Ketaki Datta is an Associate Professor of English with Bidhannagar College, Kolkata. Apart from a slew of academic writings, she has two novels, “A Bird Alone” and “One Year for Mourning” to her credit. She has two collections of poems, “Across the Blue Horizon” [U.K.], and “Urban Reflections: A Dialogue Between Photography and Poetry”, coauthored with Prof. Wilfried Raussert [Germany]. She has two translated novels. She is a lyricist too.
A New World to be Born
Wash your hands for twenty seconds,
Wear mask when you go out,
Leave not your own self behind
Take it along—
Well-masked, well-camouflaged,
Hands, washed off of all sins,
All misdoings like the
Indelible stains of homicide,
Committed long, long ago.
The soul-less roads cry out in anguish,
The wind howls on the empty roads,
Listening to its own swoosh,
Like the wolves in an African jungle.
The sky getting bluer,
With no avion to cross
By leaving a smoky trail
of civilized humanity!
A new world is about to be born
On the feathers of a
long-lost sparrow!
Dancing down the steps
of a spiralling staircase,
of the dilapidated house
across the road.
The roads lying in quiet abandon
Speak to themselves,
Seeking a little attention
Of the people
Of the post-Covid era,
Who will at least
Care not to clutter them,
Care not to trample them
With careless abandon.
***
Post-Covid Roads in Conversation
We lay in a quiet abandon
With sun on our shoulders,
The men who ran on us
At breakneck speed
With two- or four-wheelers,
Were all locked indoors!
The beggars who sat cluttering
Our nooks and crannies,
Had all been taken for quarantine
To local hubs,
We think.
What about you?
I am just a lane,
You are a junction
Where so many
small roads meet!
Yes, I was happy too,
Basking under the afternoon sun,
Being regaled by bird-songs,
And greeted by cuckoo and nightingales,
Kept wondering, where had they
All gone for so many years?
Then they spoke in unison,
Yes, I was having whiffs of fresh air,
Yes, every day made me calm, calmer,
I know, from tomorrow
The old tale will repeat.
Again we will go deaf by the
Honk of cabs and cars,
And maddening footfalls of
Millions of men and women!
Let’s hope for a better tomorrow,
The humans would not clutter us anymore,
They will be a bit empathetic,
A bit more accommodating,
They surely will be,
Won’t they?
***
A Quiet Diwali
Cops came blaring a microphone,
“No crackers, no noisy fireworks please”,
Little Pumpu went in dumps,
Went to the balcony to mull over
these terms!
His mind went roving around
The dear aunts and grandpas
Whom he lost to the ruthless
Clutch of Covid -19, oh alas!
The cops added, “We should
Keep the air clean,
We should make the surroundings
Cleaner than it had been!”
Pumpu looked around
And found the air clean already,
So no need to garb it with smog
By bursting crackers, leaving it untidy!
Pumpu came into the room
Sadder and wiser,
He sidled up to dad to say,
“ I want diya, not a cracker!
Dad tried to read the lines
On his little son’s face,
He spoke so wise,
What was really the case?
Pumpu stood straight to say,
“ I want all of us to pray
To keep everyone hale and hearty,
Happy and sprightly!
If our air gets polluted,
We will suffer instead!”
The happy parents exchange a glance,
Being happy to see their son, in a trance.
*Diya: Earthen Lamp
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