Suvankar Ghosh Roy Chowdhury
Salman Rushdie, the British-Indian novelist, gained prominence with his second novel Midnight’s Children way back in 1981. An exponent of history and merging it with fantastic elements, Rushdie emerged as an author who spoke on socio-political disparities of modern times, particularly in India, with utmost clarity...
GALLERIES IN THE NIGHT
Abandoned by all kindly lights
To gnash their teeth
In penumbras of their own making,
What half-bitten talk
Peoples the dark galleries
Between masterpiece and masterpiece,
Restrained from lawless combat
By gilt-edged police
Or the garth of mortar?
The greatest allegories of art
Are secret journals kept
By that gossip Night
Whom no historian of art consults
As they...
Haiku
1
The flowers have bloomed
and the locusts devour
any sign of life.
2
Oily dressing with
the pit-marked spinach leaves on
my baby-blue plate.
3
A doe has died on
the searing blacktop. It still
continues to smile.
4
My gaze, downward, with
all the plastic faces here;
coffee stains shirt brown.
5
Break up in tiny
distinct pieces. Now, your heart
is not the same.
6
Please and...
Pinakbet
A dish I watched my grandma cook with
zest. I was six or seven.
Bitter gourd because I’m diabetic, my
yearns for sweets squash-yellow.
Canola oil sizzles, the air adorned with garlic
expressions, wafts of red onion.
Drizzles of black pepper, and I
wonder if this spice will let me live longer.
Eggplant will tell me if...
Sanctification
The pimples on my face
seem to have an identity
of their own.
As if, those are my sins
penalized to be worn.
However, they make me look
a graceful lesser mortal.
Thankfully unattractive
like Sycorax.
A rose infested by fungi.
Oddly, they seek a lot of attention:
Hormonal imbalance? A digestive disorder?
A passion pimple! A dispassionate cycle?
Innumerable diagnosis followed...
BROKEN WAVES
Some place where waves are broken
I’m still
like a rock
at the bottom of the sea. It’s the only way you’re found:
where you’re missed
and found again. I watch from a bubble — hushed thirsty
breathless—you, becoming a newborn;
a noisy drifter.
I’m envious. But I love you best
this way. Yes—me. The sinker. The...
wisdom
fire burning to coals
poet looking past embers
seeing distant world
before existence of light
coming of god
untitled
poet on edge
meds not refilled
lost in black silence
static white noise
echoing around skull
deafening suffering soul
seriously considering
ways to kill himself
answer me
telephone without voice
no caller id
broken-hearted poet
wondering if ex-lover
quietly bagging
shrink
routine family counseling
necessary before divorce
doctor’s dark office
framed degrees on the...
The Widow’s Nights
“Days are not so bad.
My volunteer work.
Lunch with friends.
Gardening.
All of these fill the daytime hours.
But it is the nights—
they are so long, so very long.”
I don’t know how to respond.
We smile at each other in
a moment of silence.
Then, she adds, “If you have
any alterations you need done,
bring...
BLOOD
1
I see the blood
in hands of others
faces of others
smeared like fog
or smog,
I lift myself from clouds
a thin line wavers
as I walk into the existence
of blood
2
I ask questions
the voice is silent
asks questions
can you rape an eight
year old, six months
the voice is silent
of course, only at
the cost of blood
3
I saw a...
Tarmac Labyrinth
Have you ever forgotten a road
only to travel through it
years later?
The old smell of it coming back,
the same branches leaning towards
same shadows designing it
weaving nets
The same emptiness and
potholes.
Doesn’t it make you reminisce
about the things you passed?
Left behind?
Glanced at and Ignored?
If you haven’t tried to recollect
the stops you made...
Title: England, England
Originally published: 27 August 1998
Author: Julian Barnes
Page count: 272
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Genres: Satire, Farce
Nominations: Booker Prize
Reviewed by Abhijit Acharjee
The eighth novel of the Booker winner (2011) author Julian Barns is woven around the lives of a cluster of characters in a corporation that is lead by an entrepreneur and ‘ideas man’, Sir Jack Pitman....
Raja Chakraborty
It was a hot day. Stiflingly so. An unforgiving midsummer sun blazed from the cloudless sky, burning everything in its wake. Few blades of grass, brave enough to struggle still, was slowly turning to brown from a dull yellow.
Cracks opened up in the parched earth, like dried wounds...