Organic

There is something red growing
on my tenth floor apartment's balcony.
It is silent like hunger, cold like a fact
and it sways like some unattended lines of a long forgotten poem.

Yet it appears organic and my one year old son tries to reach for it.
Someday he might just be able to touch it, feel it,
smell it, perhaps grasp it with his two hands.

In what you see today as a lone Hibiscus,
growing on my tenth floor apartment's balcony,
I see a crimson tide.
I see a crusade.

Now Day and Night

- A translation of Souvik Bandyopadhyay's poem 

"Ekhon dinraat"

The pale boulevard appears

as a lazy, ancient serpent in this colourless evening

sipping nonchalantly from the chalice of time

we grow antique as well.

Narrow by-lanes, old rusty antennas

no one dwells here anymore

just a few black and white photo albums

of girls..young, frolicking, giggling remain.

Its been ages since spring came visiting Kolkata

Now just a deep, bluish winter

sits hauntingly on the window pane.

No fireworks for a millenia 

of precarious existence-

Now while thinking about my friends

I put on a cold grey suit

and habitually keep floating night and day.