ढाका शहर

Photo: asiaexplorers

अगर दमड़ी है दीवारें मिल जाएँगी

जिनकी ज़मीन हमारे पाँव न छू पायेंगे

जिनका छत हमारी पहुँच से बाहर होगी

जहाँ पर मिट्टी ज़मीन का नाता न होगा

मिट्टी सिर्फ़ उड़ती धूल होगी

जहाँ आसमान पर भी ताले होंगे

आसमान सिर्फ़ हवाई जहाज़ की गूँज में होगा

गाड़ियों की शोर होगी

आदमियों, औरतों और बच्चों की चीखा-चिल्ली मिलेगी

पानी जहाँ सूख चुकी होगी

पेड़ जहाँ गमलों में जीते हैं

हम रहेंगे उन दीवारों के साथ

ज़मीन और आसमान के बीच कहीं त्रिशंकु की तरह

लटके हुए हम किसी मालदार की जेब भरेंगे

दीवारें सारी-की-सारी उन्ही की तो हैं

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Idiosyncratics

I have not reached here alone
Walking the path of reason
I carried a baggage
A load that prevails over the idioms of sanity

I journeyed along passion
Delighting in pain and anger
I have been rooted in emotions
Attached to the warmth of frustration

I could not fill normative spaces
While walking with a desire to belong
I must set out my agenda
A ripple in the calm water

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Glance

The Not-So-Easy-to-See Frescoes at the Citadel of Sigiriya, Sri Lanka.
500 painting of women wiped out when the citadel became a monastery (again)
so that they would not disturb meditation.



I was
suffused with the inside out
but what your fleeting glance could discern
if not the embodied absence

Every time the pain of being surfaced
I quickly averted the glance
why should it be so
if not to look for the pleasures of ephemeral

I am who I am
able to withhold
unable to contain

So what you discern is the key
to let me recognize you

I must tell you
each glance that dwells fleetingly
leaves an imprint
everlasting.

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Flights

In a yet another ‘new’ place
Sense of being tied down to nothingness remains
Roving freely into unknown lanes
Searching for a place to sleep sound, I stare
A desire to be obscure stays
Deepened by the familiarity unattained
Known-unknown probe go unrestrained

I know the migrant birds
I notice them always
Pigeons, the rooted survivors, are known too
I look for expanse, for existence unshackled
The lack of conviction disturbs
The movement of the migrant birds
Instigates a desire to move on

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energy

the sound from the laptop dims
and another grows louder – a faint whirlish whoosh
it’s a spinning wheel set on a torso
weaving.

the stories exaggerate the imprints
she stamps her foot and snorts her nose
but freshness deludes
breathless.

the smell of inside suffocates
and the juice rushes outside – fits of convulsions
the arid suck thirstily
parched.

weary tongue screams in protest
joined by droning noise of the radio
but the sound loses the sight of the direction
disoriented.

her eyes search for a small recess
but many others glare – all contemptible
sitting cross-legged nowhere she stares back
emptiness.

years of hollow existence
she remembers yesterday with clarity
but finds each new day blurry
fatigued

hands play laboriously on the keyboard
the mind tries to switch off – alternating sleep
holding scratch of this and that
restless.

closer scrutiny reveals countless traces
and dialogue flings open inlaid patterns
still it’s a smudged appearance
madness.

switching off the laptop and the radio
she laughs quietly – a satirized version
maintaining a precarious hold on sanity
recharged?

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Ego

The surface of emotions
Aligned with ego and formed
An intricate organ
Without the outline of a body.

Yet, powerful with agency to manoeuvre
The inner workings clear yet invisible
Inward imposed on outward
Without in-flesh to project the reality.

The point to point destruction
Achieved without giving away
The deception of calm
The façade of justice prevailed

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The 6th of the February: A Day of Zero Tolerance

     



International Day of
Zero Tolerance of FGM



The proprietors of passion

Wage a war to conquer lust

Open in an understanding

The source of unquenchable bodily wants

The culprit is somewhere outside

Someone who instigated desire

They say:

Using a force unravelled

She imposed a desire on renunciators

She the subject of ‘animal’ instincts

Lacking in the nuances of control

Enabled violence against herself

They claim:

She fashioned herself as the object of regulation

And so

The war goes on against her body. 

Watch a video on FGM. Help End it! 



The 6th of the February is the International Day of
Zero Tolerance of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM)
Watch the UNFPA-UNICEF Video

FGM is practiced by the elders using crude tools like blades, knives and pieces of glass as well as by some professional doctors and nurses using professional tools. Up to 140 million women and girls are affected by it Nearly three million girls are mutilated each year. Women and girls from both rich and poor families are either forced to go through it or convinced to go through it because otherwise they would not be regarded as a respectable woman/girl and would not be entitled to their basic rights like the right to inherit property. FGM is a heinous crime. Stop it!

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Taking Martyrdom to the Massess

Someone said: “I'm going to die for my faith!
Jesus/Rāma/Allāh/Sammāsambuddha - I love you!

In death I will be united with you.

End of this life will bring glory to you. 
... That is the conclusion I have come to!”

Who cares even if your soul were to fly
Out of the window of the concrete standing tall
And your chitty-chitty, bang-bang conclusion too!

Beware, some rational will make you an ally
Material gains, losses, the rational will evaluate all
And use your conclusion to build a political xanadu!

A voluntary death seeker

Your body will reek of the faith lost.

The martyrdom of an unwisely bold

There’s no nirvāna for a venturesome

You are but a foolhardy soul serving political conveniences!

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Known Unknown

Behind the door

Work continued, methodically
Assembly line movement
In order without an error
No sign of getting overwhelmed
But for a realization

It’s an extensive blotch
Difficult to articulate
Say, disappearance of the unpossessed
A long instance of losing
Something that was always amiss
But a forest of no meaning spreads

A cold current
Numbs calm deliberations
A corporeal mark
Placed at a close angle
I attempt to look away
But the vision is blocked

The power of sensing contained
I know the act of not knowing
All intrusive and forward
The dark ray passes through
Striking the known unseen
But for a particle dropped here and there

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Ghosts, again

Can you smell a different whiff
In my breath
You smell the surface.

And you see me
Standing at the street side
While I walked that mile.

I sense awkwardness
Fearful for we have nothing to exchange
We are creatures of inanity.

In this twisted ghosts life of ours
You keep up
Awkwardness surfaces occasionally

You masquerade conversation

You keep the thrifty words keyed in
I keep my guard on
I talk to your reticent vocabulary

Such a strange association

You knock on my door
Looking for some brightness
You pretend to be content

I know, I play along

We hide familiarity in closets
We are strangers again
With nothing to say.

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Contest

Ripped apart, cut and chewed

A political consequence of her actions

Spit through filthy mouths

She gathers herself

She contests, hesitantly

Examining her position in his world

She knows she must bear through

The problematic dichotomies

And live in the structures of servitude

While speaking to break free



But …

Attempts to contain emotions break down at points

Threatening ceilings of strength

Turmoil of dichotomies replaced by the resurgence of vengeance

Mapping implications of this or that is not a choice

Her politics of dichotomies must go on

She recognizes

The choice is between void and existence

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Volatile

Fire within

Engages in a mute debate

I am glowing

With ash on my body

I am speaking

With deaf chaos around me



Glitter of sugar crystals

Nails my tongue

A glimmer of hope

Pierces my eyes

Fresh air

Leaves me breathless

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Multiplicity/Whole

Muddled in my thoughts
Erratic in my actions
I divide to be concealed and to be opened
And forget what belongs where

Not knowing the boundaries
Nor to break free
I time my existence
And lose track when to be where

A being of contradictions

Tell me
How to cross over
From multiplicity to a whole

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Hope

Despair in muteness
Deftly paralyzes near and far vision
Hope promises the future

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Cold

Stillness of the night
Breezed past the narrow veins
Warm blood stood frozen

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Calm

The evening carried away
Tumultuous whispers of the day
The night is silent

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Created, Checked and Managed

Therefore, I was told
You are potent
My womb was recognized
Uncontained menstrual blood
Signaled fertility
The process of condemnation was redefined


And I was advised
You be compliant
My power to be unruly was interpreted –
A curse of the cunt
The irony of sensuous tits that nurture
The symbolic threat was validated

So it was suggested
Not to incite unpredictability of my body
The instability of my emotions must be encapsulated
Subversion of natural order
A warehouse of dangerous desires
Therefore I am marked

And so I know
To keep unharmed
I have to be contained, separated
Life in my existence is forbidden to surface
Dark and foreboding I stand
My role drawn, solidified

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A Woman of Dreams and Dryness

A woman of dreams and dryness
Holding moist memories
And a heart saturated with feelings
Treads cautiously on water

A child captured naked
Pierced through and through
Skin burnt by sharp dancing eyes
Floats on fire
"What have you been up to
You shameless audacious creature
Shame, you are a shame"
Cries fill the air

Free in a room locked from inside
Seeds of fear sprout
A fence made of fresh cacti
Springs from the floor

Years of violence branch out all around
Miles and depths of life get covered
Escape from memories now made unimaginable
The inner self offers a mask to cover agony

Menacing heat of the sun
Rays like rain breaking the pores
Mask melts and is washed away
A naked woman remains
Desperate to fade away
In the air beyond every hand’s reach
Lying face down on the earth
A child cowers to cover her naked body

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Mental Disorder

Until one experiences
The fear of losing
One doesn’t know how to possess.

"Is that what you are experiencing?"

The nonsensical bursts of detachment
Followed by enhanced sense of longing
Waiting for the reasoning self to fall silent.
And hearing calls of chaos
The permanence of faith
Now seems placed precarious.
Unexpected periods of intense fear
Compounded by a sense of belonging
Questions reason persistently.

"Are you feeling fuddled-duddled?"

Not being able to find a universal remedy
A potion to quieten doubts
Anger is taking on commotion.
Hold these moods close and warm
To see what avails
You must wear random sentiments.
Be tender to your frame of mind
It’s a part of pandemonium
A sign of life.
And you know
To stir up a new way of being
If nothing avails.

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Evening/Morning

The crescent smiled
Spilling thousands of stars in the sky
The day embraced the night

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