Khalil Gibran

had written:


Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,

And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you. 


........


You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. 


a poem is the child of a poet..........we are only those stable bows, apparently
loved by God, according to Gibran.  those poems don't belong to us, they
can be dedicated to our Awesome Muse, but they don't belong to them either,
they are " life's longing for itself" and they belong to the Universe.  perfect
example of what Tagore wrote in Rajarshi about "nishkaam karma"  (in other
words, perfectly useless work)

Mamma Mia

Where i live in Silicon Valley, is very reminiscent of Tuscany and i can almost smell the virgin olive oil poured over fresh pasta.  I have less time to cook here than i do when i'm in Firenze.  I love going to the Mercado Centrale daily and getting wonderful stuff to cook.  Fresh pasta from Laura, who always know exactly how to cut the sheets of pasta and Nicoletta, who has the best dark chocolate slabs in the entire world.   Pancetta, salcicca, fresh  Bufalo mozarella.  Veggies from the Bangladeshi, who always want me to come to their houses for Biryani.  A four year old Bangladeshi girl rapidly speaking to me in Italian is one of my blissful memories.  When my plane lands in Firenze, i feel exactly as I do when the plane lands in Calcutta.....i feel that i've come home.  Where i live is reminiscent of Tuscany but not Tuscany.  A good likeness but a likeness is not the original.  There are six billion people in the world but likenesses of those we love are never good enough, are they?


i miss Positano today.....i miss Positano often.  Must be all the staring I did there from the balcony of my apartment.....looking out to the Mediterranean.  one night a very impressive yacht came and they had a party on board.  i really wanted to don my LBD and go and dance!  i wonder what it is about Positano that I miss.....i had to climb 163 steps to get to my apartment three times a day and it was not fun to do that with groceries.  neither was it fun to drive on the Amalfi coast.  but seeing my daughter jump from the boat to swim in the Mediterranean on the way to Capri will remain an all time peak moment of my life.  the water was so emerald.  


i thought that i was going to write about living in Connecticut today but i'm now sure how i got to Italy.  i started with the thought about the time i lived in a boat in Greenwich, Ct for 2 months....i was 22 then.  i was thinking about Stamford, Ct, where i lived--that was when i learnt how to drive on the I-95. had my first accident on High Ridge Road,  took the train to Manhattan to study French at the Alliance Francaise, had no money, no work permit, sold Avon, stared at 'Tavern on the Green' and promised myself that one day i'd have enough money to come and have dinner there, stood in line for half price tickets to Broadway shows, spend hours at NYC bookstores, skated in Rockefeller Center, pressed my nose against the glass windows of Bergdorf Goodman wondering who bought earrings for $525,000......i remember Mrs. Dvorak, who is probably dead, who gave me Coffee Cake when i brought her her Avon stuff, my Greek friend, with sumptuous hair, i remember my Avon route, it was like doing a paper route, and cooking, endless meals for no one in particular but just to experiment and create, Strawberry Hill, going to Westport and standing at the edge of Long Island Sound, getting fresh orange roughy early in the morning to be cooked with mustard and turmeric.....where are those happy days they seem so hard to find?  what ever happend to our love i wish i understood?  an Abba song....SOS.......that was then, this is now.....


so when you are near me darling, can't you hear me darling?  SOS

To Sabyasachi and,

For Sabyasachi

 the texture of my life lies before me:

your colors, your weaves, your pencils, your mirth,

stepping in a grand world with a pink foot,

where your dreams have gone before and found light,

every “godhuli” takes on new meaning,

you have seen these lines in a gold “pokraj”,

my mind dances on rolling green grasses,

what made you do a red-crested peacock?

sarees speak as if “he” is calling me,

sounds you have patterned out in mustard sheets,

the texture of my life lies before me,

your “lal paar” for a  ordinary girl,

thrusting into the world as ‘Bengali’

which you have shown means, of universal

Artanaad

(THIS IS A BENGALI WORD WHICH

 ROUGHLY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH MEANS

 A PRIMAL SCREAM)

a poem with footnotes...

                                we can be custodians

of your screams

across continents and seas, we hear you,

from Mumbai; we put our ears on the ground,

and listen; we listen beyond grenades,

rifles, guns, to the collective sound of 

silent screams ; Angel Agony brings them

to our doors; you are being shot to death

without cause, by young men who are laughing

at your fear; you are being shot in the leg,

in the neck, in your back and in your chest;

without cause; there is no escape allowed,

no mercy; only indiscriminate

slaughtering; the majestic Taj and the 

Oberoi, have become a battlefield,

without rules; blood is boiling in cauldrons,

thanksgiving?  

          we hear in the river's flow,

your outcries.  we hear you as far back as

history; staring at death in the face,

no way out; while facing Lowe's assassins

in a line; in Jallianwallah Bagh;

in Delhi; many times the British smiled

while killing; our anger has cooled but we

remember; fury is unbridled again

for your sake; for the sake of others too,

those voiceless; all over the world you scream

as you fall; we, finally, hear Those screams

as you fell: no longer complacent,

we fall with you; we're no longer Swiss neutral,

we're engaged; we have broken the silence

of your screams.

                       we pull out the screams from the

tongue of seas;  all seas, red, black, caspian,

are united; what affects one affects all,

we know so; all the seas are bloodier

than crimson; the colour of a heart shed

like a rose; children float on the backs of

prophecies; God knows what God alone knows,

we are here; we are the caretakers here,

of the screams; not vigilantes, turning

on wrath;  we do not want to put hands

over mouths; your soul is attended as

we listen; we want all to hear what you

were stifling; metanoia is our goal,

peace our way; so the screams won't be trapped in

 a painting.

                  we can be custodians

of your screams.

a poem for Bobo, who watched the news from

Mumbai bravely for 2 nights and 3 days.

11/28/08

1. The Taj and The Oberoi are two of the 

luxury hotels in Mumbai, where terrorists killed

197 people and wounded over 400 in November 2008

on Thanksgiving Day in the United States.

2. Thomas Lowe was an officer of the British

army, which had a policy of "no prisoners" during

the Great Indian rebellion in 1857.  On one occasion

76 people were lined up and shot.  On another occasion,

149 people were lined up and executed by the British.

3. Jallianwallah Bagh Incident -- On April 13, 1919,

the British Indian army under the orders of Gen. Dyer

opened fire on a gathering of men, women and children.

The British reported 379 casualties; the actual number

could be as high as 1536 according to Civil Surgeon

Dr. Smith and higher according to private sources.

Whatever may be the actual numbers, many people died.

4. In Delhi at the conclusion of the Sepoy Mutiny, in 1857

the British shot the rebels, while their wives

and children watched.  in many cases, unarmed sepoys were

 bayonetted, sown up in the carcasses of pigs or cows,

 or fired from cannons.

Bogota

she said she came from Bogota

to Philadelphia: where’s that?

she had laughed before her face turned,

it is where mi papa was killed,

it is where mi mama was killed,

but we must forget that quickly

so she turned her face back again

to an awkward racy laughter,

Kathy, for that was the girl’s name

shifted in her clothes to the crisp

of a  new identity that

lost for her memories of loss,

don’t remind me of Bogota:

where’s Philadelphia?  it’s here!

Khaniker Atithi (Guest For a Brief While)

The apricot trees at Dave Packard's house 

every february 

                        they arrive,

these apricot blossoms,

                        for a week

on my way to and fro,

                       i'm breathless,

at Kurasawa's Dreams,

                       i'm dazzled

i choke back my tears,

                       one morning

when i find them all gone,

                        just like that

i learn the alphabet

                       of all griefs,

their beauty is to hold

                       inside me

all the same i miss them

                      intensely

when i find them all gone,

                      just like that

1. the film Dreams by Akira Kurasawa

contains almost similar images

The Dalai Lama's Laugh

The Dalai Lama’s Laugh

I wrote a poem a few years ago

that my friends really liked, but

I lost the poem.

I have been upset for many years

that this particular one got lost

due to carelessness.

Sometimes when I drive my car

I feel like banging my fist into

the window.

Because I lost this poem.

a little gem of a poem. My gem.

irreplaceable.

This evening when I was driving

I was reminded again of this

Lost poem.

So sharply do I feel its loss

it is like losing a country or

at least a lover

I fell into a thought today

and I was skimming my mind

with this pebble

Tibetan monks spend days

of intricate work making

marvelous mandalas

After it is made, they,

routinely destroy the work

Of many hours

They would’ve deliberately

lost the poem, and this thought

scares me.

First a poem

A Neck That Snapped

it could not be limestone, could not be metamorphosed,

                                                                      the neck,

it had to speak for itself, and it spoke too roughly,

speaking strictly the cervical off its c axis

                                                                       the neck,

spoke about brutality in the minds of all men,

the lack of love that the tsunami showed to everyone,

politics of sex and the dysfunction of pleasure,

the haze of alcohol that chilled very small children,

universal cries of unfairness and injustice;

chords of a piano strummed up and down the vocals

pianississimo, pianissimo, at first,

loud soft then, and then gorgeous, orgiastic screaming,

discs like keys, like twigs, bulged out of their resting coffins

                                                                           the neck,

feathered a raven and kept death enclosed in a box,

for as long as it could but then could not anymore,

it had to speak of blood on a fallen woman's face,

it had to show up the face of a revolution,

the neck,

could not be allowed such self aggrandizement at all

                                  the neck

had to lean forward as the spinal cord was attacked,

choked, and feel the consequence of paralysing quiet

8/4/2009

A poem dedicated to Neda Agha Soltan but only loosely so