Sreetanwi Chakraborty is an Assistant Professor in Amity Institute of English Studies and Research, Amity University Kolkata. She was a former lecturer of English at Salesian College, Siliguri and Sonada. After completing her graduation from Presidency College Kolkata, and her Post-Graduation from Calcutta University, she achieved the First class First position for her M. Phil thesis focusing on a Feminist interpretation of fairy tales, from Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta. Her recent article title Re-reading a kaleidoscopic presentation of women in Naxalbari: Role Conflicts, Marginalization and Gender Discrimination has appeared in the seminar proceedings conducted by NSOU Kolkata. Her poems, articles, and papers have appeared as ebooks on Amazon, and also in Muse India. Her areas of interest include gender studies, Indian English poetry, Diaspora studies and Indian fiction.
“The unfinished story…continues”
It is the story never told, or as some say, it is a tale told twice,
When you overlooked my senses, and pierced me with your eyes, kept me immured in the dark dungeon of what you classified as being ‘wife’…
The surreptitious evenings when I played the humble infidel, moaning, groaning and smiling in my pains,
Extinguishing the fire in my eyes with rolling tears that buckled on to the memories, which were lost to be re-lived.
Slowly, steadily, with guilt-ridden bones, blood, spleen and cartilages, I tried to recover, from the daze of your love…
Windows split wide-open, breezes spitting on the finer tentacles of my brain, a body ready to be devoured, loved, hated and held up to cosmic glory.
I could hear the mango orchards brush past me, the autumn current of the dry river beneath my jeweled body disappear into eternity, the winter snow making my eyelids pallid and decorating my heart with its dewdrop scent and the smell of burnt ‘elaichi’ tea…
The sprawling garden with a cage full of imported badrikas as I turned left, the statue of Mother Mary standing as an emblem of serenity that records an impetuous feat of laughter, the chimneys in the distant tanneries tottering with a careless ferocity….
The orange neon light across the last bend of the blind alley flickered dismally. You were about to come, but I still pondered.
It was my fifth year in the asylum, the seat of my comfort, the doors of my destiny, the pulse beat that I never missed…
I recollect the unfinished story, a tale of the magnet called love, an anecdote on how the river went beneath the jeweled crown, the hands, legs, bare thighs and around the serpentine ‘me’…..
On seeing the commuters under a broad daylight
Briefcases, water bottles and files with glossy or rugged surface,
They huddle all along the railings of the soot-eaten footbridge walls,
Paper advertisements stuck on the abraded surface: about nursing training, spa, and medicines for erection,
Galloping past the Oleander seller in mazy little circles, as they have a quick glimpse of their watch.
I see the commuters with a hole in their pocket
I see the beggar under the Banyan tree commuting to heaven everyday
With promises that are sold and saliva dripping from the sides of his moth-eaten slice of day.
The commuters jostle across a steady passage, on to the stairs of an illusory platform, waiting for the carriage that will take them to some unknown destination…
‘Success’! that is what they call it.
Office hours ticking, credit card owners trying to manage debit and credit sheets,
Gossips behind the blue chiffon saree that covers the broad round hips of the lady,
Cappuccinos, half-digested dhosas, smell of a local au di cologne sold by the beedi shop next to office, scent of half-cut muskmelon kept by the one-legged fruit-seller around the corner of the building…
The commuters still huddle
With bulging bellies, and protruding white breasts, from behind the veil of uncertainty.
Hours move on, hours that sympathize, hours that kill,
Hours that are pensive, hours that drop down dead at the windowsill.
The clock moves on, the journey wheels along a charred infinity.
The fallen Sisyphus rolling the stone again all along the mountain,
Amidst the white walls, the air-conditioned lobbies and among the reeds that grow along the well-manicured lawn.
I look blankly at the beggar, still sitting under the 25-year-old Banyan tree, counting the drops of saliva that cling on to the frozen lips of the winter evening.
On looking at the self beneath the glass altar:
Ridges on stone, fine crafty art that speaks of something called ‘poetic sense’
Encircles the last two drops of blood that congealed on my ringed finger, draining away the last fervour that dresses itself in the most religious pursuit beneath the glass altar.
Reflection in the altar of happiness, as they say, makes my day look pensive and sultry, the relics pointing to the vast abyss of eternity that decks the monotony of what I am supposed to call myself- daughter, wife, mother, child, corpse or nun?
Pages flutter near the altar; the church organs create a rhythmic violation of the most pristine orgasm, letting in the blasphemous ruminations that could cajole me into trying to remain alive…
I pray, I summon the finer tedious spirit, which makes me invincible in your eyes.
I delay; I deal, desecrate, dabble and dance with multiple flies and bees, the worms and moths that hover around the primaeval altar, they mar, make and manage to meander across the dark recesses, which I call my soul…
I look at the self beneath the glass altar, until it breaks, dissolves, curses me and does what else I know not,
My desperate laughter, my childhood peaches and chrysanthemums that looked withered, dried and crestfallen, could bid me a tiresome nothingness,
From beneath the sparkling, grained, congealed glass altar.