Calcutta Unbound

Long faded footsteps –
history books are silent,
but you can hear them
if you press your ears
against the mossy brickwalls
decorated with myriad
handbills and posters
and faded paint,
or if you walk along
those sunless alleys
where the stench of
bleak sewer-pipes
descend…
If you look closer –
into the rain-soaked grounds,
you’ll see hoofmarks on
the three hundred year old
mud…

Pilgrims, bandits, butchers,
saints, nawabs, thinkers,
poets, soldiers and Governor Generals –
they whisper together,
along the hanging roots
of the banyan tree
which has seen much blood
and has weathered many storms
Don’t disturb them now
Don’t wake their spirits up now…

Can you hear the rain falling
on the gutters
of the dark bylanes of
the mystic-drunk-red eyed
brothels?
All the raindrops that have fallen
for the last three hundred
years have sounded the same…
Can you hear a gunshot
echoing through the death-black night?
That’s Warren Hastings shooting
Philip Francis down,
or maybe the police
shooting some revolutionaries
down…
All the same
The entire history of the city
has been written around
the soundless nights,
the chain being broken
at times by the howl of dogs,
eerie shrieks from the neighbourhood,
the whistle of the nightguard
and the occassional distant
thunderclaps and lightning-streaks…

The river bears testimony
to all the tears, laughter,
oil and tar the city
has ever seen…
If you go to the riverside,
you’ll find an old man
in rags, smoking –
his gaze seems distant
and the lines of his face
tell stories of their own;
He stares
at the chimney-smoke-hazy
horizon – reddened by the sunset…
You’ll see the sun drowning
in the river,
as the old man
and the two bridges look on,
silently…
The river…the sleepless patrol…

But the sun will rise again,
tomorrow, like it did yesterday
For hope never dies in this city…

This is my city,
This is my nest,
It breathes in me
I breath in it
It flows through my restless veins,
and roots down deep inside
like the incessant sound
of the primitive trams
dragging themselves along
the dusty tracks
towards eternity, like turtles
like turtles