Writing herself

A lost manuscript is a woman once loved.
Once written.
Caressed with chappy fingers.
Nestled between sweat soaked pillows.
Of the poor poet who lost it on the tram line.


Now she doesn't know who wrote her.
Doesn't know who loved.
Crumpled in an old tin trunk
She writes herself.
Unpublished.



© Sudeshna Sanyal

The man undressed

Come let me shave your beard
Alumwash the cuts and burns
Let us watch together
The white and black
Children of your chin...
Run down the local drain
Merge with memory of pain.


Come let me undo that saffron turban
That sacred thread snaking around
Your fair fat body arrogant
Remembrance of a quiet boy
Initiated into top class convoy.
And wipe off the sandalwood paste
Your believer's forehead in haste.


Let us fold aside the skull cap that sat
Snug on your namazi head
While the sun burns uniform your face
Blackened brows now mere history
The pride of grinding it five times on the floor
That you wore so well, no more.


Instead let me clothe you naked
And play a game of 'guess who'
Or let us just go as we like
Undressing the raw man that lurked
Behind the fez and the turban.
For we are all going to die one day
It makes sense to live today.

 © Sudeshna Sanyal

One for the road

Sometimes do look back
At a life almost lived
And a death almost died
Along the shores of forgetfulness
Wilful or by chance....
Roads once travelled
Alone or holding hands
Gently going on ash grey
By-lanes.


Remember names scratched
On strangers' doors
Metal and wood.
That screamed to outlive
Time's kind erosion.


You have survived
Scratches and bites
And succumbed
Slow to your own
Rhythm.


Keep going. Keep going.
Until you become the road.

In Milan, Italy

© Sudeshna Sanyal

On being deaf

The red earth that was Kalinga
Panipath and Plassey
Is fiery Godhra today.
Our Gaza Sudan Libya
Passengers of death...
We are.
Stranded.

Burn a church
Shoot a girl
Burn books too.
Raze a mosque
Flatten a temple or two
You are scared
Aren't you?

A snake called Sabarmati
Winds through tunnels of gore
And green intestines of revenge.
The yellow air fills
With charred human smell.
All in a day's planned fell.

Where is your turf?
Where do you fight your wars?
How do you kill your hostage?
Your neighbour, kin
Shell shocked to silence
Or locked in an iron cage
While the camera rolls
And the fire rage.

I will play ghazal on the stereo
Or some Tagore full throttle
Oh drown the newshour now.
The coffee is made, the cries grow.
Or shall we play noisy monopoly,
Who cares for so much human folly
For I must master the art of pretense
And carry on as if it all makes sense.

Photo: Internet

© Sudeshna Sanyal

Life in a face

There are faces you misplace, you forget or lose.
And then there are ones that stay with you. Forever.
Faces that are sacred. That settle in the den of your mind. 
And claim ownership. And grow roots.


There are faces that have crossed the by-lanes of pain
The winding staircases of joys too frail
Faces that make you wonder. Wander.
Faces that hide. Faces that unfold. 
Faces like oceans, of stories untold.
Some talk, some brood, some wait.
Some just hold you in place.
In an enchanting tight embrace.

 © Sudeshna Sanyal

Chameleon unleashed

At first, you only see black and white.
Like words on paper.
Like dark and day.
Then the grays unveil
The zones of what - ifs,
Of the red carpet of rage,
Of the yellow sun of doubt,
The brown of dried blood,
The blue doom of gloom,
The green leaf of disbelief
In happy endings.

There is no happy ending.
Endings are sad. Always.
And then you know it's time
To bring the inner chameleon out.
It's good to hide
In colors
Sometimes.

The bluest eye. Willingly blind.

Does it ever happen to you, say when you are reading a good book and all of a sudden you notice it is drawing to a close, the pages unread are growing lesser in number, the right hand side thickness of the pages slimming down gradually and the left increasing in familiar abundance, disrupting the balance of the book's binding - and you get sore and panic? Do you suddenly feel empty in your gut at the prospect of a goodbye? Of an imminent closure that is at once satisfying and unnerving?

Well, I do.

Then, as a self induced therapy, I start making a mental list of the rest of the cool reads I still have in the pipeline. Just for some consolation. Sometimes I go back to the earlier chapters of the same book I am reading and reread. Just for prolonging the pleasure, you see. And then I quite self consciously unread what I have read already. I tell myself that this is a part I missed paying proper attention to and the author must have had a hidden purpose in dealing his tale this or that way. Which I had completely overlooked in my initial and cursory read. I think I tell myself a lot of rubbish to keep myself amused. I horse around a lot with my reading. That, I guess, makes me one helluva phony. 

But it works for me.

But sometimes I chicken out. I stop telling stories to myself. I stop rereading stuff. Like when I read The Bluest Eye. I couldn't dare a second read. And I have since then pushed myself away from the memory of the story so far that you may call it a willful suspension of belief. I lost my nerve. I loved it. I hated it.

I still don't know how to unlove Pecola. How to neutralise my outward gaze toward her lot. How to see her as she saw herself from within. How to anaesthetise my agony at her frailty, her supposed ugliness, her mad wish for blue eyes. How to exorcise her destruction from my memory.

I realise that I have pushed her story so hard into an enforced forgetfulness that I no longer remember the full story. I dare not pick up the book again lest it haunts my waking moments with the pain it once shot me.

Call me a lousy coward. A selfish sentimentalist. A stupid one-eyed reader. But I will keep looking for make believe happy endings.

For truth hurts.