The Last Sight

The green curtain fluttered

a dream-like fragrance

with outstretched hands

She came in…

I gently put my hand on hers

She ran her fingers

…through my tangled hair

I looked at her kohled eyes

shadowy lines merged into emptiness

reminded me

…of the dark forest grove

and the name of Rana Uncle

on the flyleaf of her book

middle parting of the hair

and a tight bun behind

highlighted the broad forehead

I looked out of the window

…a purple haze

lights shone like glow-worms

She came up to me

…and stared with helpless eyes

She drew me close

and on my feverish cheeks

put her cold, dry lips

light breeze and her saree trembled

She slept in the next room bed

morning a feigned knock…

the maid said…

‘your mother passed away last night…’

Sky and its halves

Someone once said that she often felt an intense desire to return to the womb. Do you feel so? I often do…but if you ask me why then I will have to say there’s no rhetorically graphic answer to that…but when I see bound by their tradition a section of women still eat last and least throughout their lives, even when they are carrying and lactating. Perpetuating the cycle of malnourished moms’ dying in childbirth or giving birth to malnourished babies…I do feel the desire…

Be it your newspaper or your cell phone-open display of reassuring messages that women’s day is all about freebies and gift coupons…clothing ranges, movie tickets, spa packages, restaurant deals. Oblivious of the existence of this very day when I see Meena, Korobi, Lashmi in purulia, nalbari, Agya (just to name a few) are working hard like any other day only to listen to their husbands words that "women, like children, eat and do nothing." I do feel the desire…

There’s nothing new to talk of daily rapes, assaults and dowry-related murders. Female infanticide and sex-selective abortions nip the little aspiration left right in the bud. Amidst these when I see women in rural India (even a section of urban) lack power to decide whom to marry. And women inheritance rights…legal loopholes deny that too… I do feel an intense desire to return to the womb…and sit peacefully under my rainbow coloured umbrella…

Tale of a Morgue

1021…

lying at the extreme end

you must be thinking

of popcorns, Sherin, bolster home

or love in the time of cholera

oblivious of your present identity

you must be thinking

how beautiful your name sounded

when Sherin uttered

on a random night-out

whispers around

they said –

you are a medico legal case

1021-against it

the length of your body

breadth across the shoulder

weird mole near the left ear

finger impressions…

all recorded

in the unfriendly register

I wondered

is 1023 too is thinking

of popcorns…