`
In a corner of my new apartment,
I wake up into emptiness.
The solemn dawn 
Breaks upon my transparent window-pane,
Splashing gold onto my desk
And onto the thin layer of dust on my unwrapped television.

I stare aimlessly at the hands of the clock,
Moving painstakingly in an arc, on and on.

The days are easy to spend.
But in the evenings, I am left searching for an escape: 
Sometimes in the stench of the coffee shop,
Sometimes on the forlorn park benches near the river,
Staring blankly into the dusk, bathed in gold,
Under the mosaic of glimmering maple leaves.

The night holds no mysteries any more,
Just a meaningless silence, and a spattering of loneliness.
`

Minneapolis, MN

June, 2012

Love on the evening train

`

You sit 'cross me on the evening train

In your dark denims, and gray cardigan.

Your lips flush red with red lipstick.

You glance at me, and smile once, quick.

When he calls up – you hardly speak:

Your eyes are tired, your voice is weak.

The phone call done, you close your eyes.

The train chugs on, amidst your sighs.

Lovely you look, in your gray and blue,

Your dark red lips, large eyes and you.

How he must love those lips, those eyes,

That lovely nose, those eyebrows wise!

Yet does he really understand you?

Your lips, your eyes, your gray and blue?

Why let me love you while you sleep

For these few moments, for me to keep,

Before we part strangers again,

Who sat across on an evening train.

No, not your lips, or eyes, or hair –

He loves all that, and you do not care.

Instead, let me love your empty sigh,

The infinite tiredness in your eye,

The yearnings of your lonely heart,

And these three long feet that keep us apart.

`

Grand Central Station, NY, 

November, 2011

অসম্পূর্ণ (Incomplete)

`

ঠিক এমনি করেই, আর একটি ক্লান্ত দিন 

ঢলে পরে আরও একটি রাতের বুকে  –

নিঃশেষিত, তবু অসম্পূর্ণ |

(And in some such way, another tired day 

Collapses onto yet another night  –

Exhausted, yet incomplete.)

`

White Plains, NY,

October, 2011

gWait

`
For you to turn green
I've been waiting all day,
Even red you could've been
But you've chosen to be gray!

`

Minneapolis, MN,

July, 2011

Returning

`
I am tired now and need returning
Back where I grew up in,
Where they sing in a tongue I used to know
But such a long time it has been.

I've been too cold and been too dry
Too far away too long,
Will you not fill my cup again
So once more I may belong?

Your wind rustles the leaves up high
Can't it rustle me too,
Return me my voice again
That I may sing with you?

The city has kept painting me
With a myriad hues,
Won't your rain now heal away
The scars of that abuse?

The world's too big and I too lonely
I've earned too much to own.
Come, wash away this loneliness
While I sit with you alone.
`

Crystal Ridge, NY,

June, 2011

`
Much of what I have achieved had once been just a dream. Yet, I remain unable to trust myself with my dreaming.

Help me entrust myself with my dreams master, and I shall change the world.
`

Minneapolis, MN,

January, 2010

Winter 2010

`

For no particular reason

I have decided not to work on Sundays.

So sometimes, in the afternoons,

I drive down to the river.

Trudging through the snow

I lean over the railings.

They're steel and cold

And getting brown with rust. 

I stand and listen carefully

For voices, chirps, caws, croaks.

I hear only the mumble of water,

And the wind through dry branches.

In the distance, the river
Knifes through its broad banks
Now whitewashed in snow
And scarred with bare trees.

The snow on my sneakers melts slowly

Trickling in like a painful memory.

I try hard recalling one,
Almost desperately, to match the mood.

And I recall nothing:
No anguish, no hurt, no pain.

Dazed, I stare blankly

At the dark water flowing below.

It is too dark 

For a boy my age.

`

Crystal Ridge, NY,

November, 2010

গ্রামের বাড়ি

`
ছেলেবেলার এই গল্প শুনতে
ভালো লাগছে ভারি

এক সপ্তার ছুটি নিয়ে

যাবি গ্রামের বাড়ি?

বাঁশ বাগান আর মাটির ঘর

মাথায় খড়ের চাল

থাকব গিয়ে দুজন মিলে

দুজনের সকাল

ভোরের বেলা শিশির পায়ে

ভিজে মাটির গন্ধ

বাঁধ পেরিয়ে অজয় পারে

বাউল এর আনন্দ

সেথায় বসে সারা সকাল 

গান গাইবি কত

শুনব কোলে মাথা দিয়ে

ছোট্টবেলার মত

দুপুরবেলা ডোবার মাছ

শাক ভাত আলু-পোস্ত

তারপরেতে কম্বল গায়ে

গপ্পে গপ্পে ব্যস্ত

বিকেল বেলা বেড়াতে যাব

সেই তাঁতিদের পাড়া

কথা কয়ে দেখবি

অবাক প্রাণখোলা হয় ওরা

সন্ধে হলেই অবধারিত

লোড-শেডিং এর মশা 

তারই মধ্যে হেচক জেলে 

হবে মাংস কষা

হাসছিস তুই; সত্যি বলছি

যাব একদিন চলে

কতদিন হল ঘরে ফিরিনি

আমার গাঁয়ের কোলে |
`

White Plains, NY,

August, 2010

Not a madman

`
I'm not a madman Aditya,
Don't smile at me that way.

This moon, these dark
Trees, swaying to the wind
Those boys, all drunk
All loud, all laughing,
Everything
Is so beautiful:
They suffuse me with joy.

Don't smile at me that way.

We walk this moonlit
Spring night, the air
So light, so mirthful,
And you waste time
Mocking me. I wish
You could breathe
This joyous air, Aditya,
I so wish you could.

There, you are smiling at me again.
`

Minneapolis, MN,

April, 2010

Demise of the artist

`
More and more the mind
Seeks solace within the head.

It does not yearn to fly again,
With the flock of storks over misty fields;
Or to hop with monsoon frogs,
From leaf to leaf, across lily ponds.

Quite mysteriously, it has silently succeeded
In forgetting all those pleasures.

Instead, it now remains obsessed
With a corner within the cranium,
Where it has housed itself
Indefinitely.

Crouched in that dungeon,
Chained down by time,
It sits and works,
Like clockwork.

Perhaps it is too scared to float out:
Some unknown fear engulfs it now,
And it seeks comfort in cages.

It now longs for the assurance
Of meaning, over existence,
For a certitude
In the social orderliness.

Alas, it has got diseased
With this perfect sanity,
And there is nothing I am able to do about it.
`

Minneapolis, MN,

March, 2010

Purple river

`
Tonight, I will run away,
Into the distant dark
Beyond the hushed and weary silence
Where all things sleep,
To visit my purple river.

Shawl clad, and lamp in hand,
Where they lie in whispers
Behind their doubting doors,
I will tiptoe past.
And when a trembling voice calls out:
"Who goes there?"
I will not answer.
Tonight, I have to visit my purple river.


Barefoot, through the crumbling dust,
When I reach her edge, I will blow out my lamp,
That I may see her again.
And I will whisper to her:
"Tonight, purple river, I have come to listen."

Tonight, purple river, I will not say: "Stop your flimsy tale!
And hear me talk, I have so much to say."
Tonight I will listen
To your purple voice
Undulating, in the distant dark.

Purple river, tell me all those secrets tonight
Of little farmer girls in red frocks
That only your naughty ripples know of.
Of the fisherman's son, and the barber's wife,
Of the shepherd who lost his flute,
Who plays no more his lost tune.

Purple river, make me giggle tonight,
Make me laugh, and make me cry,
And make me smile just the way you do
Rippling as you flow by.

Purple river, I too have tales to tell,
But they are flimsy, and they are gray;
And I have run and come to you
To hear of your coloured day
Of a coloured life, and of coloured people,
In your simple, purple way.
`

Minneapolis, MN,

March, 2008

`

লিখিতে সাহস হয় না আর
পাছে বেদনা উথলে পরে
ভাঙ্গিয়া পরি নয়নের জলে

(I cannot dare write anymore
Lest my grief spills over
And I break down in tears)
`

Minneapolis, MN,

September, 2007

Beneath the corporate froth

`
Days flow by
like a ripened River
Shimmering, but Still
indifferently watching
Familiar
Undated
Images
on its banks
and never bothering
to Capture any of them
only getting Slow and Heavy
with Gray silt
picked up Unnoticed
and now Drifting
Languidly
into a Murkier Still
`

Bengaluru, KA,

May, 2007

Grandfather

`
2000 kilometers away, today morning
He died.

I felt sad.
I loved him
And even wanted to cry,
But of course, I did not.

I remembered
How he had worked
Days and nights on end
To sustain the family,
Educate my father;
I remembered –
What I was today was because
Of all that he had been.

Today, in the evening
We friends met up
As had been decided
And had a gala time.

2000 kilometers away, at home
They wept all night.
I loved him
And I did not cry at all.
`

Bengaluru, KA,

April, 2007

On the terrace

`
Now on the terrace,
Sitting.

The night breeze flows
Combing my hair
Back, and above
The night is dark
And shallow
Planets don't twinkle.

The neons glare aloud
As the incessant
Traffic screams by.

Clutching
The wind and the night,
I, helpless,
Try escaping.
`

Bengaluru, KA,

February, 2007

Nights

`
Moist hopes
In shadows
Wait into beads
Smudge mistrust
Onto sodden nights
Dank with defeats
`

Bengaluru, KA,

December, 2006

And, be quiet

`
And be quiet
In agony
In the breath of women
The moon faltering
In painting
Dawn and mist
And drops waiting
In death.
`

Pilani, RJ,

September, 2006

June, 2005 at BARC, Mumbai

`
The gray sky, dimly lit
By a million Mumbai neons
The silent dark hills
Peacefully soak in a light drizzle
The dust-laden foliage whisper words of gratitude
As the first monsoon wind tip-toes
Through the great city,
So quiet, so silent,
Careful not to rob her
Of her hard-earned silence and her meager slumber.
`

Mumbai, MH,

June, 2005

Evening on my terrace in Chandannagar

`
The moon, so forlorn, so peaceful
Crimson diffusing into blue, the evening sky
Littered with gray cottonwool;

Swaying palm leaves in the gentle breath of air
Squeals of laughter, young children at play
Floats across the distant hum of gong, hymn and prayer.

The disc of luminous gold, across fly swallows free
At each other we gaze, just the two of us,
Lady moon and me.
`

Chandannagar, WB,

July, 2004

Summer vacation

`
Crawls along a morning
Drags along a day
Passes along like strange void
Night falls, as dull, as gray.

No job at hand, no sleep in eyes
Awake I sleep, like the old new-born
At length grows drowsy the indolent eyes
Crawls along another morn.
`

Chandannagar, WB,

July, 2004