Calcutta, I cried yesterday

The streets were buried by the creases of anxiety. You could find the children in uniform stand in the queue of perplexity. Their eyes narrated the stories of dreams that they live everyday in this city. There were spiraling lines of vehicles emitting the black manna under the sky of hatred. Hatred of illusion? Hatred of oneself? Or hatred of fellow beings? Can we remember the book fair, the film festivals, the Durga Puja and many more? The city has witnessed numerous motifs of political demonstration, but none like it before. Nothing scared me; I walked from my professional fortress to the mundane.

The mundane was standstill. Dotted with inertia everywhere, it faced the division bell of times that are changing. And the next day the city was again in her familiar identity. There was no burning effigy, no lines of sublimed philosophy, no rhetoric of Nandigram. There was mundane in the flow of drums, following the idol of some Indian goddess, there were crackers, children with safe innocence. There were the men in uniform in the tunes of banter over a steaming late tea. This is the Calcutta, I have known.

This was the Calcutta, we all have known for years.

A home breathing safety;
To live in mind
In our pen
In our poem - is not a child’s play.

Live Calcutta in my highs
Take away our tears and
-- a mother’s cries;
We belong to you.

Calcutta is my innocence,
Don’t let us walk on burning fence.
Don’t let the ideals bury in debris,
Rack and ruin, let us dismiss.

The city that shares my memories cannot die in the wrath of anonymity.