Naina
Dey is a critic, translator and creative writer. Her
books include Macbeth: Critical Essays,
Edward the Second: Critical Studies, Real and Imagined Women: The Feminist Fiction of Virginia Woolf and Fay Weldon,
Representations of Women in George
Eliot’s Fiction, Macbeth: Exploring Genealogies, Snapshots
from Space and Other Poems and translation of Upendrakishore Ray
Chowdhury’s Gupi Gain O Bagha Bain. She was awarded
the “Excellence in World Poetry Award, 2009” by the International Poets Academy,
Chennai. Her latest publications are One Dozen Stories, a volume of translations and a poetry volume
titled Homing Pigeons and sundry stuff.
Jog
Falls, Karnataka
In the pitch darkness
Of a night of spirits and dak
bungalows
The dim bulb lights us up
Showing flimsy wooden banisters
Hanging
A deep chasm below
Resounding with the roar of a
gigantic monster
Risen from a murky swamp
Ever advancing
Drenching us with droplets
As the Jog rushes through our
hair
Tossing in our beds
The whole night
We hear the monster howl and
stamp outside
Till daylight
When beauty is revealed in all
its splendour
The king and the queen with their
two retainers
Cascading down the precipice
A rainbow peeking out
Like the lopsided tiara in the
hair of a reclining nymph
Waiting for her lover
Drowsy with the scent of sandal
From the woods where serpents
twine
And the hills hug the sky.
National
Gallery, London
Inside the mangle of tourists and
passageways
Halls leading to halls
I hunt down old friends
Titian, Turner, Manet
The rain pours outside
Blinking little stalls
Selling souvenirs shielded by
translucence
The warmth of coffee and tuna
sandwich
At the museum shop
Michaelangelo, Van Gogh hang in
lockets and keyrings for a discount
I peer at the coins the shop boy
counts for me
Tiny packets of bargains
To be taken home as memories.
Happy
Birthday!
You cut a lava cake today
To celebrate my birthday
A knife slicing a chocolate heart
Drip drip went the chocolate
Staining doilies
Messing bedclothes
I puke as you sit contented
Your cheeks bloated with
chocolate
Baked for the wrong day
Shopping
You take me to shops of branded
shoes
And silk bomkais
Your pockets jingling change
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