Friends of the road

 

We are friends of the road-

With ebb and flow of time,

where we talk for hours aside

on topics lame or prime.

We talked of disease and its cost 

of patients who missed the DoT,

we talked about systems apathy

And the numerous lives lost.

 But hardly the bond touched a core

We willfully let it be

As the friendship was of the road

Where  hearts and homes kept free ..

© Amitava Chakrabarty 

( DOT is a treatment protocol of Tuberculosis patients in India)

From Metverse Muse

 

Maiden's strings

 

As the rays kissed the sky

From a veil of clouds dark and deep

Upon the river passing by

Its fragrance spread with melody.

Do the strings play a tune

And awakens untouched chords

That resonates and weans too soon

Leaving pathos in the heart?

Do the music and the ray

From the Goddess soak the souls

Of battered humans in mayaic play

Craving with senses varied goals?

Play on oh! maiden Nature

From your holy strings, ragas divine

To bring us inward,we mortal creatures

Where Love resides in Her holy shrine.

© Amitava Chakrabarty

Engulfment

Engulfment

-------------------

The evening sun bade goodbye

And left the adrenaline in the sky,

And before the blue be smudged

With soot, the twilight hovered

Upon the town; specks of red

Being afraid of impending doom

Surrenderd herself to the gloom

While the reds smudged by black

Dumped in crony capitalist's sac.

Men in masks and gloves hurried

Home, driven by phobia of Covid

In the pervading alarm of pandemic

Their fragile defense,

alas! is theoretic.

But little they truly can to avoid

The onslaught of tragedy, forced

Upon man by men with motives

That are foggy, but all it gives

Is to serve the platter of wealth

To a few crooks in wily stealth.

The despotic darkness wiped off

Man's freedom and its joy, thereof.

 

© Amitava Chakrabarty

TO THE NOBEL SISTER - NIVEDITA

What Celtic blood did flow in your veins

Oh sister! What genes did it carry?

From unbridled spring or holy fountain

Of the divine land that knows no worry.

What force that enthused you to cross

Several seas and come to this land

Seeking the Master, the Swami, the ultimate boss-

Whose spirit did drag you from Ireland?

Yes, it’s the Swami’s divine words you heard

At Westend’s cold afternoon in London

That crux of Vedanta seeking transcendental Third-

The Self – above the mind or sense it’s position.

You sought your Guru, and you got one;

Divine providence brought you to Bharata

The land of the rishis who taught renunciation

And you renounced everything to embrace the Maata.

Maata- the Mother- became the land of yours

Where your divine spirit dragged the youth

To unshackle the fetters of the teeming crores

Of Indians, reeling in bonds of servitude.

You embraced every Indian as your brother,

Your sister, daughter or your son,

You treated them in plague or nation’s disaster

As your own siblings in convulsion.

Your first school for the girls at Calcutta’s edge

Was a flicker that opened the woman’s mind

Of your Mother India and set up the stage

To export her brains to the globe’s other side.

What unrestrained knowledge did you imbibe

In the artistic brains of the painters then?

That today Bengal School of Art still thrive

In the artistic space, with painters of new gen.

What spiritual force did your guru imbue

That lashed the nation out of slumber?

What holy blessings did your parents bestow

To be in one -a sister, a friend and a mother?

Let this humble poet bow down to thee

Like the world stoops to the sages,

As no school, no college no university

Can teach your ethos in the printed page.

# (published in Metverse Muse-Golden Jubilee Issue)

HUNDRED YEARS OF LULL

Labours from Bengal and its adjoining states of Bihar and UP in India were coaxed and duped by middlemen ( locally called aarkatis) or even forced to act as bonded labours  on the other side of the globe ( at West indies, French Guyana, etc) more than one hundred and fifty years back. To keep the mills running, they were treated inhumanly.

This poem tries to catch the by-gone era.

 HUNDRED YEARS OF LULL

They landed in Demerara or French Guiana-

We know not, with little hopes in their eyes

As en-route, they saw their dead mate

Being thrown in the turbulent seas .

On a contract, their left thumb impressions

Had Indelible ink, that changed their fate-

And that of their children and later generations

As the contents they knew not – they were not adept.

On board MV Whitby* or some other ship unknown

 As sugarcane plantation labours they went

And landed in the barbed open prison

Into a glorified concentration camp they were sent.

They were brown slaves, somewhat better than cattle

Who squeezed juice from canes to fill the coffers-

of “White men”, who tortured and fed them forbidden meat ,

and lodged them in jails for some minor blunders.

Five years of contract, they toiled in bondage

The child of disgruntled fate rotted in loogy**

Those that were vacated by the African counterparts,

-who were set free from the clutches of slavery.

  

They survived the torture by the skin of their teeth

Sugar’s bitterness made them strong,

Masochism seeped in their nerves, they could breathe-

when their resistance was whipped as wrongs.

They took the “ white – whips” in their stride,

Their beloved Indian culture almost gone-

They stayed back after years of torment

 That robbed their language and their religion.

But their resolve sustained, their children thrived,

Their progeny after hundred years of lull

Gave Nobel Laureates, Cricketers or Businessmen-

Who, today gracefully employ the needy White men.

*Its probably the first ship that took the Indentured labours to South America from Port of Calcutta.

**loogies are the quarters of the African slaves that were later used by the Indian counterparts, post abolition of Slavery act in 1834 in British Guiana and British west Indies. New form of slavery was introduced by the authorities by taking hapless Indian labourers from the opposite side of the globe.

You My Lord

You have torn me up to set me free

From beloved’s embrace, to Eternity.

You have filled the void that she had left

With pouring of nectar, that slowly crept -

And filled my heart, which I see inside

Has been lit by some magical Light

The serpent ego that entwines me

Must wriggle out and make me free

So I pray to You in reverence

As tears flow down in obeisance.

Slowly the pain of pathos has lost its way

And engulfed my heart in melodious sway;

In leaves, in stream, in stones I see -

Your form; Your presence surrounds me.

My being melts and mixes in the mist

Till I feel nothing save You amidst;

Each spore upon my tender skin

Erupts a bizarre tinge within,

Whence all at once I see You gone

And my journey has now begun.

(Published in Phoenix New Life Poetry by David Allen Stringer, UK)