Routine Check on Life from Top of Golkonda Fort

From the top of Golkonda Fort, life flows downward, a bit tilted, light-breezed, like spring's dead root

Labyrinth of Winter

Coaxing me to put Kamini oil on my rough, knotty head,

while combing grey, voluminous hair, of her own,

My mother asks me

with voice softer than serpentile hiss,

“Mumu, do you know,

Winters are like labyrinths

and cold is like wild rats,

searching for food in empty fields,

and when you aren't here,

sunsets from our old balcony

Looks like a giant eagle spreading its wings? ”

A nod, perhaps a ‘hmm’

impeded by a gentle carassing

 -- that much I can provide to her,

Then comes the tremble.

Do I tell her or not,

that Winter has creeped around my conscious self,

Like a moth caught in a spider-web,

the strangeness of the strangled day-end,

is the other version of the emptiness

of burning diary entries in fire lit up by scented woods of pyre.

The shadows of walls on the stony floor,

the fully drawn curtains impotent fight with the evening light,

dim as a fish eye staring at you in crowded fish bazaar,

In that light,

My mother's eyes glimmer with a celestial brightness,

the little game of light and darkness adorning her with moribund grace.

Should I tell her,

that

Labyrinth of winter has conjurrd me, lured me in,

fixtated me on the ever-whirling path,

Or that,

the eagle has picked up the snake

and the skintone of the predator and the prey, has become the same,

And I am supposed to accept death like I am to follow my voting rights.

Or

that I am stuck in that labyrinth,

Particularly at one turn,

where the ghost of pigtailed, little me

runs back towards me,

just as I used to Mother, in Winters locked in the casket of childhood trunk.

Labyrinth of winter

is a lethal one,

with silence

contagious in its core.

Holy Morning in Deoghar

Rolling between eleven and twelve,

Time stops at a point

Where daylight counterfeits waking ups.

The resilient sleep with furry blanket against my pale skin,

has slit time and shed off its bulky body from its skin

inside the warm, dark room,

 where the mother strokes and lulls the child into sleep,

But, as I have woken up,

I saw it

up and running again.

Days like clear glass,

Eyes that try to discern the winter sun,

Native women with bright drapes and orange mark on there forehead

- all pass by, with loud incantation with the year that had stumbled upon us while running

and trying to wipe out the blood from its knee,

eversince.

The chuckling doll dances with the mechanical tune,

Moving with its hands up,

Spiralling to pick up conversations, biting on the flour-dough,

winter sun trying to melt the burden of ice in her memories,

feets untraceable, fluttering on the steel ground,

The chuckles as bright as the vermilion

on the forehead of the women,

hurrying towards Prayerhall with hard-earned candles.

A ray of light,

from the far west Side of the sky,

and aeroplanes,

like the dreams

inside the closed fists of a school girl under the thatched roof,

would suddenly pass by,

The doll won't stop.

It would laugh and laugh again,

seeking blessings from its paper God's protected innocence.

Routine Check on Life from Top of Golkonda Fort

From the top of Golkonda Fort,

Life flows downward,

a bit tilted, light-breezed,

like spring's dead root,

secured like stacked food of

a famished mongoose,

waiting to be rended

in pale bushes of winter afternoon,

It oozes,

in conversations for tomorrow's dessert item,

late deadlines, holding hands, and shattered  kaanch-bangles,.

 It makes a way through

clandestine meeting of lovers lips,

gilded by excess of fluid in some dead uncle's knee-joint,

swayed by a gentle touch on the bell and cigarette,

through panting of sprigged city, holding history like flames over the horizon,

It spirals downwards,

steep and knelt down,

till a point,

where an infant's sleepless scream,

molded in an offering of concrete blocks and traffic horns,

hushes it up

like fumes from locked cubicles.

A Dog's Winter Sleep

The particular spot,

right beside the inflammable Sacrificial bush,

Where spring has been killed with the woos and sombre filters,

Yes, that spot,

full of hurried footsteps and economic conversations,

belonging to hunched-back women and campus shoes,

There, yes, right there,

A dog should sleep.

A dog should sleep.

On the dead cement,

Or dusted up red soil,

dance floor for sixteen-year-olds and displaced grasses.

Wherever it decides, a dog should sleep.

Discarded filaments of guitar strings,

stamping of late-night workers,

Nothing should disturb

its fading winter's sleep.

Hunger strikes, resistant speeches,

Communal chants, and dear comrades

all together,

wouldn't move it,

A dog is to be feared,

by all,

Those who have ever petted it adored its bushy tail, giving the remaining bones from their own scavenged meal.

and those who have run away

with astonishing magic and bewildering commands,

-All should be mortified of

its feral teeth and fluffy body.

A dog might bark on a lonely road,

Or excrete in front of staff quarters or parliament,

but when it lies down,

and gradually breathes louder than humans in its sleep,

A dog should never be bothered.

---

About the Poet:

Sumana grew up in a small town in Bankura, West Bengal, and moved to Kolkata to pursue her BA in English from Calcutta University. She has recently finished her MA from the University of Hyderabad. The spatial transformation of living place, from small town to city, has significantly guided her voice in poetry. Her poems have been published in PoemsIndia, Verse of Silence, and India Poetry Magazine.