1
Today, like most days
There were a lot of people in the market
Of poetry.
The highest were of course
Like finest chinaware
Created with love devotion and sacrifice,
And like all great things in the market
Received little attention
And littler reward.
The 200 rupee poems were being sold out
At breathtaking pace
Because it came with the face
Of a pretty poet.
The 1000 rupee ones belonged to minor canons
Etched with the blood and toil
Of dead poets
Who died defending the cause.
While the 10,000 rupee poems
Belonged to the classics;
Like the Tagores
The Elliots
And the Shakespeares,
Because they were fossils in the hands of sales executives
And their motives
Had aged gracefully
For far too long.
Now they could be moulded into desirable shapes,
Without undesirable untouchables
Parading the margins
For recognition.
And like all other days,
I stood like a beggar at the gates,
My verse, as ruined as my bowl
And the edges of my soul
As frayed as my rhyme
And rhythm.
Then one young woman
Out of pity perhaps,
Lagged a little behind the others
All neatly dressed in the aesthetics of their time
She gave me a little wine
And the beggar’s little pots
Filled with the milk of her kindness,
And the acid of my thoughts.
2
The day I decided to seriously write poetry,
I realised that bank accounts,
Job profiles,
Toned biceps,
Functioning liver,
And sound mental health,
Were all going to become disposable,
Like cheap sanitary pads,
Like rotting manicure ads
And bills that you hide,
When you do not want your date to know
How much you are really worth,
Before you can show her/him your charms.
The day i decided to seriously write poetry,
I lost all my rhyme, meter
And pride.
3
Centuries pass by
Under my eyelids
Drooping
Like ink
Dripping
Onto the dreams of others on sweat-stained beds
In the corners of ruinous huts
By the edge of
Fractured fragmented cities,
And I,
The privileged stockbroker of their absent voices
Am at once,
Shiva,
The Dancer-Destroyer of the world.
And also,
The urchin who dreams of him.
4
In the tiny dark alley
Between a row of old
Multi-coloured houses,
And the skeleton
Of A half-dreamt apartment,
There was once a tiny little shrine.
Inside,
A nameless stone
Had unknowingly become god for a while;
Before being forgotten
And ignored
When Gods backed by rich sweet men
Claimed the simple faith of humanity
In exchange of protestations
And costly demonstrations
Of religious ferocity.
When the shrine was crushed by a giant marble slab
That killed a nameless worker,
All the hopes and dreams of Man and God
Together turned to dust.
5
At the end of the world,
There is no Heaven
No Hell
No Jesus
Or Judgement day,
It does not fade away like a dream
Nor gets blown to smithereens,
Only One Grand Panda
With a torn yellow gas mask
Walks up to you with a sign
That says,
“I thought you loved me more.”
Arnab Chakraborty has lived a rather varied life in his twenty-seven years in the dystopic sector of Behala in the lovely city of Calcutta. His love for poetry compelled him to leave a career in civil engineering, bringing him to study literature instead, after a year of working as a correspondent at IBNS. His writing is informed by his many experiences in academics, journalism and beyond. He currently resides in Calcutta with his parents and his four cats.