A mother,

A wife,

A daughter,

A sister.

Teacher, friend colleague, boss, mentor,master

And.......

Too many roles.

Duties,

Responsibilities,

Commitments.

Tired.

Fulfillment.

Satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

Laughter,

Tears,

Worries.

A little smile, a little joy

And a little hopeAs we wait in life's foyer.

As I fly: 1 and 2

As I fly :1

Watching from the sky 

the rugged green earth below,
I am mesmerized.

Dots of water,
green fields,
low hills,
snaking brown roads
sunbathing lazily.

Gleaming roofs,
stubbled fields,
winding rivers lying still,
slothfully.

Straight lines and curved ones
forming squares and hexagons,
chequering the earth.

From a pigeonhole
in the sky, I spy
abstract designs—
patches of dull
blue, green, and browns
mixing and remixing
Into earth.

Far away, the clouds
fade like watercolour strokes,
smudging the blue sky.

As I fly  2

Unknown towns

 light up the night below.

Their street lights shimmer 

 like streamers, 

Crisscrossing the night -

Aappearing, disappearing  

Creating sparkling designs.

From the tiny bauble in the sky

I watch the light show on earth-

Mysterious and anonymous 

In the dark,

Hiding stories of crime,

 Drunkenness and love.

As the show comes to an end

The curtain lowers , lights brighten. 

Houses slums and skyscrapers pop up ,

Roads come alive with lights from streaming cars.

Glowing streets look like 

strings of pearls.

The show must end .

The cabin stirs,

Seat belts click,

We rise to leave.

Flight Home As I fly 3

Deep forests, gorges,

And cascading waterfalls

Merge into one green.

Clouds come suddenly,

Blocking all views of the earth—

But one gleaming roof.

Into nothingness

We sail on, bumpety-bump,

Waiting to touch ground.

The winding Ganga

Appears—disappears to tell

Home cannot be far.

Tiny houses play

Peek-a-boo with wispy clouds

As landing gear drops.

Down, down, down we drop.

Bright hues replace greens and browns.

One sharp jolt—touchdown.

My Haiku days

 03.12.2025

Lonely roads I see
But peace at last there must be
I find strength in me.

4.12.2025

After the whole day
Lethargy grips my body
I fight the trap to be free

5.12.2025
A frenzy mind waits
For the breeze to blow away
Unsettling  dead thoughts.

6.12.2025

People from the past
Keep crawling into my mind.
Memories erupt.

7.12.2025
A lazy day spent
Struggling to  discipline  my
Wayward , fickle  mind.

8.12.2025.
Childhood seems a dream-
Chilly air and carefree  days
Laced with love and tales.

9.12.25
In the moonlit sky
I spy stars and wisps of clouds
Whispering all night.

10.12.2025

A new stage in life-
Of changes and the unknown ,
Just ride with the tide.

See what happens  now.
Be like clouds across the sky-
Simply  drift and trust.

11.12.2025
Sitting at the back
of the black ambassador
I followed the moon

Mesmerized by the
White glowing plate,the child
Tracked the moon till home.



12.12.2025
The banjaras sit
With their mortars and grinders
Few buy, few pass by.

The pavement their home.
With blankets and stoves, waiting -
For their wares to sell.

13.12.2025
In the festive air
I see despair  in their eyes.
No one buys their wares.

Husband, wife and child,
Standing together, urging
People to buy toys.

No one looks at them.
Sometimes a balloon is bought
And sometimes a ball.

14.12.2025
Festive mood in the 
Air- here and there ,everywhere .
Christmas is coming .


16.12.2025

The moment had gone.
The lust completely exhumed.
They lay entangled.

Stuck with sweat and sperms,
Heaving sighs of fulfilment,
Lost in  private  thoughts.

Disentangling  now,
They rise, dress , and drift away-
Back to waiting  homes.

17.12.2025
For all those days gone
I can only have a smile.
I grew in my mind.

I was never a
Child,but  already  grown, within
My searching  young mind.


18.12.2025

1.Days  melt into  months ,
Months gather into long  years
Entwined ,they  weave life.


2.  Days melt into months,
Months gather into long years—
Spinning into yarns.

Years traverse through time,
Passing through the loom of life,
Making steady noise.

The shuttle picks through
The yarns; wefting and wafting,
Fabricating  lives.

.20.12.2025

Restlessness engulfs. 

Setting down to new routine

Is not that easy.

14.03.2026

Little beads of sweat 

Emerge shining on her skin

Then trickle in streams.

Her polished dark skin‐~

Brilliant white teeth, sparkling eyes,

bring joy selling toys.

16.03.2026

The morning stretched out-

Like a sleeping cat waking, 

Yawning,  unfurling.

Rani

 The woman in a black sequenced  sari stood on the kalighat bridge looking endlessly nowhere.  Her thick back,  curving , bulging and rippling from below her tight bra stlyed golden silk blouse, vanished underneath her drape  held tight by a petticoat.  Her posterior?? Many men's desire ,broad and rounded and must be severely pounded but still firm..

Her  hair gave way her despair, hanging limply at her waist, mangly, brown and split ended adorned with a  carelessly strung gajra hanging on one side.Big gaudy jumkas strained her ears. It was difficult to  assess her age from behind. Nothing disturbed her. The sounds of the rushing  cars, nor the nearby quarrelsome voices of other standing girls like her, who were vying with each other for  the attention of the dismal looking passers by.
Now and then  some men tapped her shoulder for attention but she ignored and they tried other preys .

Her name was Rani and she did dress like one. She was much respected amongst her lot and no one had ever seen her so desolate.  Flower sellers came to sell flowers, men came and cracked lewd jokes with the other girls,, others came to bargain a fuck, some abused and went away, but today Rani didn't notice any of these. She had turned her back to the world that had taken away her world, her 15 yr old son and crushed him under the wheels of  a speeding Mercedes,  just as he was returning from school. She had worked servicing the men, she hated, for 18 long years  so that she could send Babu to school. She had risen up the ranks, rented out beds and rooms,and still giving a fuck now and then to keep her Babu at bay. He had to go to college, he had to become a big man and once  he went to college she would stop and go far away where no one would know her. In her own way she had lived life queen size.She was ready for simplicity now.She had saved meticulously for Babu to go away. He was a bright  student  and never ashamed of his mother. He had promised to  take care of her like a queen . Whenever her back pounded and her front pumped and pumped she dreamt of the day when her Babu would be taking care of her like a queen.

She had performed her Babu' s last rites yesterday,  stoically, tearlessly ,fearlessly and humbly. She had been surrounded by the other girls, who had all been  some kind of a mother to Babu. They had been his Porima, Khushi ma, Liza ma, Bali ma and all.All had cried with grief except her. . Today  as the other girls picked up their lives, she stood shrouded by her aloness, dressed in her black best because she didn't know what else to do.


Rani, never  spoke much anymore.  She still rented out rooms in the dingy gullys of Kalighat red light busty. Some evenings she went to the NGO, that,
functioned as a creche for the children  of the sex workers, where her Babu had spent much of his time first as a child, then helping out teaching the other children as he grew  older. She tried to find him in every child, every  corner ,every  moment  .Then desolately she  would return to her room.

Then one day  Rani packed her large  black Aristocrat  suitcase,the one she had bought for Babu to take to college, leaving a note for the NGO to  distribute her remaining belongings amongst the girls, use her room as a dispensary  , collect the rents and use the money for the welfare of the children some of who even called her Boroma. Kalighat never saw Rani again.

Rani travelled aimlessly,  quietly  and fearlessly  from place to place. Sometimes in busses,  sometimes in trains always lugging her big black aristocrat suitcase along.  It contained her black best, a few clothes and some memories.  Sometimes she stayed in small rooms sometimes on platforms.  She lived anonymously,  unnoticed.  Now and then  dressed in her black best  she walked the streets  . Her face paler, her body thinner,but her big broad posterior and her red spread lips still attracted the younger men.  As the pounding and pumping  would begin Rani writhed and wriggled,  flaying and flapping her hands, beating and bouncing er  body to that primeval  rhythm . Every movement of the prick inside her was   a whip on her body like a flagellant.  Beating,  bouncing, writhing,  wriggling she released her pain, not her orgasm with a primal scream expressing  a mother's  anguish  of  loss. The  men, battered and bruised but sheepishly and falsely proud   of being  able to have  aroused ,  for the first time in their lives  , such animal like pleasure . As for Rani, drained and exhausted from her exhumed pain, would lay lifeless on the bed,oblivion of her naked body , the spilling sperm, the closing door  and the extra tip that those manless men left on her bed.

Unknowingly,  Rani because of her reactions in bed   had become popular  among these pleasure seeking males. But no one saw Rani unless she wanted them to. She changed  places and rooms continuously.  Not out of anonimity but because of the restless,  pain inside her.

All of a sudden Rani was all across news papers. "A Prostitute  Pumped to Death"," Story  of the prosecuted Prostitute" , "Horrific death of a Whore ", and what not. It seemed reporters  were in an alliteration competition.
Then one day  the news reached Kalighat in the form of a news paper , brought by a client  who had read it   in a train.

The girls gathered in the NGO office  to  hear Didimoni read out the news."Man confesses to killing prostitute.  Shocked and frightened by her animal like behaviour,  her primal  orgasmic scream , the man , ashamed of his dismal release and  jealous of the prostitute 's robust orgasm gags her to death for making him feel small " The news ended with a brief description  of who Rani might have been.  Wherever she went she had been an enigma. Not much was known about her. Kalighat recognized her  from the description  of how she always dressed in her  black best, and a grainy picture of her's from her Adhaar card, printed alongside the picture of the spineless,  spermless , shameless  scoundrel  that the girls of Kalighat had begun calling the murderer. 
Rani's unclaimed body had received a pauper's  funeral,  but Kalighat  performed for her a belated Shraddha.  The girls  contributed . A puja was performed, the poor around were fed and  the children , the Babus of Kalight received a story book each from the NGO.  In each book, Didimoni had painstaking  written , With love from Boroma. The dispensary,  till date nameless was named Rani Dispensary.  Thus, Rani continued to live in the gullys of Kalighat busty, her spirit fleeting here and there looking for her Babu.

Gift

 Every day is a gift we  live.

Our lives hollow coffers

Holding  these gifts.
Some large , some small,
But blessed we are all.


When  our coffers are  to the brim,
And no more gifts can we receive ,
Then full our lives shall be 
With all the blessings  received .


So let us    enjoy the gifts of life
And, give what is ours to  give.

Whether  we shall be or not be
Let it be the Almighty's worry .

The Leaf

 

I am rolling in lullness.

There's a stillness around.
Now and then a soft breeze blows ,
And  I  flutter  in and out.
In that bare autumn tree
I am one of those leaves,
Refusing to fall.
Holding on strong.
My aging yellowness
Makes me stand out.
Though I am not  supple and green anymore,
I am rough, tough and  ,
crunchier than ever before.
I  will have to fall one day,
Melt into the earth or
Flutter away.
Till then I hold on strong
Daring the wind to make me fall.

Free wheeling

1.My life,  

pages after pages 

Spiral bound with

memories.

2 Suddenly from the realms of my subconscious, springs this man.

Light cream shirt, brown trousers, stylishly dishevelled hair, standing on the road, in the middle of nowhere.

3.Aging to me is enigma.

If you have lived so long, you now know that you could die any day.

We never stop wanting to stop clinging onto youth. We visit salons, , do face firms and skin stretches. We cannot see our once taut skins  slowly sagging and wrinkling as deseases creep in .

I used to see my handsome father wilting away. How his legs thinned and body gave away. One day the pain overtook and he stopped smiling. But I remember the sweetest smile that he gave me when I visited him out of turn in the hospital. He was so happy .

It was a wonder, when he had lost count of days, he remembered my birthday. The moment I entered the ward for my evening visit , he said Happy Birthday.

That moment will remain engraved in my mind.

Yesterday , when I was in the diagnostic centre getting my self tested, a patient was brought down from the ICU for some tests. He was restless  .I was reminded of my father. His suffering s had started already this time last year

4 I visited my Uncle yesterday. 

  How age has withered him!

  How frail has he become!

  He swayed when he got up to walk,

  His fingers trembled when he  tried to make a call.

 I watched my aunt who was once so stylish,

 I watched  how she had suddenly turned old.

 I  witnessed their process of aging,

 I felt death hammering on the door once more.

 We spoke of health,

 We spoke of illnesses,

And,we spoke of what may happen-

 if one of them die.

 I sensed the fear,

 I sensed the sadness ,

But I enjoyed their old age love.

 When young, you may fight 

You may not care,

You misunderstand and  ,

May have misgivings.

Then, when suddenly one day 

You realise that you are old--

You fall in love once again.

With children gone

leading their lives afar,

The nearest you have is your spouse.

 You have made memories together,

You have  travelled together,

You have had children together,

Through thick and thin you have remained together,

 So now you have only each other.

 My heart filled with sadness once more

As I witnessed the decadence of life.

One day you want so much,

Next day  its nothing as such,

 then suddenly it will be-

   Just.

  Really. All is not lost.

 Hope begets hope. Joy begets joy,

I know that some day my dreams will merge to form a concrete reality. My subconscious mind wields its power, pulling me towards destiny.. Its is there , it is there. Hope hope every where.

 I will not stop till I face my truth,, till i do what i am meant to do. 

 GREEN GRASS BEFORE ME, the windows open, light breeze pushes the curtains now and then,

 I am content.

 I write, I shape, I walk, I gain as beauty surrounds me  I am thankful to God and look up towards heaven.

  

 I