Poetry: Mandakini Bhattacherya

ADDA^*  AT CHOWRASTA

1. OPTHALMIC LOVE

Cars whizz by the light of the lampposts

The lampposts that border the sari-like pavement

The pavement in whose bricks I see a design

A design that spikes into your melt-me-brown eyes

Your eyes that mine eyes search over a sand-heap

The sand-heap that cuddles the tea-shop bench

The bench where your lips play a melody

A melody of meeting with the brim of a tea-cup

A tea-cup whose wisps of smoke bring us together

Together, as also when your eyes gaze

Gaze deeply into my eyes across a lens

A lens that lengthens shadows and clears focus

The focus you adjust, nonchalantly for my eyes

Our eyes meet, un-meet, depart

Departure leaving memories on my eyelashes.

2. TRAFFIC AT CHOWRASTA

In the corners of wispy streets

brought into existence

by Grandpa and his friends,

sudden rides materialise.

Bang! Bang!

I ride the Desire Car.

In the evenings

that stretch into mornings,

the night somehow disappears.

As Desire sucks, feeds, grows,

the streets stretch from urban to countryside,

from Kolkata to Diamond Harbour,

and merge again.

Like a roving gypsy with raving fires

I traipse and sashay

from boulevards

to riverside temples with hidden menaces.

Forever, forever travelling,

the unfamiliar streets morph and beckon

with familiar flames and names.

* Adda is the Bengali word for friendly gossip.

Mandakini Bhattacherya, from Kolkata, is an Assistant Professor of English and a multi-lingual poet, literary critic and translator. Her scholarly articles and poems have been published in international and national journals, and also in books and anthologies. She was invited by Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi and participated in the All India Young Writers’ Meet organised by it in February, 2020. She is Associate Editor of the ‘Muse of Now Paradigm’ anthology (AuthorsPress, 2020). She was awarded the Philosophique Poetica International Achievement Award ‘Master of the Word’ in recognition of her poetry by Philosophique Poetica and Grand Productions Canada at the World Poetry Conference, Bathinda, Punjab, in 2019.

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Local 2020 :: Setu, June 2020