BASUDEB CHAKRABORTI

BASUDEB

CHAKRABORTI

A Terror With A White Mask

The new order in our world is near the dawn.

The death of millions of people is a chess pawn,

Of a gruesome and formless monster,

A terror with a white mask and an icy aggressor.

The rich and the poor, people of all religions,

Are all equals to the malice of this angry pavilion,

A great leveller, seeing us sub-human dwarfed,

The other side of the coin is our bonds unified.

Man is aware of Nature's overriding power,

Man no longer disturbs the Ozone’s layer,

The air we breathe in is free from pollution peril,

A mad even perceives the Immanent Will.

Chimney smokes, its number, growing day by day,

Black smokes cover the evening blue sky bay,

Sprinkling acid rain and its brother Cain,

We are uneasy to breathe in the abnormal.

Thanks to the leaders of Technology's claim!

You now take a rest with a little shame!

Redundant is your great weapon industry!

Good bye! your research on Space Technology!

Men and animals,

All are denizens of this world,

Why do we destroy their home at forests?

Why do we kill them for our foods and jests?

Is Charles Darwin's theory now acceptable?

No need to re-read that for our life palpable?

This world is meant for ecological balance,

For the principle of co-existence and reliance.

After this dark spell is over, .

And surely, it will be,

Let us then spend money on health care system,

Education and essential commodity supply.

Mind Sanitizer.

Sanitize we day and night,

Our hands, body, not our mind,

After a return from our local market,

Even for ten minutes.

We put our clothes in one basket

For wash next day in the machine,

Lest the pandemic of fear

Eats up our arrogant pride.

We help us thus

We help our neighbours,

We fight constant battles,

We make no rattles.

We are law abiding tickles,

Excerpts some persons insensible,

Who get social reprimands,

Respond to authority's commands.

Now the time is ripe,

To start a hype,

To sanitize our minds and body's inner parts,

Our mind is black with different dirts,

We demand a lot, a lot from our life,

Few of them are only of daily use,

The outer life Is full of pomp and glory,

We need to be less demanding, less greedy.

God is blind when we bow down to deaths.

I see at the time of our prayer to Him,

We light a lamp, hoping to let Him see us.

His eardrum is mal functioning,

So God demands our hymn in loud chanting,

God even cannot procure His meals,

Science and doctors will sanitize our body,

Let God and religion take a rest for a while.

Mind sanitizer is second mind in our mind,

Multiple minds we create, if we voluntarily grind,

And they will not be in one single bind,

And the newly born mind provokes the old

To hope this hop or that, to overreach,

Fuelled by a sense of immorality,

Maybe, it is our life's satiability,

Or man's mind, ingrained in universal sympathy.

Temporary Chaos In The Cosmos

The distant light in this darkness,

Trembling like the flicker of a lamp,

Maybe, from a boat in the far sea,

I stand on its shore alone,

With a hope to be rescued,

From this land of solitude.

Who can lock down my hope and imagination?

Who can lock down my fine art of doing nothing?

Who can destroy my world I am dreaming?

Who can stop my regular habit of reading?

Who can stop my inner urge of poetry writing?

I am not locked down; I am alone only for living.

We are in our love, though all, locked,

This threat makes us united

This crisis makes us feel we are One,

We are not alone,

Definitely, we maintain physical distance,

But our one determination is a unique instance.

ĺ

In time of this world wide death and suffering,

Neither love between the two nor the cooking,

Is even, for a while, waiting.

Birds are seen and tweetering,

Peacocks in the field playing and dancing,

Everything in Nature is routine abiding.

BASUDEB CHAKRABORTI

BASUDEB CHAKRABORTI: Professor of English at University of Kalyani, India. He has edited an anthology of critical writings on South Asian writings in English and in English translation in 2014 published by Sikkim Central University. He is the contributing editor. Connected with Sikkim Central University at present. After the formal retirement from Kalyani University as Professor of English, he has joined as senior most Professor at the department of English, Sikkim Central University at Gangtok. Presently writing a book on Indian Dalit Literature in English and in English translation.