Gandhari's Lament (A Translation)

গান্ধাৰীৰ খেদ । অবনী চক্রবর্তী

I wiped the tears from your cheek

With my soft palm

In the hope that you’d smile,

That you’d play.

My bruised body

A heart pierced with pain.

My child, how will you ever understand the agony of extortion?

Nourished with my life-blood, my milk,

You are muted.

Muted are the claims of the voice.

The savior came to heal me,

Instead shredded my tissues into bits.

Where are the bleeding women?

Where are they?

Why, I have no inkling!

Only if I could hold you once before you left

O’ my stubborn child.

The Lantern of the Dark Highway (a Translation)

এন্ধাৰ বাটৰ এগছি পোহৰ । অবনী চক্রবর্তী 

He leaves home at dusk.

In search for some light, he’d said.

His nana stood there

In the dark corridor of their home

Awaiting his return.

Burning the wick of her hope,

She stood still in that dark corridor.

When the boy did not show up

She pulled her stiff body

To go knocking on doors; familiar, unfamiliar.

Her despair stricken bones crackled, and 

Her hollowed eyes gleamed

When she heard of other neightbourhood boys;

Ratul, Putul, Joduram, Bapuram

All set on their voyage;

In quest for the light.

Punakon, in his search for light, they say

Has turned into lantern in the dark highway.

Old nana saw a sky covered in an apron of stars.

She fills her basket with herbs she’d picked from her kitchen garden

As she hears them sing the song of their return.

In the Womb of the Eastern River (A translation)

সূর্যমুখী নদীৰ কোলাত । অবনী চক্রবর্তী 

Even in the song of the creek he hears cacophony of sirens

(And they say the poet lives in the silence of solitude).

He hears the squeal of fallen leaves;

Powerful eyesight of silence!

The darkness calculates

The gruesome pain of the machine-led night;

Bewildered at the parasitic creeper crawling up

The arms of the lush cassia.

He gages at the leftover terracotta dreams

In the womb of the rock that still shines

In the darkness of the night.

And in the cradle of the eastern river:

A motel is birthed.

A new sunrise of horizontal beams

In the dog collared pages of an old book.

Down below he hears the melody of the raging people

He dives in; shifting sand and pebbles, picks up the octave

A broken sky

Belonging to the artist who has never seen the lantern

Perhaps a motel built in the grave of a civilization

Dropping dead, breaking the pathway of a friend

Blinded in the lust of development

She sleeps into the darkness of the cemetery.

Every ghastly night he falls in love with solitude.

Sawing to death all morbid memories.  

Weightless

I am surrounded by
mystic creatures (which are)
Forming my destiny
Before I can contemplate...
I used to believe in floating with the waves
But now I am in unison
With the wind.
I am weightless.
I am here.

Feb 9, 2020

New Beginnings

I make some room for some new me
In the cradle of the
Moonless night sky
Counting the stars of the Scorpion,
Staring at its venom pit
Thinking of the myriad colours that chose me
Mesmerised by the painting that lay in front
The one in which do the sky
And the ocean meet
I hear the sounds of waters
Gulping the night
And a small boat rowing by.
I feel the breeze
On my bare skin
Of a gentle sigh

- 2017 (to new beginnings)

Bipolar

Is it possible that a bi polar disorder is on its way?

No, your life cannot be so gifted.

Perhaps, you are a mere case of hopelessness, ambivalence and ambiguity.

Ambivalence - that's a good word.

It also indicates a psychological disorder.

But in an outwardly world, categorized as a social issue only.

You could be ambivalent.

That does not qualify for a bipolar disorder.

- Written five years back. I am no longer ambivalent and I do not feel bipolar either. I am at peace. 

The View from here is good dear; only the pedestal is a little wobbly. I shouldn't have used that easel as a ladder to climb up. It does not give a good perspective of the impending danger. Moreover, I am barefoot. There are spies all around and they will look for footprints. I seem to have left many.

- an old scribble from five years back; trying to get a hold on my life through art, and it wasn't really fruitful.