Special Edition: Kushal Poddar

Kushal Poddar

Although Kushal Poddar has authored ten books, the latest being 'A White Can For The Blind Lane', and his works have been translated into twelve languages, and he has been a sub-editor of Outlook magazine and the editor of Words Surfacing, and he does some illustrations and sketches for various magazines if you ask him, he will say that he gardens a growing up daughter.

The White Stag Run 

The thirty seconds of a white stag

last longer than the trip or our visit 

to your uncle who will spill the bad blood,

breaks the news about your birth as if

the truth will make our relationship a lie,

and the albino beast leaps over 

the new road, black pitch, yellow line, 

fast shadow as accents beneath its hooves

whose colour we shall argue about 

instead of wrangling about your parents

and hissing in unison the names 

we may have given to your kin. 

No. We live those thirty seconds white.

We watch the beast, pick up the crumbs

of dreams in order to track the trail 

to our home in a bit of a Brothers Grimm 

puzzle. Sometimes when I move in sleep

and cowp a glass of water from the nightstand 

I see your uncle's eyes narrowing, 

diluting into the fierce pupils of the white stag.

*** 

Red Crested Cockatoo 

The ditty about a cockatoo

and its red crest and its white breast

awakens me. You have not heard it 

unless your birth city is mine,

its tongue speaks for you. You won't 

hear it anyway. The song my dawn plays 

will remain perched on my wrist 

if I stay on my sweat stained bed, lie

in a fetus position, my arms juxtaposed 

and spread, some verdant leaves 

sprung out from their wooden skin,

a few fledglings of another species 

shivering in a circle of my wrinkles.

***

This Monsoon We'll Become Ghosts 

The muscle of verdure 

touches your shoulders 

this monsoon, 

bridges, communicates with you, 

and have you not been complaining 

about the wrecked relationship?

Now or never, you have to discuss 

about restoring the house with the roof 

you hate, even if you have to shout 

your words from your 

acid-on-your-tongue slow balcony.

Nature takes the bricks 

your grandfather's father in-law built

for his daughter. Nature lifts

your memories beyond 

your immediate reach, and now, oh,

where are we? Here, the second person 

is the first and only. I don't really 

care about this house, do I? 

Often I see you, or maybe it is you 

who see me standing on the edge

of a sad day and let my or your weight 

do away with the house No. Fifty Six.

***

Droplets of Leaves Are Not In This Frame

Time canonizes the photographs, 

the printout ones, adds halos, 

and this one, whites out 

right to the edge of its geometry

as if I have revisited the house feelings 

in a vintage spy thriller movie.

All I have is your index, not in full, 

just the tip, and some burnt out space

where our fleshes define the indefinable.

Whereto does your finger point out?

Where will it lead me if I may decode it?

Will I be ecstatic again if I see 

what you wanted to show? Will I be 

unable to over-express because 

no longer I need to win you, be 

on your side? I cannot lose you again. 

I could never in the first place.

***

---

Setu, August 2024