twigs with utmost zest

Hoping one day she returns to his nest.

*Raqs  Sharqi  is a classical belly dance of Egypt.

The Breeding Boon

No politician ever pointed his finger at

Uncontrolled breeding of humans in our land,

Half fed souls where bred like jaunty rats

Stressing meager resource, that our country had;

Skin on bones they are and scantily clad-

A leader knows these men will come to them,

His leftovers is all these men have ever had

For ages these half nourished bodies were his game

More heads brought more grants, a vote in every name.

(A Spenserian stanza)

A CASE OF RAJA & RANI

All pervading gloom I daily see

The snail’s pace of Democracy

At last the King is in custody

After hue and cry      

With years of coffer-looting spree

And he wasn’t shy.

The Rani later followed suit

With an MP’s tag to boot,

Ill gotten money, black as soot

She obtained,

From companies that vendored fruit,

Which, she never ate.    

After the cry for justice surged

One ninety days in jail she served

But Delhi’s strings are attached

Deep in south,

No commoner to her stature matched

So she walked out.

                                      

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article1767241.ece?service=mobile

(A Burns Stanza on 2G scam)

Hold me not

                                                      

courtesy:  http://www.lifevesting.com

Hold me not as the moment has stealthily come

From the fateful abbeys of dark holes,

To ruthless time let’s seek the balm-

Hold me not.

Let the cord that tie our fateful souls

Silently part, without humdrum,

Let secret tears flow far from consoles.

 O’ bees, what monotonous laments you hum

 Cronies- Stop the heart- wrenching carol!

 I need no parting tears, let my strings charm,

 Hold me not.

 (A Roundel)

 ( Published by The Journal of The Poetry Society, India, 2011)