In the ocean of ignorance

the world
whirled into wars
weapons, drones,
bought, sold
to violate the earth
the pages browned
and old
resurrect into a cruel mirth

no one, absolutely none
has the wisdom to deliver
us out of this unconsciousness

we, the humans of the space,
drowning into the ocean
of ignorance

***

Un océan d’ignorance

le monde
tourbillonne dans les guerres
armes, drones,
achetés, vendus
afin de violer la terre
les pages brunies,
anciennes
ressuscitent en une
cruelle dérision

personne, absolument personne
n’a la sagesse 
de nous sortir de
cette inconscience

nous, les humains de l’espace,
noyés dans l’océan
de l’ignorance

***

অজ্ঞতার মহাসাগরে

বিশ্ব
যুদ্ধের ঘূর্ণিতে নিপতিত
অস্ত্র, ড্রোন,
কেনাবেচা চলে
পৃথিবীকে ক্ষতবিক্ষত করার জন্য
পুরনো, বাদামি পাতাগুলোর  
পুনর্জন্ম হয়
এক নিষ্ঠুর উল্লাসে

কেউ না, একেবারেই কেউই
পারে না আমাদের টেনে
তুলতে এই অজ্ঞানতার থেকে

আমরা, মহাকাশের মানুষ,
ডুবে যাচ্ছি অজ্ঞতার
মহাসাগরে

Never give up

The journey may be tough,

Roads may be rough;
Obstacles, like stones and pebbles
May ruin your happiness,
Might even thwart your progress.

Yet,  never give up until you are done
Until you can breathe under the sun.
Never give up until the stars at night
Stop shining for you, brilliant and bright.
Never give up until the air rejuvenates your body
In every moment supports you sure and steady.

People may call you names,
You may not win in any game;
But with vigor, without shame
Stay put. Never cease to play your part,
Slowly, you will find your hidden art.

So, never give up until you are done
Until you can breathe under the sun.
Never give up until the stars at night
Stop shining for you, brilliant and bright.
Never give up until the air rejuvenates your body
In every moment supports you sure and steady.

The universe is here solely to give
If you give up on life, how will you receive
The benevolence? How will you achieve
The fruits of success on this winsome earth
If you give up on your unique birth?

So, never give up until you are done
Until you can breathe under the sun.
Never give up until the stars at night
Stop shining for you, brilliant and bright.
Never give up until the air rejuvenates your body
In every moment supports you sure and steady.

Rewrite

Girls and boys
Of all ages, across geographies
Listen to your inner voice
Tell your original stories.

Don’t wander in a frenzied way
Bogged down by hearsay,
Bullied by the external noise;
Listen to your wonderful choice.

What would you really want to do
Where do you see yourself be
Respond to the questions
That’ll set you free
Don’t remain in the vicious chain.

Do not copy-paste in vain
Others’ lives, instead, find
Some time to spend
With your magical mind;
Experience your agonies, ecstasies
Rewrite your own histories.

Power of prayer

No, I am not a doctor,
A mere writer.

I wonder if I can put the world at ease
With my prayer? Here I try
I humbly write my lines,
To heal the endemic disease.

O God (atheists, agnostics
may replace God, Goddess
with anything that suits them)

O God, please save the world
From this mayhem
For I know there is nothing truer
than positive vibrations,
And between you and me
There is nothing but energy.

Let us not waste time
Looking for the Brutus;
The viral game is a global shame,
Let us pray to Krishna, Allah, Jesus
Or whosoever it may concern
This coronavirus
Has disappeared
From the face of the earth.

Please let us pray so we can put this global headache, the coronavirus, behind us. Nature has surprising ways to tell us that we are all one. 

I will perform nevertheless

Nature says, 'I do have a huge audience
Who love to see my performance.
They don't follow me
Yet, wherever I shower, they follow
They listen to my streams that flow
They treasure high and low
My beauty, my bounty;
Yet, they don't listen to me.

I bloom, they bomb
I heal, they kill
I support, they stab
I give, they grab
I unite, they divide
I love, they hate
I offer opulence, happiness
They bring poverty, sadness;
Guns, weapons, plastics, mechanical madness
Crowd the ground, cloud them night and day
In me, they invent unnatural tools;
But they praise my play
In action, or in silence,
Unemulated, my stage is perpetually houseful.

They see me, they hear
What I do for them
With emotion and intelligence,
They sing, write pages
About me, but I wonder since ages
What's gone wrong with their sense
For many inactive, inert yearsThey remained passive spectators;
They've chanted hymns, holy prayers
All in words, lifeless words,
While through their deeds,
Nurtured hatred, suicidal violence
For a long time,
They've not used their pairs
Of eyes and ears.

I will wait for you with patience.
For you, my supreme audience
I will perform nevertheless.'

Hot favourite

When you are feeling low

don’t wait, just go

grab a cup of coffee,

or, a hot cup of tea.

When you have to face

the daily stress

at work, or in business;

or, when you are lonely, jobless,

these beverages

can help you beat the blue,

they have saved us for ages

they’ll save our future too!

Natural shift

I realized I had to get 

Off my chair;
Else re-positioning it,
Became an impossible affair;

All this while I was one
With the wooden seat
Agility lost, I succumbed
To a rigid defeat.

Likewise, when I recognized
I was neither my thoughts,
Nor my feelings
I could detach myself from them
I was able to behold them from a distance,
I could hold them at once;
Like I held my framed identity,
My unnatural self, as the sole entity.

The obnoxious ones left my system;
End of the vicious game!
I emerged. Gave myself a priceless gift,
My paradigm made a natural shift.

Real power

Real power

I have the power to bless everyone,
Those who are nice to me
And those who are not;
From my royal position
I will not fall,

I will only use my power to love

Above everything, above all.

Vrai pouvoir

J'ai le pouvoir de bénir tout le monde,

Ceux qui sont gentils avec moi

Et ceux qui ne le sont pas;

De ma position royale

Je ne tomberai point du tout,

Je n'utiliserai mon pouvoir que pour aimer

Avant tout, et surtout.

সত্য শক্তি

প্রত্যেককে শুভেচ্ছা দেবার ক্ষমতা আমার আছে যারা আমার সাথে ভালো বা মন্দ ব্যবহার করেছে; আমি আমার এই রাজকীয় আসন থেকে থাকব অনড়, অটল এখান থেকে এখন, শুধুই ঝরবে প্রেমশক্তি অবিরল, অনর্গল।

Possibility, a thought away

I don't want to rise so high That I get lost in the sky; Everything, everyone I look down upon, Write their future On a polarized piece of paper And say, hey there See here, you've all lost, I have won. I don't want to lie so low and buried That I get trampled, stampede; Everything, everyone Walks over me, Writes my designed destiny And say, hey there See here, we have all won You are just another loser. I want to walk and fly steady in the middle Involve all in the most engaging huddle; Encourage naysayers, failures So they fight and taste success, Motivate high flyers, achievers So they humbly help others in the race Everyone wins, no one loses We grow hand in hand, in medias res.

Glasshouse

I look at you I know you don't lie,  But what you show's untrue.  Captured in the classy frame Shades of faces begging for fame,  Masks unmasked, in a win-lose game.  To be the fairest of them all My zeal to kill with skill,  Let them go to hell,  Let them fall, ruined And crushed in the glasshouse, Forever forgotten, perpetually small.  Who's the wisest of them All? All of a sudden If I'd change my question,  The jobless glass will screech in shame For it's not designed To peek within at all The glasshouse will stand Like a useless wall.

Hide, and seek

Hide yourself
In one little corner, 
For a moment, shelf
Your worries of pelf,
Position, power;
Seek your inner tutor.

What does the guide
Tell you? Listen to the voice,
Get rid of your ego and pride
In silence, try to sacrifice your noise.

We may be anybody on earth,
A loser, or someone famous
The in-tuition will reveal the worth
And show that we all have Mohammed,
Krishna, Buddha, Jesus in us.

space

A frog in a well
couldn’t bond with
its mate it met
in a pond, by accident;
it’s not the water
nor the swim
nor the tongues
that croaked,
caught insects;
it’s the vision
that made their
space different.

Boss

I have no boss, I am no one's boss
No, I am not even my own boss. 
Big burdens buried, binned
Baggage alighted in the wind, 
A barrier I had to so desperately cross.

Business has messed with 'boss'
Cruelty, punishment, penalty
Germs that devoured liberty
The ethos that spread chaos
All around the globe, without slightest dignity. 

In a boss-free zone if the world would ever be
Wars, woes, worries, would wither
Work would be done comfortably, 
Wealth would wonderfully wander 
Without the boohoo of a boss buzzing anywhere.

What a bliss! The bad and the sad word,
Has gone for good from my world;
I see friends all around, I can work
In peace with my profit and loss
Beyond the mess and the curse of a boss.

Ice-breaker

The color of the skin
was a household discourse
a cause of concern
that spread its agonies
beyond the domestic front.

Eyes would shy away
from darkness,
paint a beautiful face
with foreign fairness
so it merged in the blinded way.

Tearful years have passed,
bloody roads buried
by design, under the red carpet,
until freshness bloomed bright
and held aloft the ignored right.

Dewdrops brightened the colors
when dawns broke, certain and sudden
smiling meadow, dancing brooks
heralded overlooked beauty; ice-breaking silence
on the same stage, under the same sun.

Megalomania

Of course I have
The right to write and speak
But with it I also exercise
My limits;
When I fulfill my responsibility
I look at myself, with dignity.

I understand why Tom was shown the door
When he wrote an angry mail to his CEO,
Why Tonmoy was hurt
When he was 'bullied' in the mart.

I found a place where I thought
By exchanging opposite points of view
Scholars bloom and bond,
But maybe I was wrong;
For it polishes the pebbles, dims the diamonds.

Sadly, like any other place
It is diseased with megalomania, beyond grace.
Maybe it's far too unfair
To judge a site for a handful few
But I don't look at every rice
To see if it's cooked; I count on one or two.

My juvenile reaction to some even more kiddish responses! :) 

The most unconscious crime

If I do not forgive
The outcome is simple,
The inability won’t let me live, 
As one little drop of poison
Spoils the drink
One such little lack will prick,
I will remain in the prison
For good, fall in the abyss
Where, life would be bound
To drown and sink. 

If I'm able to forgive someone, 
Regardless of the magnitude
Of the harm done, 
I become my best friend forever;
As it is to me, I offer
The most charming gift
I do not anyone else a favour.

But how do I do that
It's so easy to say!
No, when you're working at
It, you'll find a way. 

Close your eyes, sit alone;
Whether you believe in
God, or you don’t,
It doesn’t matter
As long as you're determined
To get rid of the sin forever. 

Say to yourself, 'I have the power
To forgive and so I do', 
Imagine the person in front of you,
Keep repeating it from time to time
The words will do the trick
Like a miracle, or like magic
Your body will slowly liberate you
From the most unconscious crime.

Words are energies

No, I will not lie
I am here to lay bare
On what I can never rely.

You're most enthusiastic
In your reluctance,
For highlighting errors
You write pages,
You're most reluctant
With your compliments
You finish them off, as it were
In one sentence.

It's not your fault
It's your horrible upbringing, 
Your terrible education
That has taught you this
You are happy with your Ps and Qs
Yet you're restless in your abyss.

It is not anybody's fault;
Unconscious, we all fall
Prey to this monster
That hides behind
That handsome,
Innocuous word
To have our curious
Conscience murdered.

This breeds poison in the air
Makes the atmosphere
Vicious, we lose faith
In people with plastic facts,
Whose words only harm;
For words are energies
That in truth, infuse and charm.

In unison

'The most beautiful spot in your heart'
Is when you find oneness
In everything, everyone
It’s not free, it needs practice
It's an exercise, a rewarding art.

When you truly get there
There's lightness in the air
You overlook divisions, dissensions;
Lessons you learn
Is that everything's a game,
Everything's fun
Everyone's effortlessly won.

The interviewer, Soumik Datta, a disciple of late Pt Budhhadeb Dasgupta, is a Bengali-born British Indian musician and composer, who specialises in the sarod.

Credit

The world.
Begging for credit.
Stealing, robbing
Snatching it from others;
Friends, relatives, competitors.
Everyone is doomed
In the lose-lose gloom
Unable to choose.

Step back.
Giving becomes a given.
The world changes,
Flourishes, washes all sins,
Takes off the imprisoned page
With its win-win wings.

Credit is for giving.
It is not for getting.
Simple, no bombastic,
Antiquated words
Like those ignorant herds.

O workers, managers
Wise men, politicians
Scientists, artists, industrialists;
It just needs a shift to give credit.
Not expecting it in return
The world will be a marvellous place
For doing anything, for everyone.

Game is on

Every moment
An image surfaces,
Without a page,
A scratch, a paint;
It stays,
Gets destroyed, or recreated;
Game with Trinity
Is on, liberty
Is captured in the
Blue infinity.