history wants to be free

history hisses horrors 

the dead is scared of death
times frozen in the corridor of minds
fluttering flags throw up
in the same blue sky
colourful reminders of dead streets
loyal animosity deceives all external changes

no new thoughts outwit the eraser

standing as a bodyguard in borders
yet new days and fresh nights peek
offer new jiffs new waves
new darkness new light
in this momentous world
just born, today, now, here

...

but from the leaves of the past

crawls the snake

its venom becomes the nectar
the beautiful creature cries trapped 
climbs up and down but fails

the eraser walls block the roads
it wants to be free

the garden is right here...on the earth... to outwit history seems to be the key... in this new era of technology, everything external changes, from versions, to looks, to its features; yet the beautiful mind that creates all these from behind doesn't...voilà le mystère

Witness

I have an ocean in my handkerchief,

Of stories untold

Hidden in the dark pocket,

The cotton skeleton

A rubbernecker of insolence, of cruelty and deforested thoughts!

You are telling me to wash it dry, to make it shine again?

I’d hold it against the wind and let the tales go

Of no use at all, to none of those blinded ears;

Yet it had spots bolder than words,

Footprints more telling than the ink,

What it did; died...

Empty winds! With you take them all

Let it live with me, I would wash it clean.

Pillory

Cannot keep afloat, not anymore,

Prepare for quietus, in the letters that made you speak

For bigotry has overwhelmed the catty collars now,

For overconfidence had overlooked the frozen horrors.

Give your words to them, for you hold no rights,

Inexcusable show of smutty heights,

Smirking dentures, right through those failing ghettos of humanity

In miming games of brinkmanship

Overmuch benefaction, a win-lose rope to hang.

You are wrecked and sunk,

Yet no rats leave the deck, none at all

Afraid of safety, being guillotined in foams is safer still

For nature holds no charity

In the land, cacophony of sacred puffy cats will stone you,

Until you sound deaf.

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.

Falling from the indomitable freshness

Brown days, tired and sleepy,

Destined to fall free

As autumn leaves,

Or a brewing steam that went wrong

Waiting in the cold...

Yet

Days gray, yellow and white

Appear anew, stretching for colours!

It’s a merging, in the midst of things.

For the rising child,

The relentless brush pokes

Needless needles,

Until with softness, the brightness

The freshness of imagenie*

It appears smoky in the shelves.

There is a wind that begs, blooms, flourishes

Still

The most fearsome storm

With the green bomb,

Incapable

Leaves, grasses

Ready to spring, splurge

Falls in the silent woods

With a spread, unnoticed,  

All around,

The earth gets it all!

In the new forest-fresh world

The blind sun is born, crying

Undressed, unwilling, drained

Staging a bed, in time

Prepared to pounce on the pounding

Pumping heart

Faking to be child’s own blending

Mellows,

Yet set to be brown.

The fertile waters chirp through the wind

Soften the ear melt the pride of the crown.

*Imagenie – A word that is left to be interpreted by readers

Visio infectum

Visio infectum

I have scratches in the mind,

My mind.

Pages blot.

Forms, shapes, impaired in letters;

Halted interactions

Mimic on a shining surface.

Glassy waters, dressed as mirror-pieces

Screech in lines; black,

In blocks of silence,

I was drawing in the world,

My world.

Withdrawn, yet reborn;

Willingness, its helplessness

Despite aphorisms,

In the juicy-leafy semiotics of life

Somewhere in between the mind and the world, life wills for a space

Insane ecstasy

Another day of thoughts, to kill again,

Never spare to kill,

Black choice, white bargain

To let it go, no effort no skill;

In the living, divides in scores and tons

In the killing, there is none!

Guilty is my world lying deep in me

Can I clear it all with insane ecstasy!

The will to kill, the wire’s everywhere,

My ribs are stunned with shocks and trapped in the air,

Guns in those arms, they’re deaf still and stiff

Beings a while ago are bodies in just a whiff;

Death takes the breath away from the dead

Scarlet news that purple, no step to stop the dread!

Guilty is my world lying deep in me

Can I clear it all with insane ecstasy!

My thoughts are in the woods, and I am taciturn,

Raging thoughts I kill, so they’d never return

I have the world with me, in the little big I do

I will nil the germs, in me brewing anew

Pictures paint in spasm, in chapters closed for sure

Stillness alone will stay in pages strong and pure!

Guilty is but a word living dead in me!

Without it in view, is the insane ecstasy

  

The world belongs to me. It is my property. I will put hatred, anger, killings of all kinds behind me. There will come a day, not so far away, when we'd get back to our natural self; Peace. I will erase war, terror, horror from the face of the world; my world.

Passion for Peace III

We forgive you because you were born

Forgive us, please! For we’d also be gone

This gibberish just popped out... I had perhaps been possessed by Lucky, who never waited for Godot by the way, ha!

Lucky that I was, with Pozzo outside of me, I needed a hat to think. Lucky that I am now with Pozzo in me, 'I don't need no [hat]'!

Hello fellows,

Installing Peace

I have come back. Again! Just to remind you of the rats that might be lying on streets and making headlines! Let us not call them rats, let’s call them poor cousins... ah no! They are actually our siblings... we don’t recognise them as ones because of many differences, like skin, language, food, dress, etc. No matter what name you give them, rats, poor cousins, siblings, they are our own...at least from the inside...like blood, flesh, skeletons, functions of their organs, their ribs... I am here to tell you to be prepared...

SOS for the SOT 

Tell me how is it possible not to be angry on those who are killing our siblings? Tell me how? But we have to practise that...because anger blocks our ways, it clouds our thoughts, it is essentially destructive in nature and Intelligence has nothing to do with it... so we will not let anger block our ways to Intelligence! Every single individual who is dying because of terrorism is my sibling, the world belongs to me, it is my property... it is this thought alone that can deliver us...so let us think of ourselves as siblings, from today... we are all siblings here... waiting to die...why not... who has escaped death anyway... just add an adjective....like untimely death, unprepared or sudden death...that’s all! But today, we are determined to put this behind us... from this day onward, we will refer to each other as siblings...we are not cousins, we are not aliens, we are our siblings. To save our siblings is our cause. We know that in the absence of a noble cause, intelligence doesn't show us the way. For instance, the school of terrorism (SOT) has a cause in front of them, which it thinks as noble. So we have decided on SOS [save our siblings] as our cause to counter SOT’s.

Thank you for your time...we have all assembled here to discuss on how to demolish this SOT. Our path is powerful because it is that of peace...what? Thank you for the name... GROW UP is what you have decided, is it? And what does it stand for? Oh! Getting Rid Of War...Using Peace! Oh, that’s a nice name to have, but we shouldn't get limited by the name alone... I hope you do understand! So for this SOT, we have SOS...and for SOS, we have formed a team called GROW UP, is it? Good! I am happy that you have agreed upon this name, although some of you think of it as childish, but you are mature enough to let go of your egos, and not waste time fighting for a more effective name...after all what is in a name...GROW UP will stand for what it is...no matter what! 

GROW UP

I am so happy to write down the points of this MoM. 

1. We will not kill anyone, no matter what because killing does not help, we have seen that. We will think differently.

2. Those who are getting killed and those who are killing are our siblings.

3. We are good at post-mortem, at understanding how things happened. We will now focus on pre-mortem, will focus on prevention...Intelligence will show us the way for sure.

4. For the same reason, we will employ pre-detectives... the world is with us...we treat the world as a whole, from today. 

5. We consider those who have been killed and will be killed and those who are killing as our siblings. I know some of you wanted siblings to be replaced as riblings, but later decided to stick to siblings without getting emotional...that’s good indeed! 

6. In this journey, we consider Martin Luther King Jr. as our guru because of the following reasons:

• Upon hearing his famous speech ‘I have a dream’ a number of times, we have not seen any hatred, any anger for those against whom he was talking, in fact the speech was not for or against someone, but against something
• No angry vocal clues were observed, no angry facial expression, not a nerve on his face changed as he was delivering the speech
• As a result of the speech, things changed... and today we do not observe any killing (physical) of the people for whom he was speaking
• The speech was like a prayer that came from the Heart of our guru, the heart which truly represented many hearts, the heart which did not exclude the hearts to whom the appeal was made
• His ability to connect with the world without sounding rude is what we will need in our effort to demolish the SOT 

7. We will connect with the Intelligence to

     a. Demolish the SOT with love

      b. Understand the dependencies and neutralise them

  i. A gun has the power to kill, but is powerless without a bullet inside: We will separate the guns from the bullets

ii. A bullet has the power to kill, but is powerless without a gun: We will separate the bullets from the guns

iii. A loaded gun has the power to kill, but is powerless without a person: We will separate the persons from the loaded guns

iv. Persons with loaded guns have the power to kill, but are powerless without vehicles: We will separate the persons with loaded guns from the vehicles

8. Understand how a regular person like us gets admitted into the SOT and track their trajectory:  A regular person, like us, thinks killing innocent people unarmed, unaware is dangerous, unfair, unkind ------ the person gets admitted and inducted to the SOT ------ the same person thinks killing innocent people unarmed and unaware is convenient, fun and fair: NOW with GROW UP’s intelligent intervention, this track will be demolished 

9. Not lose POWER

1. We will not torture anyone sharing SOT’s religion, because we know what happens during the moments of torture... the power from the tortured person is transmitted to the SOT
2. Not blame any country for supporting the SOT. We lose power if we do that because the country which is ostracised unknowingly transmits power to the SOT
3. We will not consider any country, or a group or even the SOT as separate from the world... if anyone has to be ashamed, if at all, for the innocent-killing, the world has to be ashamed... Understanding the world as a whole... in the level of feelings, not that of words

10. Strengthen our network, remote sensing, deploy Intelligence of the highest order to track, monitor movements (money, arms and weapons, students or supports of any kind), virtual, physical to and from the SOT

Action plan

We have decided to plan on these lines

1. Understand that justice without love has always been disproportionate and unjust

• Otherwise how is Sisyphus still pushing the stone!

2. Focus on the crime, not on those committing the crime: In the exchange of energy and information, Love is the only reality of the Infinite consciousness, it is the only energy and information

3.  We will do our research on the school: We need to understand what kind of love, commitment, dedication the SOT has because SOT is a Learning Organisation: It has spread its network in every part of the world,  its ultimate success of power was displayed  by demolishing the twin towers in the US, of conversion was displayed in France, where they converted persons from the land of Voltaire to kill free-thinkers; it has less of suicide bombers now...they kill and flee

4. Understand how we can make committing crimes inconvenient: It is sad to see how we have made committing crimes so convenient. A bank holdup is easy these days, and it’s an easy and fast way of getting loads of money getting rich faster and bribing one’s way out, isn't it? Most people who are behind the bars today have nothing to do with the crime...yes most of them are innocent. Most Money laundering, cheating, frauds have become so common these days. Like most people who are fired from organisations have been fired because they failed to be in the good books of some powerful men and women! Yes, most of those who get fired are innocents. It's a habit for predators to prey on the innocent, and we blame the students alone, huh! We have also seen what kind of mails now float around to entice the innocents... your mail/ mobile number has won [an obscene amount], you have been selected by a [dream organisation], please come and join us by paying [a small amount]...I wonder how they track these innocent people like us desperately looking for jobs/wherewithal... it is Intelligence that’s working behind all this, isn't it? So killing innocents or playing on their weaknesses, helplessness has always been convenient to make money or to prove a point. 

5. NOT blame: If we have to blame, we need to blame all of us, as a whole. Look how interesting we are... we invented computers, hardware, software, and god knows what... but we also invented computer virus! We did it, didn't we? And then we also invented anti-virus! We have invented medicines, and then spread diseases so we could sell those, didn't we? In organisations, we hire people when we need, but we also fire them when we need, don’t we? And we claim to work as a family! We are talking about disarmament, but we are making a lot of money by producing sophisticated weapons for mass killing, aren't we! So, in order to let innocent-killings freeze in the past, we have to stop blaming the students of the SOT...else past will continue to be our future. It’s actually good fellows, that we have decided to NOT blame, but focus, focus, focus on demolishing the SOT. 

6. Deliver Peace through pre-mortem and by deploying pre-detectives: We have decided to place drama of the highest order in two things

1.      To strengthen our tracking system until the point we are able to send mails to the SOT on neutralising terror before they send us mails on causing terror. There will soon come a day when the first mail will be sent in advance by GROW UP with the following lines:Dear SOT, We know your plans of sending us mails on your next delivery. You are hereby informed not to try there because it will be annulled / neutralized by us.

All the best

GROW UP

2. Charlie Chaplin: Our focus on the scope of work would be to convert a scene of terror into a comical scene. We will keep Charlie as our guru here. Imagine a scene where people are busy shopping, window shopping; office goers, and children playing in the park, writing their examinations suddenly gunned down. Boom! And gone!!! What energy spreads post the scene? Horror, terror, anger, scare, fear, mistrust, hatred, helplessness, and many more! Our Intelligence promises to convert this into a comical one. Like this:

Our advance tracking system is able to track the car in which the SOT students are coming. They come and alight in Medias Res! But they don’t know we have neutralized those guns with which they have come to deliver (spread terror, horror)! They open fire, nothing happens, they find all their guns inert, deactivated! With eggs on their faces, they run towards the car in which they came, but find the car deactivated too!! Those students now panic because they can’t even kill themselves!!! NOW! By this time, the innocent crowd comes to know of what’s happening... and ... no but they don’t pounce on them... Intelligence comes and takes control!!! 

I am so happy to know that all of us have agreed not to put them behind the bars, or to punish them in order to get information from them, but to let them know that we don’t depend on them to get information, to drop them in their homes and pat them on their cheek and say, "Dudes better luck next time!" And if they have parents and other family members at home, we’d even have a cup of coffee with them. 

          From GROW UP.

This is not fiction. Intelligence will turn this into a reality very soon because our action is not directed against someone, but against something. The whole world full of siblings is now determined to install peace, with love.

Team! Oh please! Please don’t think of me as the Team Lead because I called you as Team! Ha ha! I am not a leader, and I am definitely not using a corporate jargon to subjugate you...Team! Ha ha!! ... I would be happy to follow you! Oh Intelligence, please come forward and connect! Heartened to know that despite disagreements in the modus operandi, we have agreed on one fact; that if we are intelligent enough, we don’t need to be cruel!

Let me know if the points mentioned in the MoM are correctly represented. Feel free to correct the language (I know my English is not good enough...so please go ahead and make the necessary changes)... I pray you look at the strength in the thoughts by overlooking the weakness in the language, at least for the time being! Remember! SOS for the SOT!

Yours, Supratik 

P.S Unlike Lucky, I put on my hat as a remedy to schizophrenia... I stop talking, writing with my hat on...will be off with it some other time maybe... don’t know when...see you until then.

And buried underneath

Under the earth,

They lie in muddy albums

Burnt, buried, rotten!

Who are these?

Poor cousins!

Far, far off my lands

Their nourished thoughts

Woke up from the same bed

Sounding strange in disfigured ribs!

They froze and shivered for a quilt

But I thought they were dancing

And gave them ghungroos*

They died with them, tied in their bones.

I wouldn’t dig them out,

For there’s more to come

To sleep under the bed of coloured tears

The earth prepared to take some more...

I am busy making ornaments,

I will ignore the tremor

Behold the dance.

When they’d shiver in their imprisoned frames!

I am keeping the berth soggy enough,

Not to struggle too hard to scoop the concrete

For some more needs to be burnt,
And buried underneath

Note: Ghungroos: also known as Ghunghroo or Ghunghru or Ghungur (Bengali) or Salangai (Tamil) is one of many small metallic bells strung together to form Ghungroos, a musical anklet tied to the feet of classical dancers.


Explanation:  This poem

1.      Is a take on ‘clarity’, on specificity, on bondage that ‘I am this and only this; I am not that’! How does clarity help I wonder! If I said with utmost clarity not to fight or to rage war, or to produce weapons for mass destruction, it doesn't help... this is just one among myriads of examples.

2.      Is only about ‘feeling’, and I am heartened  to see that although many things are unclear, it makes for a reading

3.      Has one central theme, viz. torture and pain
4. Is also of 'understanding' a/the problem instead of being adamant in providing solutions

Interpretation to this poem depends on the experience readers are going through at the moment of reading. For example, it could be about 'flesh trade’, about devadasis, of a probable punishment of the wrong-doers, and so on! However, it also talks about our inability to connect with the ‘real’ cause; therefore shivers are interpreted as dance, and when the remedy would have been quilt, it comes in the form of ghoongroos; a corporate example to this would be giving apples instead of oranges. Our situations of torture do not change because our reaction to situations is seldom a response, always a reaction, therefore the remedy is a quick-fix. But the interesting part is that we know deep inside that the remedy will not help, therefore I am prepared with soggy berth because i know there’s more to come. In what the last stanza looks as a punishment, it could also be a looked as acceptance... because this is also something that the poem wants to say, that it is perhaps through acceptance of our situations that solutions might emerge.

I must also quickly add that the writer’s interpretation is not sacrosanct... the poem wants to connect with readers above everything else, and therefore the poet is also a reader. Yes, in this poem, nothing is so clear, a dollop of ice-cream floating as clouds can also appear as cotton...it all depends on how readers interpret it. The position of the poet is at the base, at the bottom of things just urging to connect.