Midway (Sonnet)

There is no midway when you are in love.

In the same way, a midway cannot exist yet,

in writing a poem. On the way of becoming a poet,

one cannot actually wear a non-poet's glove.

When you have a fear of losing, you lose love.

Back and forth steps create a nowhere scene.

Being or not being : nothing exists in between.

The same happens with politics, when you think of.

Either it sinks you completely, yes completely, or not at all.

Swimming in love, a glass of infatuation you cannot drink.

A journey begins the moment your plans start to scroll;  

about returning from a mid-way you do not even think.

Does one live a half life? However it ends, it's always full.

It's Khushru's river, to cross it, you definitely need to sink.  

Just Two Minutes

For two minutes I had fallen for you.

A grief was mounting

From my stomach through the chest up to my gullet

An unbearable pain : what if I won't get you for mine

The pain forced down me to a breathless state

I saw my death within that two minutes

When I was in love with you

Now all is just memory

If borrowed Sananta Tanty's expressions, then,

A plate of Sandal wood getting filthy   

A wilted petal of flower

For two minutes the world became more beautiful

And that was the time when I realized

The tremendous amount of power I had within me

To transform all the ugliness in the universe

Within just two minutes.   

For two minutes I realized

Amnesia was actually good

All the learning from history was mere conceit

I witnessed my own death with a great pleasure

In those two minutes

I forgot you for thousand times

I found you rediscovered

In those two minutes

For two minutes I used to think that you were mine

Then I saw

From the tadpole flocks in Konasori Pond to the cosmic milk ways

Everything was actually mine

My Diaspora state of mind suffering from homelessness all the time

Got a home

In those two minutes

For two minutes the pages of history were flipped abruptly

Somewhere in Shravasti roadside, a branch of the Sala tree was broken

For the first time I became happy loosing the ground beneath my foot

In those two minutes

I became a revolutionary rebel, I became a meditative Yogi, I became insane

I was charismatic with incredible amount of happiness, I broke in heavy grieves,

I was collapsed, I was emptied within myself

I found myself somewhere

And how many things I became

And how many things I did

In that time span of just two minutes

This me, as you see today, everything of mine

This all

Are nothing but remaining ruins of those two minutes

The clouds are bursting outside

The clouds are bursting outside

And you are asking me why I am so restless.

Actually

Even after losing so many things in life

I couldn’t lose this restlessness of my mind,

What you may have lost somehow.

You may lose you, but

I cannot

Let me tell you something

Even after losing so many things in life

I actually lost nothing…

Can You Blow Me?

(For @just.call.me.eve)

The silk cotton seeds know how to trespass the barbwire.

The silk cotton seeds know where to stick, and where not to.

The silk cotton seeds know when to fly high in the sky,

And when to kiss the ground.

The silk cotton seeds know how to make a touch tender.

Crossing the borders the silk cotton seeds know

How to spread life.

When everything was dried up in the late winter

When the earth was dying for a drop of water

Those were the silk cotton trees

That bloomed in red Putting fire in the sky.

For their inflamed tide

Spring had to come.

Now just before the rain comes,

They know how to sing a song of love and spread it in the air.

Dear, can you blow me to fly like the silk cotton seeds?

Can you bring me home

On your rumpled hair or the undetected folds of your cloth?

Dear, can you blow me? 

https://www.instagram.com/p/BTWRMOkgBfO/?taken-by=samudra_kajal_saikia&hl=en

Winged Elephant

Prologue:

In a forest land there were folks who never dared to dream. Dream was a taboo, a sin.

One just ordinary day, a young elephant started dreaming. As he started dreaming he got a pair of wings. He flew away, nobody knows exactly when and where…..

Art: Vishnu Madhav

The Winged Elephant:

Once upon a time a winged elephant

Came down to earth from the sky.

Some thought he was a holy prophet,

Some other thought he was just a spy.

In the jungle there was a group of elephants for hay 

They were roaming around the fields of paddy.

The winged one joined them and asked for a play

But to accept him, the leader elephant was not ready.

"Hey, you cannot be a part of us, since you are a winged one"

They rejected him. He became isolated and lonely.

He was desolated and sad. Then he saw flying a wild swan.

He asked for company, but swan said "I'm sorry, but, I'm a bird only".

Now he was very sad. Because whatever happened, it was very bad.

Then he went out of the jungle and met an ant.

The ant was very tiny but it was shiny. That's why he noticed that.

They became friends, good wishes were there abundant.

The ant was so small, he could only see the elephant's trunk.

Looking it as a serpent, the ant said to him

You should join the snakes. You do not belong to us either, to be frank.

Goodbye then, the elephant's face lit with a beam.

Art: Vishnu Madhav

In the kingdom of snakes, the king snake came forward, and said,

"What's funny! You do not belong to us at all.

You look like a upside down bowl as just like a tortoise laid.  

Be off now you stupid upside down bowl!"

Now where to go other than the tortoise, the elephant thought!

He went to see the tortoise, but the tortoise said the same.

"You do not belong to us, to be a part of us, you'll be only a fraud",

Again the Winged Elephant became lonely, without knowing whom to blame.

The Winged Elephant decided, I should fly away from here

Since this land is not mine

He started flying, without knowing, to somewhere,

Searching a place where he would be fine.

A wildfire occurred very soon in the forest.

Causing trouble to all.

Elephant, ant, tortoise, snake and the rest

What a misfortune,  a Distressing scrawl.

Art: Vishnu Madhav

All were in despair, suddenly an ant said, "we need a winged one

Who can help us showing a new way of living".

Let me tell you, as you can guess, all of them remembered just only one

But there was no way left, as earlier, all of them were rejecting. 

On the other hand, while flying on the sky

The winged elephant saw a smoke in the wood.

He realized this was the moment that is why

I were born. Why didn't I do things what I could?

The winged elephant started flapping his wings.

The flapping wings caused turmoil of winds.

That turmoil of winds caused the fire stop

And resettles not only the woods but also the resident's minds.

Flapping the wings for so long, the winged elephant was tired.

He fell down on the ground full of fire.

He, then, were burnt totally, and on the spot he was expired.

Anyway now the wood is revived, it is again full of life.

Today all are happy

All are on their own ways again once.

No one remembers really

The Elephant, the Winged One.

Art: Vishnu Madhav

Epilogue:

“Aag lagi is Vriksh ko jalne lagi sab paat

Tum kyun jwalo pankhruwo, pankh hain tumharein paas

Phal phool khayein is vriksh ke, bheet bhari hain paat

Urna hamara dharam nahin, jalna vriksh ke saath”

(This tree has caught fire, all the leaves are burning

You have a pair of wings, why are you burning with it?

I’ve eaten the fruits of the tree and got a shelter with it’s’ leaves

Flying away is not a way-out for me; rather I’d die with the tree)

An Oral saying, attributed to Kabir Das

Art: Vishnu Madhav

Text: Samudra Kajal Saikia
Art: Vishnu Madhav
First Performance: Satphool "Hoosori" Theatre, Behali
seond Performance: Puppet Making workshop, Nine Schools of Art, Delhi

OPHELIA

You said the time is cursed

But my love is cursed by time

And I am cursed by my love

You have only one time

 to set right the time out of joint[1]

I have too a single time

For my love

Your time is yours

Mine is mine

A firefly reminds the moon

I have a time too

For my ambition

“Life is a nightmare. Death?

   That is also a mere consolation.”[2]

A nightmare has a time

A consolation has a time

The time has no time at all.

*

Ophelia was first planned in December 2003 and staged in a national campus theatre festival, organized by Abhivyakti, New Delhi in February 2004 and then in Kalabhavan, Santiniketan on 11^th March, 2004. After Delhi and Santiniketan I tried to (re)present Ophelia on 10^th January 2007, as a part of National Workshop for Students on Gender and Sexuality in the Disciplinary Paradigms, held in January 8^th to 11^th, in the Dept. of Art History and Aesthetics, M S University of Baroda. On the basis of the same text, with another text from Mahashweta devi alternative theatre director Parnab Mukherjee experienced Ophelia and O connecting the women all over the world referring Steven Bercoff’s The Secret Love Life of Ophelia  as a sub-text.

On April 24, 2013, Multiple Monologues, Aloud Asides, a Disposable Theatre by Kankhowa took place at Gati Studio, Delhi as a part of the festival : The Ghosts of Shakespeare. 

[1] ("The time is out of joint; O cursed spite!/That ever I was born to set it right!" [I.V.211-2]).

[2] Ophelia, Homen Borgohain

When I miss you

When I miss you, I lose my mind.

My life swings with - you are that source of wind.

You make me an expressionist. I try to cry,

but my voice is lost, my throat - it's all dry.

I call you with all my wishes:  

come and blow my body like a whistle,

make me an instrument that I never could play.

Burn it, my body, as they rightly say:

the human body - it's all but made of clay.

Be there, for me ever, oh bidi of a Kendu leaf,

blow me up to the eternity.

A makeshift of Memory (Sonnet)

No one dies for somebody else; we know it well, but whatever,      

It is important to say: I’ll die without you. At least say it for once.

I do not have a faith in eternal love. Nothing surpasses the limit of the times.

Still it is important to speak up: I’ll always be yours, forever.

At least say it for once. You don’t have to mean it either.

Otherwise it would be painful if no memory remains at your absence

We all is a memory, or a constellation of memories, of any distance,

Of somebody else, or, just our own rather.

I find no meaning of life if not in creating some memories for a strange someday.

Emptiness would be if there remains no memory of you when you are absent,

Empty, not the universe is. If someday you hold my hand, be it just for a day;

Please consider that single day could encapsulate our entire lives in consonant.

I know in this world we all walk alone. Nobody is made for anybody, anyway.

Still try speaking out: I am yours, and you are mine. Speaking up is important.   

Come woman, let’s bathe together

Come woman, let’s bathe together

We know which shampoo can remove dandruff, cleans your hair,

We know which soap can keep the germs away 
We know, we know, we know all, you know,
What to apply on nails, what to apply on toes,
What to, and, what not to apply on our faces.
Come woman, let’s bathe together
What we don’t know is what to apply to remove the age-old dirt
The dirt of hatred
The dark marks of imposed power on our bodies
Where is the herbal, where is the chemical
Where are the brushes, sponges and scrubbers?
To remove the glutinous norms
Come woman, let’s bathe together
Bring the sponge luffa
Let’s remove the marks of those measures today
Come woman, let’s bathe together today
by cleansing ourselves
You’ll become you
I’ll become me
By being yourself you’ll be mine
Being myself I’ll be yours
Today is the time
Come woman, let’s bathe together

(To Til Jethai, my aunt who used to scrub me when I was a child)

An Ode to Your Loneliness

I know how lonely you have become,

Even after splitting into two from one single body,

When you have gained the warmth of closeness of an 'other'

mesmerizing each and every moment of the days and nights,

even then,

you have become extremely lonely.

Because it is only you who would take care of him,

it is your lonely body, where milk is being produced for the child,

the loss of a siesta without any scope of an alternative

it is all yours

all the disarranged hunger and thirst

it all is yours,

extremely isolated you are walking through this

endless passage, which is all yours,

It is your lone and last shelter, and yet, you are helpless in front of it,

embracing the absolute wealth of life and the universe

you are destitute today

Mother, how could you do it?

How could all women do?

you are asking this question again and again

to yourself

Women, even if I could touch every inch of you

We could never touch this helpless loneliness of your motherhood

what an inevitable role the universe offered to you!

I salute to the unbearably terrible loneliness of every mother on earth.