Poetry And Puja: Verses By Kushal Poddar

Puja 

Let's play 'Lost in the Carnival'. 

I have three eyes now, and one, 

impaired, hunts for you in the realm 

where glimpses and visions go 

after the blindness. 

The other two seek the concept of you 

in this earth, city, people pouring out 

into the streets, shops, buying and selling, 

sweating and licking the sweetmeat. 

The light blurs truths between the divine 

we worship, love we forge and fear we kiss. 

I pass a sodality, and those young men talk 

about the new clothes, shoes, flings, 

the way the festival disintegrates and its 

decorations are disassembled and immersed  

in the stream. They scream, "Cheers to the next year!" 

I feel the winter in my spine, I sprint to the river. 

Oh sinnerman where you gonna run to? 

Clouds quarrel above. Do you remember 

good ole mother used to say, "The Goddess 

upstairs desires to descend and come home 

to the men who imagined her so hard that she 

became real, and the God forbids her to leave 

the heaven. He does not want her to be mortal 

again even if for a few days if the carnival." 

Did mother say these? At least some parts of these? 

Do you remember, Devi, we play, and it is 

not a game if the hide and seek doesn't end?  

"Appear", I whisper. 

From a series titled ‘We have no place for the belief in--The one Reality and the unreal appearances!’ | Photo courtesy: Samit Das

JUSTICE 

I 

'Justice' comes up in  

our word-association game. 

'Freedom!' you say, and I  

mumble, 'Shame',  

and then a cloud burst  

cancels our autumn picnic. 

In the shelter of one tea stall nearby 

we confine our faces  

in the Rorschach maze  

of the words we say. 

You hide your protests in 

the biographies of our forefathers. 

I wake up at night to wipe out 

the DNA of some brother slain 

by another. Ancient family business. 

One ebony feline mewls from 

its burial between out minds and brains. 

From a series titled ‘We have no place for the belief in--The one Reality and the unreal appearances!’ | Photo courtesy: Samit Das

II 

Justice comes home all wet 

and he says nothing when 

we ask him again and again, 

"What happened? Where's your umbrella?" 

Silence bullies into the shelter. 

The school of thoughts screams and shouts. 

Rings an old bell, and no, there is no din. 

I mop his head. His mom dries him. 

We fix a dinner. An animal circles 

our house. Its belly flashes the glow of hunger. 

From a series titled ‘We have no place for the belief in--The one Reality and the unreal appearances!’ | Photo courtesy: Samit Das