From the last scene of Great Expectations

Is that you, dear… why, it’s you!
So how come you ‘bout here?
Ah! Must be feeling nostalgic.
Here, this place where your charms grew,
Where you grew beautiful, and a little cruel,
Where we once met, and then you departed.
Yes, the old days are so nagging,
Although, you are so strong.
But why… why are tears welling in your eyes?
Do you cherish this place old?
But everything is gone… only shambles,
The rustling fallen leaves, the moss and brick,
The rusty bench, and the air sick.
But again so much is here;
Hidden, but… perhaps….not lost.
Let’s walk a little more,
Let’s walk beside.
Let’s see if we can find something old.
-16/5/00, Calcutta-63

COMMENTS :

Very few people know but Charles Dickens’s most famous novel Great Expectations is also a great love story. There the protagonist Pip falls hopelessly in love with a girl, who, he is induced to believe foolishly, was destined for her. The girl Estella, brought up in such a way that she became dead cynical and devoid of all tender sensibilities, finds amusement in sustaining the illusion Pip holds, until she jilts him by marrying the man who is not only abhorrent but is also Pip’s mortal enemy. It is a very foolish marriage, rash indeed- the husband treats Estella very badly. Fortunately he dies. Pip, by this time had left behind his past and went to make on a new life in a new place. One day he comes to visit his old place and finds Estella there. In the earlier version Dickens had a sad ending for the readers, but forced by popular demand, he mended the end and gave us a more optimistic ending. Although the ending is left ambiguous in the end, it still leaves enough scope for the optimist to write his own ‘And they lived happily ever after.’

The poem and the treatment of the ending was inspired by a recent film version of the novel which starred Robert de Nero as Magwitch, which ended with the lovers holding hands as the sun went down on a fine evening.

Wild nights, wild nights,
Dancing like the witches of Macbeth…
I intoxicate
With haunting, simmering images
Of my beloved.
I dread and cower
Behind a spineless heart
That beats erratic.
My palms sweat and I gasp,
And the wild night
Snatches the last respite.
Wild nights, wild nights
Burning like witches oil,
The slimy dead surround,
And the two devils at dice
For my poor soul.
Wild nights, wild nights,
Ah! Such ghastly sights.
My beloved
Lies dead.
And the whole sea lights.

(A ‘Stream of Consciousness’ poem)
References:

1. Macbeth
2. Rime of Ancient Mariner

   -25 April, 2003, Calcutta 63

Creeping slowly as the night climbs,
While the moon soars and my passion rise,
I wish I could bring back
Bring back that pink day
Bring back Valentine’s Day.
And yet, let not a hollow promise tempt me to dream wonders,
They falter so often that I am lame.
This heart is scared,
Let not today follow yesterday.
But how could I chain my frantic heart-
It ceases to listen.
Would you claim for me back from despair,
A handful of daylight, a handful of hope?
Yes, tempting night it is which weaves this dream-
The morrow may see the crumbling ruins.
Or, you permitting
It might not!

17th February, 2003.

How much sorrow I still carry
With a sprained ankle
As I climb the Everest,
And shall not I cry out
Pitying myself, saying,
Man, you are so stubborn,
You are foolish,
And pitying myself I shall say,
You idiot deserve no pity.
Why don’t you leave your rucksack behind
When it sags on your back like guilty conscience,
And you feel like devil carrying all hell?
Why don’t you leave your heavy boots-
Your legs are already dead,
They won’t save you from frostbite
‘Cuz you are bitten
And you shall die.
Why bother to climb these last few paces,
Why smother the virgin snow,
Why spoil what is not yours?
Man, why don’t you die?-
And then I look behind,
The world seems so small,
There’s a deluge of misty clouds-
How can I go back?
I fell in love
And soared to the sky,
And left my heart on the Everest.
I have to fetch it back.
I know I will die.
            -6 April, 2002, Calcutta 63

Falling out of love in a leech infested valley

The leeches crept into my soul;
They crept into my bosom
      and messed me with blood;
They crept into my soul
      and picked holes in my body.
They punctured, butchered my tender life
      and left my heart gasping.
They crept unnoticed, they slithered into my flesh
      and made dinner of what makes me.
And I felt it not.

I felt it not as the blood seeped,
As my arm tingled, as the draft
      of cold air sent a lightning shiver.
I felt it not as my trouser soaked,
As the leeches grew fat,
As the crusty scabs in dirty red dried,
As my slippers slipped with slime
      and made the upward climb such a toil.
As my arms got numb,
As my legs screamed in despair,
As my back revolted in pain.

I saw them not
As they clambered for their feast,
I saw them not even as I fell at last-
      hungry, pained, listless, drained.
I sat on the ground
      dirty with dust, grimy with grey grass,
I sat on the spongy grass
And saw a faded world.
Faded sky washed with shapeless, lifeless clouds,
Faded road picked with potholes, and
My faded pair of denims.
My faded pair of denims shining with rosy redness.
My denim full of life, invigourating.
My denim torn to shreds,
Gasping in the last throes of a lost sunshine.
-5/11/2001, Calcutta 63

There’s been much confusion
Over a proposal,
The red-red rose is old,
And I guess all of them are sold,
Archies and Hallmark are candyfloss,
And great economic loss.
Amir and Ash chatted threir way
In a Coke bar and found themselves in dismay.
Pastry is bad for cholesterol,
So mundane a cream roll….
What more remains?
Let me rack my brains…
O Poetry is so boring, and Keats is long dead…
Perhaps a present…some mattress, and a bed?
Or should I stand at Chowringhee and sing
“Sweetheart! I want to be your nosering!”

-28/8/2001, Calcutta-63

This poem is dedicated to Trina Nileena Banerjee, a talented girl in my MA class at Jadavpur, for reasons I would refrain from saying.

Insomnia, my dear.
Oh! Don’t you bother.
These last nights, the air is so dead,
Musty, hot the air is so dead.
I woke up at midnight
And washed my face:
The cold woke me up at last.
Insomnia, my dear;
Why do you think I am awake?
I must have been dreaming, though-
See, foolish me,
I thought I was alone!
But you were in bed,
Weren’t you?
I woke up-
Mr. Benson was ill, perhaps,
And he was moaning into the night.
O, and his wife too grieved.
But, you see, I must have been dreaming-
Isn’t his wife away?
O, didn’t I say
I was insomniac!
But I would like to sleep.
3/4/2001, Calcutta-63

The paper came with the morning tea
And the Naga looked out from the front-page-
The long, dirty beard touching his nipples,
The jagged moustache and jungly hair-
If he had been me, he would have been fair.
‘Naga Sadhu goes digital’
And becomes a cell-phone-walla.
And now on the banks of the dirty river
With a cup of tea in hand
He might be reading himself
In The Times of India.
And what a prize it would be
To see them face to face-
He would be laughing at the pagla sadhu.
Someone tell him, it’s His Grace.
-4/2/2001, Calcutta-63

Engineers make engines,
Treat them when they have cough
And hold out a crutch when they limp-
And so the world reveres them;
Because engines run the world.
And so my parents wanted me as one.
The tough trigono, the mightier organic
And such hard names to mimic-
The rough companions for years-
And how they brought tears!
Now when the car breaks down,
The night bulb fails
Or the audio sings a rough song,
How I wish I had made friends
With the tough names,
And got rid of the idiot engineers.
-4/2/2001, Calcutta- 63

I feel giddy,
Surely the earth rotates and revolves.
Pity, it does so too fast,
Or why else does time move, alas!
I wish the seconds would last,
I wish I were Sisyphus
And could relish this moment
Which tumbles like the sprightly rill
From the mountain and the hill.
I wish I could hang upon the clock hands
As it hurries up and down-
O why do the shadows move
While I am so still?
O, why does the seconds gallop,
Why is it not taken ill?
8/12/2000, Calcutta-63