In this world I have nothing to conceal,
so flows the shameless river like my life,
there are no stones to gather moss,
nor the golden sand of younger days,
only bed of civilisation,
where shadows of trees sleep coolly,
and sandy banks, now a grazing land.
The broken steps towards north,
reminiscence of a flowed down past,
leading to the old temple, where God
still lives in captivity, a dingy flame
struggling to confine the darkness.
How could He stay there, hundred of years,
within four walls coloured by lampblack?
The gap in the center of long green fence
is the entrance to my ancestral house,
surrounded by a variety of plants.
After sunset darkness reigned,
in those days of oil and wicks.
A huge elephant in black and white,
decorated the face of upstairs wall.
On the west, the road from the town
ends up unable to cross the river.
The river in the afternoon sun,
patches of shades and silvery sheen,
as I sit under tiled roof of main gate.
An irrigation trench passed through here,
a small waterway for children,
forgotten by time, merged with the road.
Paper boats now float in my thoughts,
contented life's intense joyful moments.
Path from the gate to the house
went with shoe flower plants
on both sides, till the courtyard
the heart of which a cemented floor
in the shadow of a group of trees
like a small carpet with a fading art
of design of kolam touched the verandah
Entered the house - the center-stage,
where generations saw the light of life,
where my umbilical cord was cut,
where I spent summers of childhood,
with my grandma, the great manager.
Everything is old, but not memories
every time I visit, they grow stronger.
I began to wade through the fleshy
life's flashy ways, hugged by mother
as a month old babe, from place to place
like planets changing positions,
restlessly in twelve zodiac signs;
the flyway of life seems to be strange,
like paper airplanes of my childhood,
they never reached where I wanted.
So the wheels of life rolled towards south,
as the old train hauled the passengers,
hissing and whistling on the tracks,
spitting thick smoke and coal dust,
and I reached my father's house,
taken by my aunt, in my mother's words
into a dark corner of the thatched house
where lives struggled for existence and left
one by one leaving my father alone.
Morrows for him were non-existent,
yesterdays were stories to narrate.
He gave the present a flavour of taste
with his cookery and a smiling face
he was famous in his days
wherever he set up a way for our lives.
And he put up a coffee house
to feed us by feeding others.
Freed from oblivion of infancy,
memory gains its prominence,
empty brain begins to fill the vacancy,
like a scavenger, gathers moments
of pains and pleasures of retired past.
A toddler's luxurious days
are as bright as his hedonistic delights,
with a playful mind, an aimless life -
running between tables and chairs,
luring the minds of customers,
with infantile prattle and pranks -
an extra relish to their dishes,
I ruled the kingdom of innocence,
with abundant freedom of childhood,
where ends pure love's longevity
and begins a life of selfishness,
desire for the unnecessary,
a childish life's uncontrolled oddities.
Through the eyes of the wooden grill
I would catch the movements of rickshaws,
people walking their life of thrift,
cyclists peddling in haste,
vendors heading towards the beach
with head loads of merchandise,
the roads stretching straight on both sides,
alongside the parapet walls
guarding the canal that bisected the town
saving the park and the beach to the west.
Taxies were rare, but rickshaws -
transport of the social elite.
Clad in a lungi, a long towel
around his neck as a shawl,
or tightly tied around his head,
lifting the handgrip to his chest,
he would pull the carriage and run,
old sandals beating the road,
sounding the bell to clear the way,
a rhythmic sign of his presence in town.
After fifty years I saw him in Howrah -
a living beast of burden, but a man.
Shuttling between the town of canals
and my village, perhaps, I learnt
the route of nature's path of love,
in the warmth of sun and coolness
of a labyrinthine water world -
past resurrects, turns into present,
but the present is too different
from the resplendent world of past
untouched by humans of modern world.
As the boat moves, world travels back
jetty hides behind the dredgers
lake waits ahead with its mouth open.
Under the huge igloo of sky, the lake
adorns a green shawl around her neck,
the boat moves, alongside the bank,
fluttering ripples, wrinkles of lake,
stumble with bubbling noise - lake's whisperings,
nature's expressions; splinters of sun
scatter far and wide, silvery rays,
beaming out from undulations,
sometimes pierce through my eyes.
Shapeless creamy clouds move with wind
breeze brings in fragrance of lake water,
mauve hyacinths slither down the ripples,
drooping scrubs move up and down.
Ladies in lungi and blouse, beat
coconut fibre and wind the strands
on long spindles stretched in the background
of a row of their thatched dwellings.
Gliding down the calm and serene lake,
the boat swims between green clusters
of small islands - natures arabesque,
interlaced foliage in an intricate design.
At a distance, behind the dikes and bund,
an endless green carpet of paddy fields,
white herons changing their positions
appear and disappear magically.
The lamppost at the corner,
guiding light for the navigators,
changes the line of route,
alters the rhythm of pleasure,
from the expanse of lake to canal,
sound of engine ticks past slowly,
in the shade of coconut trees,
playful children wave their hands,
ladies wash crockery and clothes,
men repair nets for next day's haul,
flowers add colours to vegetation,
grazing cattle sharpen their ears,
noisy ducks float in the water,
a few yards away the jetty emerges.
The same route through night -
in nature's solitary isolation,
when she hides her beauty,
the boat would move like a firefly,
floating in the eerie darkness;
beam of light from the lampposts,
fiery eyes of the ghosts of night;
thickets and bushes, dens of monsters,
blinking kerosene lamp flames,
would peep out from the houses ashore,
sleepless stars would blink in fear,
and a frightened me would make,
the entire universe invisible,
curl up into a foetal position,
with my head in my father's lap,
in the feeble light of hurricane lamps
hanging inside from the roof.
