O GURUDEB: A TRIBUTE TO TAGORE: Jagari Mukherjee (Tagore Special)

Jagari Mukherjee

Perhaps Binodini would have understood me--

the woman alone and abandoned by all.

Gurudeb, to you I turn for solace in the midst of pain;

the chaos of my life I struggle to arrange…

I am the widow sighing bitterly at the moon.

Other times I am Charulata thisting for romance…

 

Gurudeb, what gave you the strength to go on after you cremated the loves of your life?

The orange funeral pyre, more fierce than the sun

consumed your days, and yet you lived

to tell your tales...

 

Does the postmaster love Ratan?

And who loves this soul of solitude

with only your books for company?

Who eagerly searches for herself in your women?

Who looks for her salvation in you?

In the emptiness of my world, I wonder

why Amit should not marry Lavanya.

The storm rises, passes through my arteries.

A flower blossoms in the heart,

watered by the calmness of your words.

 

Bio: The winner of the 2019 Reuel International Prize for Poetry, Jagari Mukherjee is the Founder and Chief Executive Editor of the literary journal, EKL Review. She has authored four solo collections of poetry--two chapbooks and two full-length volumes. Her most recent chapbook is "Letters To Inamorato" (2022) published by Penprints Publication. Jagari's poetry ebook, Wine-Kissed Poems (2020), co-authored with Dr. Ampat Koshy, became an Amazon bestseller in India and the US. Her poems and other creative pieces have been published in different venues both in India and abroad such as Kitaab, Fasihi Magazine, Vox Poetica, Treehouse Arts, Harbinger Asylum, Plum Tree Tavern, Scarlet Leaf Review, Ariel Chart, The Hollins Critic, and Flora Fiction, to name only a few. She has performed her poetry both in the US and in India, including at Sahitya Akademi. Her poems have found a home in many anthologies, including in The Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English 2020. is a gold medalist in English Literature, a Best of the Net 2018 nominee, DAAD scholar from Technical University, Dresden, Germany, and a Bear River Writers' Conference alumna. She has won numerous prestigious awards, including the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize for Book Review (2018), the Women Empowered Gifted Poet Award (2020), the Jury Prize at Friendswood Library's Ekphrastic Poetry Reading And Contest (2021), and most recently, The Bharat International Award for Literature 2022 For Short Story.

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Tagore Special :: Setu, May 2022