Arunava Sinha's Blog, page 4

I have seen postmen wandering in the autumnal forest: Shakti Chattopadhyay

I have seen postmen wandering in the autumnal forest Their yellow sacks filled with grass like swollen sheep bellies So many letters new and old they had found Those postmen in the autumnal forest I have seen them pecking away incessantly Like a solitary crane at a fish So impossibly, mysteriously, warily absorbed They’re not […]

The Tale of the Arjun and the Krishnachura: Mandakranta Sen

The Arjun tree stood alone in that field An Aryan male – a pillar of aristocracy All the other trees bowed to it This was merely the beginning of the story From somewhere came the Krishnachura seed A few years later she was a young woman A Santhal girl, with crimson in her hair At […]

Three Poems: Mandakranta Sen

After The Last Kiss After the last kiss I’ll bring back a fallen hair Life won’t change, I’ll take away this brief mistake A momentary death, a synonym, over how many lives? You sucked an ocean from my lips with sweat on your brow Give me, give it to me, let me drink it, I […]

Not a Very Happy Time, Not a Very Joyous Time: Shakti Chattopadhyay

Tottering from head to toe, from wall to wall, from parapet to parapet, swapping pavements at midnight On the way home, a home in a home, feet in feet Breast in breast Nothing more – (a lot more?) – even earlier Tottering from head to toe, from wall to wall, from parapet to parapet, swapping […]

Two Love Poems by Nirmalendu Goon

~ 1 ~ When I tell you, ‘I love you’ It doesn’t mean that I don’t Love anything other than you. When I tell you, ‘I love you,’ Do I not also see the clouds? Or the flower behind the leaves, The birds on the flowers? Pretending To look at you I look sideways at […]

From The Magic Moonlight Flower: by Satyajit Ray

~ 1 ~ Nashu the village doctor sat feeling Balaram’s pulse for nearly five minutes. Balaram’s seventeen-year-old son Kanai stood near the patient’s head, staring fixedly at the doctor. His father had been ill for ten days now. Balaram had no appetite and ten days of starvation had withered him. His eyes were sunken, and […]

From Panty: Two Novellas by Sangeeta Bandyopadhyay

~ Hypnosis ~ On a searing summer afternoon, four sex-starved women sat together, knees touching, discussing their sex lives in introspective mode in Ilona Kuhu Mitra’s air-conditioned room. Ilona Kuhu Mitra was one of them, of course. The others were Laila, Sunetra and Lavanya. All three were Ilona’s friends. They had never had such a […]

A Life: Buddhadeva Bose

Gurudas Bhattacharya, Vachaspati, the seniormost teacher of Sanskrit at Khulna’s Jagattarini School, had an accident during Bengali literature for Class Nine. ‘Amaar projagawno amaar cheye tahare bawro kori mane…’ The pundit stumbled on the sentence. Cheye? Did that refer to the Bengali word for glance? Or for desire? After some thought, he explained the sentence […]

A Claim for Possession: by Asha Naznin

I wish to buy you, my love Claiming personal possession – just the way the deed of a house Carries the owner’s name Didn’t some shameless hussy call you to her by your nickname the other day? Can my lover be a local bus who stops every time he’s hailed? The river saw a parade […]

My Parents and I: ‎Srijato‬

A I never got to visit Puri with my father and mother Nor Shimla or Ooty. Never mind those distant places, we didn’t even go to the zoo or the book fair I only got back home, switched on the light, entered My own room and observed How, adding to their mutual distance every day […]