Foray into Poetry

Homecoming

2007-01-06T16:20:00.000+05:30

It was a wonderful meet[1]
A meeting of old friends, lost and found
Through the net and word of mouth
Through incessant urgings of the friends of yore

It meant unscheduled leaves of absences
Long travel over oceans and missed dollars
Of setting aside competing business interests
Oh! What a triumph - of heart over heads

All for a couple of days of homecoming
To converge in the sylvan settings of the new campus
Just to breathe the city air that set sail
Of our destinies in the world of toil

To say hello and trade past memories
Of exploits in n’ around Langford Road
Of missed classes and dreams
Of games and harmless light-mindedness

It was a time to share thoughts of paths taken and not taken
Of new relationships, of new births
Of seeing youngsters, bright eyes and sprightly limbs
A new generation, full of hope, promise and mirth

Of meeting old teachers
Who have changed and not changed
Wisdom and everyday ordinariness commingled
Age and humanness all bared

Oh, what have twenty five years done?
Each of us changed a tone different
Wiser we would suppose
Our children would oppose, stupider they would rant!

[1] Written in homage to the IIM Bangalore 25th year alumni get together during 29 to 31 Dec 2006

My Chair

2006-05-15T13:42:00.000+05:30

Oh, what a cool fellow
My companion, at the most lonely moments!
My solace, my rest, my firm anchor to the earth beneath
My friend in solitary reverie, succour to nerves and legs.

When the mind goes blank and the
Computer despairs with viral attacks
Files lost, gibberish, when mocking letters prevail
When confusion reigns.

My companion, robust, restful and unmoved
Solace, a link to Mother beneath
My friend... has a special spirit
That of the terra firma it rests upon.

Provides, never expects
Carries, does not protest
Lasts forever, years and years
Serving every day with verve

Generations he waits on and
Takes the condescension “Grandfather chair” with grace.
Witness to thoughts, silent and solid
Company to more than three generations.

No one to sing praise
Nor provide place of pride.
Gets no head or heart or hands for company.
It withstands weight and abuse.

Heads think, hearts feel, hands do.
Not such functions for his company...
Lowly bottoms, mocked … laughed at and not
Mentioned in blue-blooded company!

Prologue of my half completed Novel

2005-10-04T14:28:00.000+05:30

PROLOGUE

After almost two months the reply finally came. The handwriting on the envelope was unmistakable. It was from Dr. Mukhopadyay.

Pranoy Nursing Home, Kolkata
4th May 2008

My dear Dilip,
Received your letter. Thank you, but could not send a reply any sooner. I was too sick to sit up in bed and write. I thought I should write myself because I am poor at dictating. My thoughts do not hold well when someone else writes for me.
I am happy that you have finally solved QP. Your solutions seem to hold well and you’ve got a handle on it now. If this had been a term paper, I probably would have given you an A+.
I had been through a lot of physical pain. The trouble at the hospital is that they want to scan you and see all your insides. All that tires me out. They say that their patient is better now. May be I am – at least my hands and legs can move the way I command. But, I think, or know, that this is only a flash before the light finally leaves the body.
The last few days I’ve been called on and blessed by two strange visitors. Here I share with you my good fortune.

My primordial Mother from yonder
Suddenly opened the gates beyond
And flung on to ride the moonlight wave
And journeyed onto earth.
It was the most exquisite spectacle.
Her face shone with pale brilliance
As the moon merged with her countenance
A blemish on her face appeared
As if to show her burden of the earth.
She came into my abode
My heart raced as she sat beside me
Her soft reassuring ancient hands
Picked me up, cradled me in her lap,
Pressed me to her breast
And kissed me on the forehead.
She then bent down to my ear
And spoke the kind motherly words.
“My child, my beloved child”, she cried.
She cried the bittersweet tears of consolation.
This Mother of the universe
Was everything; life, regeneration, rejuvenation,
All-embracing participation and inclusion.
She said,
“I am nature, I am energy
I am beauty, I am mother
I am behind the unyielding zest for life.”
That night she spoke to me for a long time.
She told me ancient stories of sacrifice,
Sufferings and forbearance.
“Live in remembrance, live in dreams
I shall be there with you.
Live life in harmony
With those who made this earth their home,
Which belongs to everybody
And yet to nobody.”
The pain from man’s crassness
Tormented Mother’s heart.
Hearing Her words,
My heart opened up
Into a sprout of new understanding,
A new freedom, a new beginning.
I bowed in supplication before Her
I hugged and kissed Her in love I have known not before
I bowed and said a prayer to the lotus that rested Her feet.
Through my veins coursed her blessings
So that my heart would remain
One with Her forever.

The night would soon come to an end
I could now hear the sun rising on the distant horizon.
It was now the turn for my Father for his visitation.
He rode on the straight shaft of gleam from the sun.
The light shone on him to reveal his perfection
All exact, geometrical and efficient
He was majestic
He was the very essence of authority and control.
His eyes bore through eternity
He bade me sit beside Him
He sat erect and I looked up the great master.
He commanded me to listen to him carefully.
He bespoke,
“I am the father of time and space
I am reality
The Master of the regular and the sublime,
The atomic and subatomic.
I am what was, what is, and what will be.
I am truth.
All words are my creation
All sights my order
All sounds, and senses my command,
I am intelligence.
I conferred you the human ability
To explain and interpret reality.
I am the primordial cause for
The human means to know that he knows.
My Father was stern, but just,
Exact, but understanding.
He too was pained by impatience
By crassness, by human abuse.
And with the abuse of Truth.
He forewarned,
“Be cautious of knowledge,
Use them with discretion
They are double-edged swords.
Use it, embellish it.
Just as all good things
It deserves caution.
Turn it to wisdom and grow.”
I sat beside his imposing presence
Hope blossomed in my heart.
His message, direct and unmistakable
Gave a new vision.

That night I had the most beautiful conversation ever
With my limitless Parents.
My heart and head spoke in tandem
I was joyous, I was sad
I was ecstatic, I was crestfallen.
My humble words were heard,
My lowly thoughts
Not worth mentioning
Received with respect.
In the end I had traversed a long, long way.
And had finally met
In all majesty, in all comprehensiveness
Beauty and Truth.

And then,
At that twilight zone of night and day
Where moon and sun exchanged smiles
Mother and Father finally met.
They spoke to each other endearingly
They held each other’s hands
And kissed in love.
They sang the eternal song
And danced the cosmic dance
They locked Their hands and
In sublime ecstasy They united.
They reached out and embraced me.
The last worldly extravaganza began to unfold
Time stood still, fears dissolved, doubts vanished,
And freedom exploded in heavenly cloudburst.
In that supreme moment of awakening
I was transfused with the all-encompassing vision of the universe.
Through every sinew of my body rushed awareness
Love and forgiveness.
And… Death became my friend!
The trumpets boomed,
The cymbals clanked,
The journey had begun.
I bid adieu as I bow my head in gratitude to all.

With love
Satyojit Mukhopadyay

As Dilip read the letter his eyes welled up. He went through it several times. Finally he sat there on his chair for a long time, too stunned to do anything else.
Dilip felt a strange fascination towards death. Here Dr. Mukhopadyay is dying, perhaps, dead already. But his ideas will live forever. In fact, he will live forever.
He got up from his chair and looked out of the window. It will soon be night. The burning summer air of the day had died. It was less oppressive now. The dust mixed with the light rays from the sodium vapour lamps that cast long misty shadows over the uneven ground across the building.
Dilip turned back from the window and stepped out of his apartment. Down at the street he involuntarily chose the road that was unspoiled by the glare.
He walked for a long time. Over four hours may have passed. By now he had walked a long way and reached some unknown place. He had not seen these streets and buildings before. All he knew was that he was in some far-off Mumbai suburb. Then suddenly a strange sensation seized him, and he looked up. There was this building, too familiar and yet he knew it was the first time that he was stepping into this Mumbai hinterland. Strange. A lone bus that sped past across the building seemed eerily familiar in a new, or old, sort of way. It slid smoothly over the otherwise bumpy road surface – it seemed to slide over rails! This building too was special. He stared at it in wonderment. There, there he could see a silent, dark, yet luminous, sentinel rising above the arched portico, and in an instant, he could recognise him. It was the old man. The scene was complete. He knew what he saw was Calcutta’s old familiar Pranoy Nursing Home on Ballygung Avenue, with those slow, ancient tramcars. “God, where am I? In Mumbai or Calcutta,” Dilip whispered. Time never changed and space never mattered.
He stood by the side of road with palms together in prayer. It was thanksgiving. It was despair for loosing a man he truly loved. It was a prayer for his soul, a celebration of triumph of permanence over impermanence.
As he was about to turn and walk back, the ancient hymn whispered within... Mrithyormaa Amritam Gamayah!
Mukhopadyay’s ancient Mother and Father! Was what he felt now a son’s kinship towards those very same Parents?
And what about that strange connection between Them and the QP?
Is he saying that those Cells in QP were simply human constructs? Are the distinctions between those Cells just the limits of human imagination and human logic?
Strange old man. He has a way to beat death – by making those whom he left behind to think through his last thoughts. Does he mean that QP is a means to see something higher? I shall not let him down. I shall continue to ask. My old friend, my teacher, my guiding light will remain forever.

The sewerage

2005-03-02T06:35:00.000+05:30

I am the woman from underground
Happy to live there forever.
Dark, smelly and unkempt
Men of birth don’t look at me.

Curved, crooked and sinuous
I reach everywhere.
The modest and the majestic
All give me alike.

And I am happy that way.
For discrimination ay’nt something for me.
If someone gives me gold or diamond
It’s truly by mistake, rarely though.

Then with gloves and masks
They unbowel and fish my insides.
They search like thieves
And violate my solitude.

What unprincipled louts
For they don’t believe that
Things that are once given away
Don’t anymore belong to them.

In Mumbai
They treat me differently.
I am bare, my bosom uncovered
My loin unclothed.

I like the wind and the sun and the air.
But am I beautiful enough to sunbath naked?
Do they really love me
That they have me on surface?

I doubt, for they sniff and make faces
And turn their eyes disgustingly away.
My shame is double then,
It pains more when rejected after a ray of hope.

They dig at me every time they get a chance,
The wicked arm of the shovels gash at me.
Some little brain from the corporation office
May have ordered to split my spine.

I like the lowly good fellows, dark shining bodies
When they descend to purge me clean.
Often cables, of phone and electricity, want to live with me
And huge, strong water pipes I envy want to bed me.

Everyday I see mean saffron, red, green and multicolored flags march past me
Accompanied by shouting and cacophony.
When swanky cars dig their heels
I long to make love to their wheels.

I am happy
I am home to a zillion mosquitoes
And harbor nature’s best friends;
Ants, rats, amoebae and hyacinths.

These humans I serve most
Are nature’s worst enemies.
They dump chlorine, mercury and
DDT into my guts.

I have no choice but to turn it to my bosom pal
The earth, mother of patience and solidarity
Her womb full of pall
Choked and feeble she cries in agony.

I am helpless.
All I do is warn those fellows
Through stench, slime and disease.
But thick skin is the nature of the fools.

One day all this will come home to roost.
I tell them that their brains will fill with encephalitis,
And their liver overflowth with jaundice.
They don’t care for that’s a burden their children will bear.

All is well for them.
These honorable men and women.
Busy with their own rut,
Laughing and indifferent in their smut.

@Sankaran

The Flying Enemy

2005-03-01T18:12:00.000+05:30

In the darkness of the night
Against a light bulb zero watt
I see you menacingly whiz past
Straining to show off your flying art

Whoosh, Whoosh, you are trapped in the fly bat
The current stuns and lays you flat
Unseen, unheard and unsmelt
Electrocution ends your happy flight.

Your gleeful joy and flying prowess lost,
With crackles and tiny bursts you are bust.
What power have you met
To spoil your ancient evil intent?

Your companion lies nearby on the bat,
Too frightened of the electrocution bout,
Far too scared to move about.
What Power? What ominous fate?

Has he turned to an ungainly mass of tiny harmless dead dot
That you’ll never make him out.
Or ashes has he turned,
Too liberated to think the last thought.

In me arises the triumphant feeling of conquest
A small battle won over a gnat insignificant.
Is it legitimate, the feeling extravagant
Over a tiny helpless flying dart?

I think of the life that breathed
And your simple search for food and mate.
Such modest needs I outwit.
Do I have the right to nip them out?

Perhaps not.
Ashamed am I, that
I wonder, have you a place legitimate
Here with us humans you bite?

I have no generative might
To create a marvel so minute.
Do I have the right to kill and gloat
Over this fall ultimate?

I search for reasons for my act
Suddenly my voice within states
You have no right to feast
Over my blood and with disease infect.

And I have the right to defend.
… Purely defend, a choice God has granted.
I only know that I have no right
To rejoice over your descend.

Go away please go away
The burden of thoughts dismay.
Enemy, get out of my way
Please fly, fly far away.

@Sankaran