Poetry: Boudhayan Mukherjee

Boudhayan Mukherjee

2ND JULY BENGAL FAMINE 1943

What else but a strong desire to love

Pushes me to the brink of insanity.

I hit my head with a solid brick

Men and women enter my house hungry for rice

I see their frail bodies and my wife cries alone

I ask my wife to cook a huge bowl of rice

She tells me to bring a few kilos of rice from the market

I stop my tears and run like a hare

Buy vegetables, onions, potatoes, a kilo

of mustard oil, lentils et al

And rush back home like a great conqueror.

Now, I can smell the fragrance of rice

Boiling in the kitchen, potatoes swimming, lentils laughing.

A huge broth will be prepared with great fanfare

We lay out the food to appease the great hunger

I relish the smell and the mild smile on my wife's face

We don't have a courtyard but a wide verandah

Thirty people in two batches will eat their fill now

Oh, what a beautiful day, what a great occasion!

We have food every day, but these people don't

I'm like a hero today, today is my birthday!

**Bengal Famine 1943 was man made to starve Bengal in order to punish their revolutionaries who fought against British colonizers to free India. I heard about this incident from my late father.

***

LOVE OF LIFE

There's no harm in getting old

But you must do as you are told.

If you have hair left on your skull

Shave it off like a ship without hull

But wear a wig blue red or green

And trinkets in your ear like a teen

You must also flaunt your torn jeans

A guitar but strum not and spill the beans

You must hire a girlfriend half your age

But tell her it's for fun and you're a sage

Now go out for a stroll in a busy street 

Hold her hand it'll be a visual treat

For the young and those getting old

It'll soar the fun of life manifold.

***

FORBIDDEN APPLE

The huge commotion of silence that enters

Into my meditation hour every dawn

Women playing basketball and shrieking 

For points like bloodbath

I curse my male hormones 

That made me different from them 

How can life of this planet be genderless.

Will no life exist if we turn into barren bodies?

The Koel I can hear is calling for spring time 

mating without love

Where the word love is man made

Creation is a product of lust

And love is a jigsaw puzzle 

Of untold miseries since Eve ate the forbidden apple.

Bio: Boudhayan Mukherjee is a treasured Indian English poet, who has been extensively published in major literary journals here and abroad. He has authored five books of poetry, a collection of short stories and six volumes of translations. He taught Creative Writing in English at IGNOU and awarded the prestigious Swyamagata Literary Prize 2022.

 

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Setu, September 2023