Disposable Hums

1

Whenever you leave me alone and go away

I hear the same ancient gong beyond the bamboo groves.

A pensive whistle in the crickets’ neighborhood.

I dare not to keep myself with me.

I have least faith on me.

It would ever better to fall in love with a thief or a dacoit.

2

Words are incredible. Sometimes you try to get rid of the crowded words. Since you are fine with a particular word why do you need so many flamboyant words around. And the very next moment you are restlessly searching for a particular word, the word that is missing, or may be a word that have not been invented ever yet. Dear, you are just a name, a word, pardon me... I am very much ambivalent just like any other word invented on earth... 

3

On my roof no sun comes, only the clouds gossip across the year.

My staircases do not lead me to up, only i can go down like a one way escalator.

My cloths, buckets and all the belongings just get heavier day by day.

I cannot embrace them anymore, neither can I throw them up.

I have a similar habit with Moushumi Bhowmik: kicchu phelti paari na... 

Disposable Army

Among all of our showpieces and decoratives army is the costliest.

Why won't it be, after all it decorates the nation.

You cannot see a nation with your eyes, it is just an abstract concept.

You need some visibility to materialize it, and so on...

Among all of our showpieces and decoratives army is the costliest.

Why won't it be, it is beyond our daily necessities could reach.

On the basis of rarity and uselessness increases the value and the cost.

The wedding jewelries that never appears useful are the costliest.

The value of the writer increases when he stops writing in a daily.

Instead of your kitchen knife, an sharp-less sword in the museum is costliest.

I do not understand why but we desire most for the most useless only.

Among all of our showpieces and decoratives army is the costliest.

There are many occasions when the army is beautifully installed.

We enjoy the properly aligned and ordered army in the fifteenth August.

In all the houses of all the states they appear in television. we're thrilled.

On the republic day as well, mistakenly, the army decorates the capital,

despite of the fact that army and democracy has no relation as such.

If removal of fear is the essence of democracy, the base of army is fear portal,

Still to decorate the nation the army blossoms, beautifully very much.

Just like, at the thresholds of your houses, you put some flowers lovely,

The army is also being put at the boundaries of the state.

That is another reason why it is costliest. You cannot own the army.

If ever the army comes down to our lives, our entire living pays the cost.

DEATH (For Irom Sharmila)

Death, you are too weak to have a nap on your lap.

Either you are too strong to hug the woman, Menghaobi*,

- the most beautiful woman on earth.

Death, you are too ashamed in front of the Indian Army,

You simply deny to recite your own part.

Death, your performance depends upon the audience's cry,

This time we won't cry, we simply deny,

This time, on the face of humanity, you are a mere dirt.

Death, in a nasogastric tube, you are stuck

Time is stilled so.

Only the men in uniform are in flux

Who are actually dead in spirit long ago.

*Menghaobi: the fair one, Manipuri

A Sonnet for Irom Sharmila: Happy New Year 2012

Wake up Irom. Take your pen and paper. Write a poem.

Break down the stagnancy of our ancient conscience.

The coming days are yours and ours. I swear precision.

Only the dreamers are welcome. It’s nuance.

Wake up Irom, wake up. A year changes itself every year.

The New Year will start up in a new way altogether.

Listen carefully, the footsteps of the men in uniform will no more

Collapse the nights and the harmony of the paddle of the weaver.

The boy went out of home in the morning will come back right

With a smiling face in the evening. Dreams on his eyelid.

No fear, no fear, no loss of humanity any more, everything alright.

Just like Ghalib, Kankhowa speaks the same, oh Ghalib! Its right-

The go down will not entertain scarcity of grains before the year’s end.

It is always good to think such things to keep content your mind.

This winter everything’s frozen

(Is there any kabaadiwala, junk or scrap dealer, 

to give away the wasted words?)

Words are glutinous. In some summer afternoon some of them melted.

Some of them wallowed at my absence. The most sticky ones

Drabbled and draggled like naughty kids. Now most of them are frozen.

There were some words I collected from the market, from the hills and the stars

There were some words I collected from the streams and also from distance screams

All the words that I kept for you for some special day

All the slapdash words that you just left away 

Some are still forming cocoons, you don’t get any idea about their tomorrow.

Some, that are not frozen till now daubing with some yesterdays.

This winter everything’s frozen, including the air. Can’t breathe properly. 

Some frozen words blocked my throat.

I opened all the doors and windows, let the words go away...

the words that are just lying here and there making me claustrophobic

Kankhowa, I warned you thousands of times to keep the house clean

Now let the roof leak, let the sunshine in...

Surf excel, Vim bar, Harpic, wiper, scrapper...

House morphing (after 31st December 2012)

 (by Samudra Kajal saikia to Manmeet devgun)

I am an untidy person. My house remains dusty and clumsy ever.

You came, and took over it. You set some disciplines at my house.

You cleaned the bathroom first. Then the wash basin, the refrigerator, shoe rack, the kitchen.

You removed all the dusts, all the darts, all the spider nets from every corner

Everything is fine now. But you, in the process touched my everything, all my interior...

Now everywhere there is a touch of you, what I cannot remove, a smell of you

Surf excel, Vim bar, Harpic, wiper, scrapper...

everything fails to remove a single touch of you, a smell of you...

By the process you left some of yourself... 

The other fear: I want to see you in the night

New Delhi, 2012

Nights are still beautiful. In this city I have never seen a sky full of stars as I used to see in my village. Cohesion of the crickets in the evening is missing here. Still nights are beautiful. A day is a day and a night is a night, this fact itself is an amazing surprise that the nature offered to us. Let’s walk across the streets, let’s sing aloud. In the night your voice echoes at far distance. At night you are free to walk around since there is less traffic. Since everything is not visible too clearly, a night offers you immense scope of imaginations.

No! I don’t want police patrolling in the name of law and order.

I don’t want to remain conscious, while walking in the nights, if I am carrying my identity proof in my pocket. I don’t even want to be answerable why I’m walking on the streets in the night. I don’t want to see police. I don’t feel good talking to police. I know something really bad happened. But I also don’t want police on the streets. Government is manly. Police is manly. Army is manly.

Dear girls, nights are still beautiful. Do not ask for any security, nothing works. Nights are beautiful in all terms. What happened in Delhi recently has nothing to do with the beauty of the nights.

Blaming government is not a solution. Looking for cops’ help is not a solution.

The problem lies at the core of the patriarchal system and the masculinity itself. Govt. and the cops all are part of the system, so nothing will work ever. Let’s come out in the nights. Let’s start singing aloud. Let’s recite our favorite pieces of poetries.

Delhi, don’t facilitate us so much. Don’t offer us ‘dream houses’ with investment planning. Don’t beautify yourself and don’t remove the poor people from their habitations. Don’t offer car loans. Don’t check my belongings every time I enter at any premise. Don’t compete with the other big big metros. Don’t feel ashamed of your poor people. You are beautiful as you are.

It is only who are out bursting at the event, who made the nights for criminals, where as we deeply believe that the nights were meant for artists and poets. The poets have a time to play around words in the night when there is no rush for earning livelihood. It is only you, who made a ‘discipline’ around how to walk out in the night, how to dress and how not to face problems. By doing that you again and again assured the criminals that how it is fine to commit a crime.

My love, I’ll see u in the nights, when we’ll have enough time to talk without a compulsion of hurry back to office. We’ll paint all over the walls of the city with love so that in the morning my city shines with the rising sun.

21/12/12

Kankhowa and J. Alfred Prufrock

Kankhowa and J. Alfred Prufrock

(at Indira Gandhi National Center for Arts)

I was sitting under a Vata tree

With a cup of tea, it was free.

I was not feeling like going inside

To see the exhibition, I lost appetite.

The ladies come and go, with chips, kurkure or Lays

Talking about someone, she was student of Ramkinkar Baij

Seeds were falling from the tree

One by one

Drop by drop

An ‘untitled’ winged bud

Falling on the ground

Was suffering

Being upside down

Its tiny wings were flapping and making some noise

LET us sit a while then, you and I,

When the evening is spread out against the sky

Like a patient etherized upon a table;

One can disturb the world

Doing nothing

Just sitting beneath the Vata tree

And listening to the unison of the falling seeds

Do I dare?

Do I dare?

To prove myself not but a Corpse, 

Prufrock, do I dare to count the drops?

Just a button

My name is a button.

If you click it

It will show my profile

Just as you wanted to see.

My image is a button.

If you click it

It will reveal my documents

just as you wanted to see.

I am a button.

Click me

I’ll perform

just as you wanted me to perform.

By Aw Ohk Nak 

Oh! Women

Women, how do you embody a body within your body

How do you nurture it, care it

Day after day, months after months...

After the separation of the body also

How do you take all the care of it

I just get astonished!  

All the game you have is with a living body

I could never put a seed of life properly into soil till the date

Some plants I bought, they also died in my careless everyday...

Including the chili plant, Manmeet gave me with pure affections...

I pen down some words with much ego in the sleepless nights

I play with lines, with colors, and I also try some rhymes ...

On the bed I just receive the touch of the dead ones, the lifeless ones;

The bodiless thoughts hum around like the naughty mosquitoes...

I am incapable of taking care of even the plants

grown and nurtured by others

I do not want to be  a man any more.

I want to be a woman this time.

Give me some strength.