বুদ্ধিজীবিদের প্রতি

হে বুদ্ধিজীবিদের দল,

তোদের বুদ্ধি এখন কোথায় গেল বল?

জাতিভেদ

তার নিথর দেহকে চিতার আগুনে 

তুলে দেওয়ার আগে জিগ্যেস করি -

" তোর জাতি কি?

নীল, লাল, সবুজ না গেরুয়া?"

জবাব আসে - "মানুষ"....

হারিয়ে যাওয়া প্রতিবাদ

রেল-লাইনের ধারে আজ ও হয়ত 

তার শেষ প্রতিবাদের চিত্‍কার

কান পেতে শুনলে, শুনতে পাওয়া যায়। 

তার ক্লাসের খাতার পাতায়
 নীল কালিতে লেখা তার কবিতার দুটি লাইন
আজ ও খুজলে, দেখতে পাওয়া যায়।

শুধু সেই নেই
আছে শুধু এক মলিন ছবি, এক শুকনো মালা
আর এক ফোঁটা চোখের জলের দাগ।

প্রতিবাদের সুর আজ ভুলে গেছি তাই
কবিতার খাতাকে চিতার আগুনে বিদায় জানাই। 

Just another conversation

- "You don't love me!!"

- "I do. But the dark doubts in the mind have created a veil over the heart and refrain you to see."

- "If you do, then why don't you say so?"

- "I do. But the unfathomable vacuum between us doesn't let my words reach your ears."

Another tiny poem

My hatred snuffed out the love from your eyes
But the Judge sentenced you to be hanged till death...

Tiny Poem

Your love killed me
My hatred did not allow me to die.....

What is real?

What is real?

Is it what I saw?

Is it what I see?

Is it what I thought?

Is it what I think?

Was it a dream?

Or is this a dream?

Or did I mistook it as a dream

When it was a nightmare?

Or is it not a nightmare

But the reality? 

And I am wide awake 

Though I deny.

What is real?

Unbearable silence 

Followed by No Answers

Yet I get answers

Or do I not?

The Voyager's dream

Once I had a dream....

That you and I like Sinbad the Sailor,

Would go on a voyage around the world for more than 80 days..

We would build a small vessel with our imagination,

Name it the 'Voyager'

Unfurl our flag over the mast and sail beyond the faraway lands.

We would travel to the Valley of Kings,

Get lost in the dark catacombs

Translate hieroglyphics to find our way back

Leave the chasing mummies behind.

We would cross the Cape of Good Hope,

Mount atop Kilimanjaro,

Fight some lions and some mythical beasts

And perhaps discover some Treasure Island.

We would befriend the Ancient Mariner

 Who would guide us beyond the western stars

Survive few storms and doldrums

But never forget to strive and seek our Neverland.

We had thus painted our vessel with vivid fantasy

But had forgotten to weigh the strength of it

Meanwhile doubts ate through it like ravaging termites

Making it too weak and shallow to make a journey.

The anchor lost its way in the tumultuous ocean,

And we hit the Rocky Isles before the sojourn could even begin

All that remained of our dear vessel

Were some shattered pieces of wood lying pathetically around.

So we both took to our separate ways

You left on a jetplane, while I took the road

We never looked back to bid goodbye

You took south, while I took north.

And the scattered dreams -  the only surviving exhibits 

were tucked away in the cobwebbed corner 

of some old, broken, shut down museum.

The Stranger at my place

I stay with a stranger at my place.

Every morning when I wake up,

She also wakes up with me.

When I finish my breakfast, rush into the elevator and press the down button,

She also does the same.

She takes the same bus as me,

Takes the seat just behind me

Even gets down at the same stoppage.

When I reach my office I find her seating in the opposite cubicle to me.

Doing the same work that I do everyday.

Follows me to the canteen for lunch

Is there when I talk with others,

And when the clock says that it's time,

She returns home with me.

She is there when I watch the television,

And also when I eat my rice,

Shuts the bedroom door the same time as me,

She is everywhere I go!!

Yet she speaks not, when I ask her about her name,

Smiles not when I make a joke,

Cries not when I feel pain and it hurts,

Worries not when I don't come home on time.

But somehow I like that she is always around.

When I tell my friends about her,

Everyone laughs and makes fun of me.

They say, my imagination is playing a nasty joke,

That there's no existence of such a person at my place.

When I ask them to visit my place and meet her,

Strangely every time she is never there!

But then as soon as my friends finally take a leave,

She comes back as if from some secret hide-out.

When I get very angry and blame her for making me look like a fool,

She never replies, just keeps on looking at me

Making me wish if I could read those inscrutable eyes,

Maybe then I could know what is going on in her mind.

Thus it continues for every day and night,

Me and my Stranger's lives go on side by side.

And though my doctor believes I've schizophrenia,

I still continue to believe that there is indeed a stranger at my place.

Not another Poetry

No It's not another poetry...it's just some thoughts that came racing into my mind like a sudden gust of wind and as part of my compulsion I'm just penning them down,as they came...so there's a high possibility of the following lines being not so organized.

It's just another ordinary day,

Another listless day going in vain

I sit in my cubicle staring at the machine in front of me

My eyes hooked on to the screen, 

My mind receiving no cognizance.

Suddenly the phone vibrates and wakes me up from my prosaic reverie

I find your number calling me on my phone.

And all the clocks stop ticking!

The world around me becomes oblivion

The only things that remain omnipresent,

Are your name and your number on my phone wall.

False Pretence

Once again poetry time!!! This one I made while returning from work oneday, during the roller coaster ride of our company tempo traveler. If asked about inspiration, then my Facebook friend and a good poet himself, Muzammil Karim's one of the latest poems would be the one. Although the theme is not the same, but nevertheless his poems really do make me think and feel at the same time.

Under false pretence I call you up every time,

As if to know the syllabus or what classes shall we have next week,

But all  I want to do is to listen to your voice when alone or in a crowd and stop the time.

Under false pretence I touch your hand,

As if to admire your latest watch or just to pretend that I can read your hand,

When all I want to do is to wrap my hands in those long warm fingers and never let them go, any time, anywhere.

Under false pretence I try to make you laugh,

By sharing a poor joke, or imitating someone's silly act,

When all I want is to listen to the music the resonates when you laugh and drown myself in that.

Under false pretence I declare my love,

By telling how much I love your sense of style or the poetic bend of your mind,

When all I want to say how much I love every bits and pieces of you,

That loving you makes me love myself,

But don't have the courage to say it out aloud.

My false pretence thus continues, amidst the only truth - my Love.

Hope and Despair

The Letter

Your letter came in a package along with a sound box.

You wrote, " Hope you can enjoy your music far more with this."

And you concluded the letter writing, 'Take Care'.

'Take Care'? What does that mean?

I read and re-read every letter thoroughly.

Maybe searching for some message hidden somewhere..

Maybe you meant something more than 'Take Care'?

Something more deep, more intimate, more profound...

Something which should not be mentioned in casual fancy...

Something which can start or stop a life...

Maybe you meant it, but forgot to mention it in some hurry

Maybe it just slipped off your mind that someone might be waiting for it

Maybe you just wanted me to read in between the lines...

I wondered and kept on wondering,

See-sawing in the lofty dreams of 'What if?'....

But still I did not get any answer...

So I came down and wrote a letter in your name

Waiting fervently for another reply....

Missing you

I had been writing you letters everyday,

Describing how my day had been,

How things are at work,

How the neighborhood child keeps on making noise every evening at a particular time,

How the anthurium gifted by you, gives flower everyday

I would describe every mundane things in detailed way

To make you the witness of my ordinary life

And in the end of the letter I'd conclude....

" I miss you"....

You would reply that you don't really believe in the concept of missing

As the world has made you too cynical to do so

But nevertheless you would laugh and write "It's ok to miss.."

"With absence, fonder the heart grows."

So I would believe and keep on missing you,

Kindling the flame that you have ignited in me

With the pain I'd get in your separation,

Keeping faith that one day you will surely return.

And dream the day you'd return,

I would light up all your darkness with love's eternal torch

So that when we can look into each other's eyes

There's no fear, there's no shame.

So I kept waiting for you, and even today I do,

But you never came, nor the promises were fulfilled

All that came were some long written words of consolation.

Like dry and withered leaves blown away with the wind.

And today again I write a letter to you,

Describing the regular and not so regular things,

Ending the letter again with 'Missing you',

Maybe out of some long grown habit.

Post script:

Don't make me keep on 'missing you' so much

That one day I may stop 'missing you'...

Strangers in the Night

It was fate that that brought us strangers together,

Chance perhaps made us to look into each others' eyes,

Attraction drew us close,

While love sealed the bond.

They say that love makes the world go round

Yes indeed we said

And became each other's world.

The Sun shone on us,

The Moon beamed at us,

The Breeze caressed us softly,

As we walked hand in hand.

Life never seemed so beautiful,

So rich in its fullest glory.

But someone somewhere kindly smiled...

Now we are just two strangers staying together

made apart by the longest bridge of all

Silence....

The silence has frozen our hearts....

Our hearts still keep beating,

But not for each other

Like chimes of the old grandfather clock

And wither away the time.

We have nothing to say to each other now,

Lest the forceful conversations at the dinner table

As we talk about mundane issues like office, children and the maid

It has become less boring, but more tiring.

We never talk about us,

Nor of our celebrated love gone sour

'Coz like our gross salaries minus tax,

Our love has been deducted at the source.

I amuse my Muse

I am not a poet. Let me emphasise that once again. I admire poetry...but never assume or delude myself to be one. But in the last one month or so, I am going through a phase after many years, which has suddenly opened a flood gate and lines and images are running through my mind like wild horses. So finally decided to pen down the thoughts in the exact way as they had occurred. 

I was searching for my muse in you,
But you laughed it off cruelly and left me marooned
On an island with just me and reality as my sole company...

It put across a mirror in front of my face,
Looking inside, I saw death instead
I screamed in fear and the mirror cracked into several pieces
In those pieces I found back my muse once again...

P.S. Name of the poem plagiarised from someone else. 

আবোল তাবোল

হে মহাজীবন,

এখন সত্যি কী লাভ আর কবিতার ?

পূর্ণিমার চাঁদ আজ সূর্যের চেয়েও লাল,

খুনের রঙে রাঙা টুকটুকে।

গদ্যের শুকনো প্রতিবাদ আজ চীনের প্রাচীরে বারবার ধাক্কা খেয়ে 

 ব্যর্থ, অব্যক্ত।

আজ আমরা সবাই রাজা নই,

রাজা প্রজায় আজ বিষম বড় বিভেদ ,

বেদানার দুটো কণা ছুড়ে দিয়ে রাজা বলে,

"চোপ !"

Note: Suddenly I have not become a poet, nor aiming to be one. The current political and economic scenario around the world, especially in India is making me perturbed....these lines are just a reflection of the unsettled mind...inspiration from three literary geniuses has been unabashedly taken.

সমাধান

আমার মা পাগলী  - 

রাস্তায় বেরোলে সবাই বলত 

"ওই দেখ! ওই পাগলী মাটা যাচ্ছে!"

বড় লজ্জা হত, রাগ হত।

বারবার বারণ করতাম 

"এস না আমায় স্কুল নিতে!"

তবুও কোনো কথা না শুনে 

আমার পাগলী মা রোজ 

দাঁড়িয়ে থাকত আমার স্কুলের সামনে।

না দামী শাড়ি পরত , না সাজতো 

কেবল ফ্যালফ্যাল করে 

তাকিয়ে থাকত স্কুলের গেটের সামনে ,

আর আমায়ে দেখতে পেলেই 

এক ছুটে চলে আসত, জড়িয়ে ধরতে।

বন্ধুদের মায়েরা নিজদের মধ্যে 

হাসাহাসি করত দেখে 

বড় অস্বস্থি হত।

মনে হত বলে দিই 

"তুমি চলে যাও! তুমি পাগলী!

আমার মা নয়!"

একদিন সেই পাগলী মা 

আমায় স্কুল থেকে নিতে গিয়ে 

কোন ভুলে দাঁড়িয়ে পড়ল 

এক চলন্ত বাসের সামনে -

আর ফিরে এলো না।

Psychosis Unspecified Part III - 'Wow' continued

I had a dream….hmmm a wonderful dream as far as I could recall….that I was on a holiday and I had no work, no early mornings, no classes..where you can sleep as long as you want, eat as much as you want, laze around as long as you want…it was beautiful…at last I had ‘peace….inner peace’… Suddenly the truant alarm clock rang and woke me up. I saw the time, it was 7.15 am, which meant the running water has just started coming and the daily morning ‘ceremony’  has began. I dismissed the alarm telling myself that it’s not my time yet and I will be up in another 5 minutes.…as I again slipped back to my dream, where I was sleeping…..

All of a sudden, something inside me told me “Wake up, it’s late!” and I hurriedly opened my eyes…I saw the time on the clock. It was 8.05 am, which meant as usually I was  late  and God only knew if the running water was still there or not!!! I opened my door to check out my doubts. The door next to my immediate neighbor also opened at the same time and I saw the insider also curiously checking out the same. When we both realized we are on the same boat, we grinned sheepishly at each other and went back inside the room to prepare for the ceremony. We both had almost finished brushing our teeth, when Chota Einstein came out of the bathroom. We both stared at each other with the intent of a Mexican standoff….we both knew it was our hair wash day, which meant we both needed the most precious water and the sacred  time to do the needful.....we both generally take ‘some’ time to finish our ceremony and most importantly we both were Late!!!

At last I budged in...I still had not ironed my clothes and the OCPD side of me can never go out anywhere without my dress being properly ironed, which meant Disadvantage me!!! I politely told my ‘mate’ “You go. I will go after you. Just fill up my bucket meanwhile.” The ‘mate’ smiled graciously at me and said “Of course…I will be back soon.” By the time she returned back, I was already fidgeting in anxiety…I had exactly 20 minutes in my hand, before the 9 am class begins!! I hurried through the motion, cursing myself under my breath for being late again and promising that next day onward I would definitely wake up early  etc etc..(by the way, promises like these are always meant to be broken). Finally when I had reached the canteen for breakfast, I saw my mate had almost finished the breakfast and we were the sole denizens of that room…which meant the rest must have already left for the class and I was officially going to get coronated as the Princess of Latecoming!!!!

I gobbled the tasteless food with such ferocity that our Mess-wala Bhaiyya even got scared looking at this view and perhaps reconfirmed his suspicion about my diagnosis! As I ran like a sprint runner towards the teaching block, I saw near Manokamna the dreaded white ambassador car with Baba inside. He had already seen me late twice this week and I knew it very well that if he catches me again I will truly be gone to seventh hell!!! So I ran Bolt-speed and reached the teaching block in record time (The Olympic committee was not there, else they would have declared me the fastest human on earth). The class had already started, but thankfully the class was full…which meant I could very easily sneak in unnoticed and took my seat among the back-benchers (i.e, the latecomers). I was still in my transcendental state and after a while when I could not control my disobedient eyelids, I dozed off.

When I woke up the class was almost over. I tried and act like a pseudo-intellectual throughout the rest of the class, taking down all what was been shown on the slides. Nobody could tell that I was sleeping few minutes back, as my unruly hair falling over my face, was protecting my sleeping face from being detected and the right hand was scribbling down something on the notebook in its autopilot mode. Only those who would have been a keen observer would have realized that all that was written was more indecipherable than any lost language.  

After the class got over I started walking towards the ward where I was currently posted. Unlike the rest who rushed to the respective wards or OPD after the class, I was in no hurry. The artistic me was enjoying every sight and sound of the nature around me, while walking...I was almost on the verge of making some poem revering the beauty of nature....as if Mr. Wordswoth's spirit was getting invoked inside me as  "I wandered lonely as a cloud..." when the stupid stray dogs roaming in front of the ward started barking at me and the poetic mood vanished in the thin air. I was going to scold the dogs about their insolence and stupidity, but their remarkable show of the canine teeth, got the better of me and I left the scene as soon as possible, realizing that right now escaping would be the best defense. 

It was our all patient round day...my dreaded day....it meant I had to stand upright on my feet and follow the entourage as we would move from one patient's bed to another, which meant poor me cannot even sleep!!! Added to that was the horrible stink in that dormitory,which acts as a sleep deterrent!! As I was lamenting about my pitiable state, I smelled a nice perfume or a deo nearby....it was coming from my 'mate' who was also posted in that ward. Me and Maggie hair looked at each other....we smiled...we both were thinking the same...and gradually moved near the 'mate' so that we can fight the stinking odor in the room with the use of the fragrance of the 'mate's' deo....she did not look behind....she was too busy explaining ERP to our Consultant who was looking at her with pride. As I basked in that life saving fragrance my mind again diverted to my poetic inward eye and my heart also started dancing with the daffodils, when Mr. Fish brought me down to reality with a big thud. Naye, it was not Mr. Fish himself, but it was our Consultant who started asking us definitions of delusion and overvalued ideas from Mr. Fish's psychopathology book. Aye my friends consider my condition once....here I was.... a fish lover...who would gorge on fish twice everyday since her childhood, forced to read Fish for the last one month instead of eating one....will any definition of delusions and hallucinations allure me...when I myself was having visual hallucinations of seeing dishes of fish in front of me???? Nobody understood... at least our Consultant who himself was a Bong like me did not...so there I was looking blankly as the questions were being bombarded at us. Hence I thought of taking a shield...very slyly I was whispered into the ears of my 'mate'...."Tell me the definition"...My 'mate' did not disappoint me and she also whispered back something in my ear...Aye!!! But she did not consider my ear ailment while doing so...well....errr...I'm little short of hearing in my right ear (actually still undecided about which one is the worse than the other)...and as 'right'ly described it literally fell into the deaf ear....So I again whispered back to her asking her to repeat again. What I did not notice that while we were carrying out the short distance call...our Consultant joined in it, making it a Conference call. I was embarrassed...but put up a brave face acting as if it was just a wrong number dialled. But our Consultant was intelligent enough to catch my bluff and so he directed another question at me, which I had no clue about. I scratched my head hard and finally came up with an answer of my own...I daresay it was particularly innovative...an open ended question itself!!! But aye! He did not appreciate my innovation and after the disastrous end to my innovation one senior chided me for giving 'air and water' (Hawa Pani - courtesy CIP dictionary)...and there went my momentary ambition to follow Mr. Jobs..."Think Different".

I was pretty disappointed at this and was visualizing imaginary dialogues with the then Apple CEO, about how thinking different is not appreciated everywhere, as I started having my ultra ultra rapid cycle of transcendental phase once more. I got alert....in that delicate condition where I was presently, I could not afford to slip back into it...so I looked around me for help. Maggie hair was busy telling some MSE while Sleeping beauty looked as if she was in a much high state than mine in achieving the transcendental phase (actually we both were fierce competitors till the end of 1st year, but she won hands down by the end of 2nd year in this category). So in utter despair I explained the situation to my 'mate' and asked her to poke me as hard as possible...repeatedly with variable interval in between. I guess she had never seen anyone achieving such high state of consciousness while standing...so the first few pokes were soft..more out of curiosity than anything else. But mine was an emergency state...it was no time for trial and error...so I asked her to pinch me harder. She did comply and aye it was indeed hard!!! I mildly screamed...alerted my Consultant once again of some suspicious activity going on under his nose...he directed a question towards me which I half knew...but as they say "fortune favors the brave"...so luckily my 'mate' whispered the rest of the answer into the right ear (in this case the left ear) and I got duly saved. I smiled gratefully at my 'mate' for this and from that moment we stuck up a weird kind of a friendship....She was supposed to poke or pinch me whenever I would pass into the transcendental state of Consciousness and whisper answers into my left ear whenever I would not know any answer during the rounds.....and in return I would save her from lizards of any size whenever they would knowingly or unknowingly venture near her vicinity at any time of the day!!! And thus we pledged ourselves to be 'Bodyguard's of different genre. We continued honoring our pledge even after we were made apart by our 'zaalim' department, as soon as we finished a record 7 months duration of postings together in different wards in the first year. And people have come and gone, but nobody can awake me via pinches and pokes like she did and I guess it is the same for her...(sob, sob)

This 'mate' is none other than my beloved 'Saat saal'...my sole partner in crime during my CIP days when it came to Non Veg food hunting (read eating)...and I know whenever she will eat hot pakodas at 4.30 in the evening, she will surely miss our memorable days.............(can't sob anymore...it's gonna flood soon)

P.S. An appeal to the makers of 'Ek thi Dayaan'...please don't show witches turning into lizards any more...it just reinforced my 'Saat saal's' 'Chipkali phobia'...

ক্যানভাস

  সারাদিন ক্লান্তির পর

ধূসর দিগন্তরেখায়,

পৃথিবীর বুক জুড়ে নেমে আসে 

                        নিঃস্তব্ধ সন্ধ্যা।

মুছে যায় জীবনের সব রঙ 

  নেমে আসে গাঢ় অন্ধকার,

ধীরে ধীরে 

      থেমে যায় হৃদয়ের স্পন্দন।

আলো হারায় পথ 

   রাত্রির অতল গহ্বরে 

  চুপচাপ নিঃসাড় -

                              সাদাকালো ছবি আঁকা হয় 

                       পৃথিবীর ক্যানভাসে।

সেফটিপিন

একটা সেফটিপিন দিয়ে 

নিজেকে সেফ রাখার চেষ্টা করি।

তবুও দুর্বৃত্তদের হাতে 

আব্রু বেআব্রু হয়ে যায়।

সেফটিপিনখানি আর থাকে না সেফ,

আনসেফ হয়ে বারবার আমাকে খোঁচায়।

মানবী

আমাকে তোমাদের মনে পড়ে ?

আমি যে সে, 

যে যুগে যুগে দিয়েছে অগ্নিপরীক্ষা 

বিশ্বাসহীনকে  বিশ্বাস করানোর অক্ষম প্রচেষ্টায় ;

যে জুয়ার দান হয়ে 

লাঞ্ছিত হয়েছে বারবার কোনো সভাঘরে;

অথবা কোনো লোভীর লোলুপতায় 

বাধ্য হয়েছে বেছে নিতে মৃত্যুর অগ্নিগহ্বর ;

যে করেছে কতবার নানাভাবে পার নীলমৃত্যুর পথ

তবুও সে আছে বেঁচে এক চিরন্তন সত্যের মতো ;

আমাকে তোমাদের মনে পড়ে ?