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.
