Living-room

Cold-warm afternoon,

Lay on my living-room

Pigeons warm up the windowsill,

There’s wooing in the coo, I guess

Winds embrace my windows,

Flirt with the leaves of Tobu,*

A tree I named after my cousin, who died for a cause

When I was thirteen!

Tobu has grown up to cover my balcony,

Comfort my house, with freshness

Of unmatched smell and nestling sound

Real and natural!

Can hear the stable clock,

Down somewhere, cows graze

The caressed meadow moos in delightful tunes

I can feel the oil and the sun

Making love to hatch the pickles in those age-old jars

On the terrace, love a necklace, all around

Far, far away, distinct whistles of the train and its wheels

Penetrate in my ears with a travel dwindle;

When I was young, I’d pack those bags and hold alls

For that one month of relief

From work, household chores!

Then, I had a family, who, later, for no reason at all, had to join Tobu

Stayed alive in the headlines, in candles for some days

Now, no vocation, other than reading news that talks of bloodshed

Of horror and terror, still loveless neck-less and processed,

The greed of good governance waters them with honor,

Like I water the plant,

With every killing in the unreal world,

Tobu stands tall, nourished and nurtured

Represents the fallen stars through its leaves and its parts

Those bulletins tell me though the world is not livable any more,

No room for peace

Asks me to believe in this!

Despite the overwhelming calm in my world

An unending supply of bliss!

In a while, familiar faces will come, do their work, and leave

Some wouldn’t show up I know,

With their reasons I’d willingly accept, in a tomorrow,

For I know, even if they didn’t come, grasses will grow

All of us work here with mistakes lost and won, sans stress

For reasons good or bad, a mess here, is not in mess

I’d have to attend to calls offering personal loans and jobs

No I am not interested, I’d say to them, politely though

I’d wait for them to hang up, for they made the call…

Work of other nature, will be done, some undone, with no fuss at all

And then, the ball of light will fade from the sky, will be gone

To brighten up another part, lit up with love, those pages to be sung

With birth of earthly inexhaustible love, to seldom bereave, or leave

Sky! O sky! This love you see with all your eyes,

But O heavens the loved look for paradise?

My palace of peace, in this I believe

Here, darkness switches on remotes, from all around

To fill the vacuum, with uncontrolled traffic of sounds

The errors make up for entertainment

An escapade from the dreadful day spent

Unnatural and unreal!

I am in my living-room,

With those pigeons

The whistles and the wheels

The clock

The cows

The meadow

The employees

The calls

The soft, steady and stable birth of the pickles on the terrace

The winds smiling through the leaves of Tobu

Note

*Tobu – a Bengali word that means ‘still’, ‘yet’. The /t/ is soft, like French. It is to be pronounced as /to/ as in ‘toast’ and /bu/ as in ‘boulevard’. Why was he named thus! The story goes that his parents were always seen fighting with each other in public, and just when their relatives believed the marriage was heading for a divorce, Tobu’s mom couldn’t hide the love-bag anymore! In time, when he was born, those loving relatives sent his parents a beautiful card with a couplet inside, that went like this:

We wonder how, despite the fury and the fight

A son was born out of love, smiling so bright!

It was his relatives who named him thus! Later the couple confessed that the fight wasn't real, it was just a show they’d put up on purpose to escape jealousy! This type of fake fights is pretty common among couples expecting a child, whose main purpose is to have a safe birth!


To read the note as an extension of the poem.