The Queer Night and other poems by Abhik Ganguly

Woke up groggy
The usual morning blues
A Metro ride later
with incorrect pathways
to the store on Google Maps
Reached the bookshop
A piece of Socialist India
somehow survived, it felt
the age of globalization.
Greeted by two feline friends
inward we marched,
Caught Chomsky peeping from
The Non-fiction shelf
A child getting yelled at by his mum
became our unwanted soundtrack
Somehow the blues withered away
as the strong fragrance of books
invited and incited us.
With Bob Dylan’s book in one hand
Surfed through other books,
Found Ramanujan, Sontag and Tagore
Though now my wallet
led out existential angsts
of being perennially broke
Turned to the counter
Greeted by the warm manager
Off we went to the Lodhi Garden.

Aboard Airbus A320,
beneath me lies the
Valley of Rarh, rent
asunder by a river.
Jubilant sunlight from the
ashes of cumulous clouds, dances
on the winglets of the plane, the
river looks like a string of molten gold.
In the verdant meadows of Rarh,
echoes of extinct civilizations
still linger on, surviving in the
half-forgotten whispers of its lands.
How my homeland calls me, in
a tongue which isn’t mine anymore
The valley, now about to fall into
a deep slumber, after sun bids adieu.
Our plane lands gently upon the
weathered tarmac, the genteel winds
cradle my soul with welcome, as a
knot of stars clings to the eastern skies.

Mushroom clouds hang over
the horizon, the sunlight has
now been hidden for quite some
time, shielded by silvery rain.
When cities crawled and turned
to dust, in contrived corridors of
history and memory, we drank the
smoke of bombs and silently crept.
Cast in the stone of blood, were
screams of mothers holding their
dying babies and cries of brothers
clinging to shadows of yesterday.
How the false idols of Science fell
with their empty words and hollow
promises, their very priests chalking
serpentine plans to destroy their own ilk.
Emerging from molten womb, we
spread our wings and fly past the ghost
monuments of humanity, where once
thrived life, now only ashes of war remain.

I’ve walked a million miles
now, scaled the mountains
and rode the seas, yet I wonder
what truth beneath these skies I see.
In the first whispers of humanity
when mankind struggled to find
its’ feet, I was there, bearing a silent
and immutable witness to what unfurled.
From Moses receiving the ten
commandments, to the crucifixion of
Christ. Through Rāma slaying the ten-headed
Rāvaṇa till Buddha preaching under Bodhi tree.
Neither virtue nor vice, neither pain
nor pleasure, neither sacred nor profane
I’m beyond all of these, I saw the legends without
my eyes and heard the myths without my ears.
I’m Pure Consciousness in itself, life and
death, being and non-being are manifest from
the very essence of mine, I can be only heard
in the silent forms of highest meditations.
There wasn’t a time when I was
born, and there won’t come a time
when I shall cease to exist, all the
universes rest still in my reflection.

The stillness of night
hangs over my head
while I walk under the
street-lamps belied anonymity.
The algid breeze
kisses my clean-shaved
face, the sidewalks reflect
dollops of tears and laughter engraved.
In the chaos of city vehicles
My mind oscillates between
whispers of half-forgotten joys
and turgid echoes of memories pristine.