Country

I look at villages and
I see my mother
As a child.

I look at hills in these villages and
I see my love
As a child.

Waterfalls spring from the heart of these hills
I look, and I see
Each home that was left behind.

The river stretches beyond the waterfall
Watched over by a wooden bridge, longing
I look, and I see
Noakhali,
                 the bridge that did not bear, and
                 the God that did not yield.

____________________
Original poem in Bangla written by Alokeranjan Dasgupta

Cambridge, tenth

Ten years went by
Nusrat still sings His praise
The avenue blushes in Trinity,
An autumn red canopy cathedral.
The ancient stones, warm from the afternoon sun
Embrace
The wide eyes, hopes, and suitcases,
all ready to start.

Ten years went by.
The love didn't last, he threw the ring into the sea
"Rob finally came out, would you guess?"
They moved back together.
Oh yes, I still go punting.
And they say it's the hottest summer
As they say every year.

Evening descends on Great St Mary's, chiming
Stories
Happy, sad, and unfinished

And years go by.

just this one

All the rest are poems of death, just this one is of life

All the rest are poems of my own, just this one is yours
All the rest are poems that are stopped, hesitant – remnants of ambition frozen on the lips
flooded monsoon streets with open manholes spewing sewage
wounded bleeding bodies left behind by tires after tires, and the fear of
a bridge collapsing

All the rest are poems about cities, just this one is about the country.

All the rest are poems of death, just this one is of life
All the rest are poems of my own, just this one is yours
This one is of the wild sea, of all the pains that were yet to be shared
of the one who walked into the waves one spring, without a reason
of laughing people bending double, letting the wind seep in with the dust
of leaves flying away in thousands, speaking of impending storms.

All the rest are poems of the Ganga, just this one is about the Yamuna.

________

Ganga Yamuna by Shankha Ghosh (from the collection 'murkho boro, shamajik noy'(1974))
Note: This is a translation I did a while back, sometime in 2007. And it appears it never left the domain of email..maybe it's time for it to be here. captured, sealed, and exhibited from behind the glass wall.

Another rainy night

And I can hear the steady pitter-patter on the skylight, looking up to a grey black night sky. sleeping in my favourite attic amidst some junk, a desktop machine, and the divine corner of my cousin's house. The gods, goddesses, and saints are less than a few feet away. Oddly enough.

Reminds me of a similar night soon after my move to Darwin a few years ago.

networking is a strange art, almost like a dance of courtship at times. and the constant implicit effort to get into dunbar's first circle. often an intimidating task, especially in view of the fact that social anxiety is more common in academics than in others, but then it gets easier with smaller groups of individuals. and sometimes enjoyable too.
had a great conference this weekend, got to lie down on freud's original couch, and meet some of the top minds in the field.
happy.

i can't

really tell if the whole point of the karmayoga is to produce automatons. not being attached to the results of the action is precisely what a robot does best. indeed what makes us human - our anger and our attachment - are precisely the things that we have to fight against.
i think it's time to draw a mirror image of darwin's tree of life - with bacteria - those closest to non-life - at the top, representing the spiritual high ground of not being attached to any action. all the bacteria does is its action of finding food, and if it does not find food, it tries again, and again, and again. there is neither emotion nor expectation...just as krishna would have us be.

আবার চেষ্টা করছি ফিরে আসার.

i am

the man who mistook his hat for his wife.

too busy

to feel much. or write much. cognition trumps affect.

should this

 become a twitter account? a string of relentless jabber with occassional sensible bits?