Calcutta Poems

Calcutta Poems

Firni

From Tagore’s house
I walk into a dirty lane
The muri-seller confirms as Macchua
Where my father had once taken me to his own house

I must have been seven then
Mother had poured kerosene on herself
Threatening to strike soaked matchsticks that failed to emit sparks

He pulled me out from under a blanket
As I watched them bicker from my combustible igloo-dome

His wife fed me a tall glass of milk smelling of almonds
When I played with the rabbits in the cage
Her children waited for me to sleep
To find out my name

Standing in his shop after thirty years to that day
I see him in a photo frame proudly displayed at the entrance

He is accepting a cheque for flood victims
From Jyoti Basu
He can share a stage with the Chief Minister
But not with survivors like mother and me

My first instinct is to ask the boy who works in the shop
Is this man still alive?

Words sitting at the back of my tongue resist moving forward
My teeth can bite them to silence

Across the street is Royal hotel
He had filled my palm with coins for firni
Eating the almond-flavoured sweet dish, I can only wish he is not dead
My debts I clear in every morsel I numbly swallow

…

This is the room where he breathed his last
An inscription in Tagore’s bedroom
Much like a museum describes a fossil that never decays

Finding myself alone in his room
A geyser of unchecked emotions
Springs from my gut
Dilating my eyes

I have found my eternal in my songs, he said
Willing me to shed a tear
For the man who writes in cadence

When I catch the shadows
Of two women on my back
Shutting the waterworks
Of a sentimental bore

Tagore’s house displays photographs of him
Looking like Tolstoy, Zafar, and sometimes ill just as himself

What a strapping young lad he was once
Before he took on the role of a spiritual ambassador
He bloody travelled the world a lot, this Bongeoisie!

Did he use a Western-style or shat as his Indian-hermit self?
How did the Gurudev defecate?
In his death room there is no access to his bath and toilet

The guard at the house tells me
Why do you want to see where he shat?
It is irrelevant

A small part of the great man is irrelevant
Like the rest of us visiting his room
In search of a private moment
…

To the two blind men begging for money in the street I asked,
Do you take food also?
No, said one,
We are blind, what will we do with food?
We are standing on the road,
Take us to a restaurant and feed us
Okay, I said, and paused to consider
Has he gone? asked the other
As I turned to cross the street
Hoping in my heart the answer was yes

…

The other day at the museum
The Bengali tour guide shrieked at Western tourists
Eett Izz Dead!
Pointing to the fossil trunk of a dadoxylon
I placed my hand on the supine tree
A feverish temperature breathed into my palm
The moribund of 250 millions years
Was passing through an eternal age of rest

…