Soumya Scribbles...

The sea was incessant For last four days. Rushing, tip-toeing - It kept me company, Uncannily knowing I Lost Someone. There is a warmth In sands That soak in sunrise And give in to sunset. One could bury his face And find a comforting Whisper. Nights, I would look at the stars And reminisce our Happy times. There are hardly any patient listeners than waves. They keep coming back To the same stories. Weeks pass And months wait. People do not come back But wind does. It is only then Emptiness beams And at times, comforts. In the midst of lonesomeness One realizes - In the end, what is love If not a little measure of loss. .

When I was young, Ammu would cycle through paddy fields, Come home and tell me stories of farmers who see the Sun off and rest. Mustard oil, rice, onion and a green chilly - Luxuriously on some days, a potato, that is when I will know she was in mood To tell stories. I will walk up to her lap, Alert so as to hear them all and sleep off in the misty smell of her hair oil. Magic was to find myself in my bed, tucked in, the morning after. Ammu would ask me to look as big as the birds flying high and migrate to places to bring in more stories. Her eyes, wet and voice at times betraying, she would tell me about neighbours who did not flee but fly. And so did I. I came back with hundred stories. Ammu would sit on the small stool on our earthly courtyard with a paan in her mouth. Her eyes will lit up, like the bird who has just found a new country. Her ears keen on hearing every word. One night when it rained heavily and our muddy courtyard gave away a bit of earth and a bit of that earthly...

...We could count the bricks. Twenty-five years after we left our house in Mukteswar - it was still stubborn, still standing and losing parts of itself with each winter. The ferns, banyans - one root at a time, they have re-arranged and re-decored like a dutiful tenant. Not so long ago, Maa and Ranu used to share the same lamp to pray in that yard. On the Tanpura, our days were marked. Summers were usually quiet. Maa and Baba used to keep their fights for stormy nights. Their sensibility to keep their children happy went through seasonal sacrifices. I never mistook father's hushed shrill voice during thunders and Maa's measured weeping with the harmony of rains. Ranu's paper boats used to be bigger than mine. Mine used to be faster. To her, I was selfish to build them for myself. But I had to win. Our family days were numbered. Baba was poor but no way mean. He poured his heart and pocket into buying us colorful dresses during Puja. My eyes did not mistake the happy tears...

Johnny was a sinner. And feared no God. He had deep eyes and a shadow Bigger than him. Johnny climbed mountains And ran through deserts Like you and me; Unlike you and me He wrote letters to the sky And the stars. Johnny loved more, Always more, Deeper than bottomless ocean And his lovers’ indifference. He had a bicycle And a tangled headphone And a few orchids. One night Johnny went to the sea With fifteen pebbles in his pocket And one letter in hand. He did not have a boat. He was no sailor. .

This winter has taken a lot from him. The saffron blanket, And the green chataai. He has seen Pari go, And Parveen never came back. Between Namaaz and chants He used to make his own collage. His friends tell him, They just don’t play either anymore. On the mic far away, And among his whispering friends, They note down numbers. One such belongs to him. On an empty footpath, With nothing to lose And no one to care for, Jai Singh Hind murmurs his number And sleeps cuddling himself. He sees dreams, One day he won’t be 1789771, And the footpath will still be his.

Today, I took a rainbow to reach your door. I walked the colours, Equal steps on a wet curvy road. Travelling through shades, I came down and knocked. You answered with a sunrise. The rains last night Looked so fresh, still in your room. Your face, warm and pink, Welcomed a shivering me. Yesterday, I had dug a tunnel To our pasts And to a few unopened boxes. I read the letters we wrote to our previous lovers. And the ones we did not write to each other. I know We will discuss them today And there will be clouds. But it will rain, again. For it is only a rainbow that will take me back home. Any monochrome, otherwise, Is always too dull for you. Dear, Come see, The birds you sent to call me, Have built nests in my room. They will stay. .

One square meter of floor. I made some drawings and kept it there. Then came my elder brother and kept his toy pistols. I claimed that place. He reclaimed. Our parents came n gave us a lifetime. One square meter to a Thousand square feet apartment now. I claimed one corner. He claimed another. We were old enough to want less. That night we slept for seventy years of peace.

A little sunset, white fenced courtyard, A few jolly good faces And memories - mostly bubbles. We didn't burst them intentionally. Dinner. Candles, not lamps, half burned. As we talk, all at once, The sea helps with its own hush. Wind blows, so do we. Little into our melancholy, Much into life as it is, for us. Strangers, we meet at a table. We laugh, we drink Lime with Soda. Not all nights are for scotch. . (For a friend)

There is a tree in you. In me In all of us. Shaal and Rhododendron alike, The dense Ashwatha, And the mystic Pines. There is a forest around us. Seasons come and go; So do Axes, as men invade. Lone wise Ashwatha talks to the cloud And atones for the sins of men. The axe strikes a final blow And two lives fall. Slow, slow fall. .

With each wave The sea retracts from the shore a little As if to say goodbye, but not yet. Sands, porous as they are, Do not know how to hold on. They try. They fail. We all lose someone in life, The way sands escape fingers, sea escapes sands and a lover slips away. There is a corner in every house where windows face a lover's exit. And at times in life You can only sit there and keep looking, knowing the sea retracts little by little and you try to hold on. Porous, as you are, As we all are. .

You told me you don't like rains in the hills, And I showed you Kurseong, With misty pine trees and cloud as its cover We drank hot tea and watched quiet drizzle while woods whispered in the fireplace, burned and died happily. You had told me deserts are dry and we ran one afternoon bare feet, towards the Sun And heard sands quivering at the sight of a sunset. A sky full of unknown stars and moist eyes you took home that night. When we went to the seas I had said I find it the same, And on a full moon night we counted hundred different waves in Ashwem And far off, some strangers played banjo. You danced a little. A few shells I kept in my shirt pocket. We travelled, With friends, without, With strangers, Bedouins, angels and devils And we travelled Never to reach. . Like Comment Share

On a cold night they walked out. Tip-toeing, hush hush - The neighbors won't know. Just enough of food. Little bit of water and each other. No shoes, No torch. Hand in hand, They knew thorns respond to love. They walked on a full moon light. Towards hope, towards life, Towards city. They were crossing the fields they plough. Farmers, not lovers, but lovers. Brothers walked on. With a dream of a romance A city eye would not know. They walked on, Still in hope. With a dream I would not know. With a letter of love In hand. Like Comment Share

When she comes to sleep late night, And I, half asleep, smell her presence, It is that oil that gives her up. Hair by hair Like roots of trees entangled, the smell comes down, drips and trips softly. It brings memories of forgotten stories And tales that I learned and unlearned. It brings stories that my grandmother had woven on winters along with the woolen she never finished. Her hair brings me the comfort of the sun-clad sweater I never wore and the toothless smile of my grand mother as I fall deep through an empty ladder where only scent that remains is Of hibiscus and a muddy, earthy courtyard that is no more.

He could not write a poem anymore. To write one, One that he could call his own, His sadness was not enough. It did not reach the depth of an ocean. He had failed like a morning sky fails to look gloom or a mountain fails to be shy. He, who had written a book once Burned its pages on a winter night - One page, One poem, One part of him at a time. Finding happiness A poet died at night; Content, Loved but dead. With a note that had blank lines and lines And more empty hollow lines.

He who has loved you like you only know. On starry nights, Inside the ocean that keeps his secret, He has written pages and made paperboats. They have crossed unknown ships and sleeping fishes. They have reached the shore where you played. He had these sad eyes. A sadness that is part of him, So much his, that melancholy could be his mascara. You had it in too. You were afraid, you were like him. Life has counted fallen springs. On winters where fireplace has burned woods, you have burned the boats One night at a time. Because you knew his love was like a dawn or a twilight. So beautiful, so calming That it always had the Sun, but never quite, never in full. ...

There are sounds in our life. And then there are pauses. Each sunset takes something away from you. Each time, you happily let go. When you are in front of a quiet sea or a dying Sun, there are few choices your mortal self has. It is like a magic trick. You lose yourself to the grandiose and realize you have been tricked. But they are all happy magics. A Sunset takes away your waste, the malignant tiredness from the urban being. On one such occasion I had run towards the Sun. Me and one of my closest friends. We were in the middle of a desert. With dunes all around and the Sun disappearing, we ran, ran towards the furthest dune and when we reached, the orange had started dissolving in the Golden sand. There it was. The sound of a desert, giving its all away to its master as a farewell for the day. The wind, the colours, the whispering sands and only us in the vicinity. We heard the best symphony perhaps. When we were coming back, there was very little to say to each other. We had h...

Dreams float, They glow in their own way And travel above us. Is there a sadness inside you? One that grows when you don't look for it. Tonight, Release a paper Lantern to the sky. Let it travel, Through uncountable gazing eyes And a few sighs. There is someone Who still counts the stars you missed And keeps a fishnet to catch a falling star. Lanterns travel Till they know where to die.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel. A big white spot, Where you and I meet And dissolve again. There isn't a story you know not, A path not walked. You know the trees that are me And the river that is mine. Yet you push, Inch by inch, me to a wall - A wall we never built. Tell me love, when I fall, Do your ghosts fall with me? -2017

One morning I sang to a quiet river On the banks where conscious waves tiptoed in. There were a few friends, Few of them strangers; Silence filled memories for me. One night she waited in the station. I couldn't come. There were a few promises made, Fewer kept. She wrote a letter without postal codes. This day, When I met myself again, They came - For things left unsaid, For songs left... - 2016

A patient spider waits, with its cobwebs of dreams and a few that it borrows from clouds. Too many have come crawling on dark nights - unaware, unguarded. It has kept souvenirs, For the times to prove. There have been a few who escaped, A few, it had let go. On rainy days, it has seen how men fall on weaker grounds. A patient spider waits - with its claws dipped in that sticky ink, we call love. - 2016

How about being a tree someday? One that stands, quietly, And people come to tell stories - Of their own. How about being a night sky That holds dreams of stars Of different kinds; and the ones Which fall, unfulfilled, still glowing. How about being a random ocean? Where waves meet and die, In peace and as a wish To be reborn and rebel, futile it be. In darkness if you have ever seen happiness on a boy's face, Who was collecting glow worms in a glass jar, You will know, He was only capturing moments. Those, he will call life, when he grows up. (To all my friends who came from around the world and spent time with me this Puja. To those who remain, we will live to tell another day.) - 2016

Before you read my poem tonight, I want a stranger to read it. To tell me what she thinks, That you don't, To touch me on those nerves, That you won't, To tell me a word that hasn't been used, ever. Before you go to bed, I want a stranger to tell me, How I look when I dream, How she feels when I sleep. Before I see you tonight, I want to see a stranger And share my stories to see the sparks, That only comes from unknown eyes. Before you meet me tonight, I want you to tell me, I have been the stranger You have always known. -2016