Still My Paradise

I see some faces floating
in the froth, in the clandestine clots of street-water.
One looks like our prime minister,
another like a boiled egg, or turnip.
The only human features I relate to,
turn out to be you; everything else vegetates.
Even me.

There are layers of melancholy
that protect you from my thirst.
Some of them, like forgotten music,
carry an ambiance unknown, unasked for.
Some are disguised as masochism.
Ill-placed and anachronistic punishments.

It all started when the rains poured down.
The drizzle, the torrent,
the pitter-patter on garden leaves:
they all became a more beautiful music.
And then, suddenly,
the rain-woman of my fairy tales died.
Not in my arms, as I yearned for,
but in her voice that carried a notion of distance.

A distance bordering on the foothills of Himalaya.
A distance conveying states of separation.
States of segregated minds as well.
I appealed with human frailty,
and you, like a fragrance,
dissolved without trace.
I sniffed the cruel undeserved void.
Your voice reeked of violin strains,
beautiful and forlorn in crescendos.
You claimed so boldly all distances
breached by a lack of longing.
They brought with them
the stink of dead sea-fish.
Weighted by scale and priced by requirement,
even though I lay there devoid of my body,
entangled in fishing nets.

My senses I devoted to you,
and hence, in rhythms of urban sensibilities,
they have been rendered vestigial.
Even in your presence, time never resumed.
Even with your return, the rains did not soak me.
Instead, they flattened the horizon
and sunk into the far away sea.
Standing at the shores, I could taste the salt.

In voiceless languages, your rains
still moisten my eyes.
In coffins of embalmed tapestry,
you still smell like my paradise.

© 2007 Ritwik Banerjee

Still My Paradise by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Approved

Cold can be a pint of lager.
Cold can be a solid wall of glass.
Cold can be the air-conditioner
aimed at my cubicle from 9 to 5.
But neither your breath or sweat,
nor your exhaustion or stink.
Those are mine by right and by chauvinism.
By my egocentricity, I own their warmth.
My soul and the warmth of that air,
they are doomed to a symbiosis
approved by you.

© 2007 Ritwik Banerjee

Approved by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

The Last Request

Your absence becomes a ghost
and haunts the emptiness of my heart.
Perhaps even my mind, who knows?
You have been granted the power of what I am not.
Whenever I, as I know myself,
cease to be, I manifest your soul.
When my sensibilities follow you
into a highly personal oblivion,
my only request to you,
amidst my weaknesses,
is to grant me the tenderness of your grasp.

© 2007 Ritwik Banerjee

The Last Request by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Vacillations

You waver and intoxicate with
the excitement and uncertainty of sports.
You even manage to pan like a Mexican wave.
And today, in your efforts of fragrance,
you carry the misery of sudden defeat.
An unforeseen lack of celebration.
Inebriation of the dance of malign feet
and a subsequent pain of abrasion.
When you rub me off yourself,
and leave a skinless body of remnants,
express remorse for the flashgun
so hungry for your innocence.
Innocence or conscience or honesty
or whatever are your supposed virtues.
Pains still have the uniform rhythm
of haggard permanent hues.

© 2007 Ritwik Banerjee

Vacillations by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Events Such As Women

Sacred scattering of vermilion.
An ebb of dark red blood from my liver.
Differences in the same colour
of morning sky before sunrise.

A conch-shell blows.
All around, the commencement
of mornings and marriages.
Sounds of death southward.

Crows and their echo of caws.
Hopeful, a new day breaks.
Absence of mourners
for an abandoned carcass.

Each new morning:
Another segment of anticipation.
A wave of joyous burst
or perhaps unveiled ugliness.

Life, like water, flows into me
and takes my shape.
Events, like women, have
layers and layers of faces.

© 2007 Ritwik Banerjee

Events Such As Women by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Time In Presence

Did you know you have such command over time
as only Gods may possess?
With acts as simple as existence,
you render her weightless.
In moments that flutter like your eyelids
she indulges in capricious flights,
swinging in the winds of you.
In moments that are expansive like the sky,
or like the clap of thunder,
you hold her hands and wrap her soul
around mine.
In that tender cocoon you rock me,
and I, I sleep like your child.
The eternal and ephemeral happiness
of rain, of the lightning bolt,
of the clouds passing by.

Have you seen the curves on a conch-shell?
Did you, then, press your ear to that line so beautiful
as to resemble your hair meandering down your cheek?
I did.
And I discovered such wonders!
The timelessness of sound that evades space:
Her beauty lies beyond the human confines
of memories and senses.
I discovered unknown dimensions and
multitudes of paths beyond the sunset.
Like all the buds erupting into flowers
beyond my spasmodic glances.
You and her — these pulchritudes lie in permanence.
Permanent like the oceans’ blueness,
or like the azure of skies.
She is eternal.
She swoons bearing the wings of you.
And you, because you were my coveted dream
long before she was even born.

These divinities are your conception.
Flights of time only give you
my shapes of beatitude.

© 2007 Ritwik Banerjee

Time In Presence by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

I Write Stories

Even now I write stories.
I weave them out of the mirages
of distant satiations.
In the dim corners of twilight
I string together a few ephemeral
shrubs and palm leaves.
And, when the vanishing pool
quenches my pulsating thirst,
when the rubbles of the trees
sway in my heart with derisive laughs,
I turn the hourglass over,
bury an oasis that never was
in the coarseness of sands;
with rejoice in feet I seek
new waters, new grass, and glimpses
of evergreen leaves.

My hopes have aged by now.
Their faces all wear wrinkles of wisdom.
Neglect and haggard futility have
callused their beautiful hands
and blunted their slender fingers.
But, time and again,
the desert breeze brings the faint aroma
of deep blue waters
silent and shimmering under horizons’ veil,
and my searching tongue, like a newborn child,
thrashes around, helpless,
for that water cold and sweet.

In every such rebirth, even now
I write my stories.

© 2007 Ritwik Banerjee

I Write Stories by
Ritwik Banerjee is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.