From one book to another

And a part of you came today
the most beautiful part perhaps?
dipped in the ink of your caress,
you, for whom I shall wait
by some shadows and some light
some day,
where your talk and mine will be meaningless
in fragrance somehow more sweet-
we shall sit in some corner,
tucked away from time
gathering dust unto ourselves
in an age old love of sorts-
your shelf or mine?

or so the refrain goes..



© 2013 Maitreyee B Chowdhury 

'Where Even the Present is Ancient: Benaras'

'Where Even the Present is Ancient: Benaras' is a book that tells the little stories that make us who we are. . The author believes that Benaras resides in all of us Indians, in some beautiful often unknown way. The author is the Sutradhar, in that she attempts to connect an India that many do not realize exists, in that it is everybody’s story. Radha, Krishna, Ganga, Benaras and Me are all characters in this deluge of poems.This attempt at telling the story of the ancient, of love and of faith is to instil the confidence that poetry exists in all of us, all that is needed is to smell its fragrance. To those outside India, the book does not seek to be a representation of what India is or was, but a whiff of what it also can be. It is an attempt to ask people to see the little stories that govern all of our lives, stories that we often don’t see, but those that are important. A poem from the book goes thus-

-A Fisherman’s Ganga-

I sat on a dingy boat,
Looking at the Maha Aarati
on the Dashwamedha Ghat.

Seven priests adorned their Ganga
in every human way possible…
Tourists shrieked, conch shells sounded
humanity applauded.

I lit a small lamp and let it flow
Into the unknown corridors of faith-

A fisherman sat nearby
Perched on the helm of his boat
Looked at the skies,
And spat some Benaras
Into his Ganga.

(Dashwamedha Ghat is one of the main Ghats in Benaras, where every evening the Ganga Aarati takes place. Thousands of tourists and residents flock to see the Aarati, which has become synonymous with the pomp and glory attributed to Ganga.)

*The book is also available on Infieam, Flipkart, Amazon, Bookadda and Crossword bookstores

Available at- http://www.infibeam.com/Books/where-even-present-ancient-benaras-maitreyee-b-chowdhury/9789382473848.html

5 PM Love

Nostalgia is strange and memories stranger..It is a bit past 5 in the evening..till the clock turns 7..there shall be a sense of slow eternity that crowds into an impending sleep. A sense of waiting, as if watching the little things closing in for the night. There is still light streaming in from some of the delicate curtains in the living room and all of a sudden a song hovering in the mind. For someone from the East, it still surprises me at the amount of light late into the evening.

I was perhaps in lower school, we had a record player that looked a bit like this. Sundays smelt of the mandatory Mutton while Baba would put on a shiny black record on the player and the strains would waft in..The houses in Assam had wooden floors, I remember trying not to step on the odd board that creaked. More than the song it was Baba humming along that I loved listening to..the opening of a tap somewhere..the whistle of a pressure cooker, all while Hemanta sang-

'Mone robe kina robe amare

Se amar mone nai mone nai

Khone khone asi tobo duare

Okarone gaan gai'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MrLjeJXK6g

The player would sometimes stop and the pin would stick to one place and keep repeating the same part again and again..I would lift my head from my abstract games behind the curtain, giggle and look at someone walking up to the player to adjust it..sometimes the same song would play again for sometime..with feet creaking on the boards, the humming would be louder..Ma would call from somewhere..stillness in the air was still complete.

Today as I sip my tea and remember the song from childhood I hum it again while I play it on Youtube..things have become simpler..only nostalgia remains inexplicable. 

( Image from Google)

Love in the times of Malls

Was dragged by cousins and family to a pre-Bengali New Year lunch and some mall hopping today..In many ways malls feel like Facebook, everyone wants to be seen here( & I'm not excluding myself here) and look at others..people aimlessly wandering around, many a times adjusting their dresses and Ray Ban's wondering if they were being looked at..Women in the toilets pee less, adjust their make up more :)

My take away was this couple I chanced upon on the stairs, completely oblivious to anyone else, laughing and talking animatedly with each other, at times pausing and looking at each other's eyes..I could not help but take a pic from the back( thankfully I did not disturb them, they didn't notice me at all..besides would not have wanted to click their faces). I was reminded of few lines from a book I am reading, 'Asura', when Ravana is asked by his Gurus to kick aside all emotions in order to be the supreme warrior he says of love, ' Without love, without the king of emotions nothing exists..if one has not felt the painful need to be with one's lover..if you have not felt the love of your own, nothing matters...People have died for love in the past, and will continue to do so as long as the world exists. I shall always love. I love because I exist, I exist because I love.' 

As for myself I found my love in a lovely hard bound copy of Henry Jame's ' The Portrait of a Lady'..at a terrific discount.

In their majestic shadow

She sat clutching the folds of her thin red saree between her two legs. She wore a large Bindi at the center of her dusky forehead, half covered with the saree. Her knees joined together to make an inverted V. Just at the ankle, two half suns joined each other in a small tatoo. One of her rough hands felt the earth while the other held on to the smoke, she was puffing at.

There was a dry breeze blowing in the afternoon air but she could smell no rain. Her eyes squinted to the skies, as a large cloud loomed over the sun. She wished it would rain, but wishing for rain was like wishing for death she knew. Each would come at its own time.

Her eyes had anger, frustration and sorrow, she knew she wanted the rain and yet there was no way she could command its presence. It was like the shadow of the man, she followed..There were days when she walked after him, listening to him speak to others, staying silent or even listening to others with rapt attention..all the while being aware that she was there and yet he had never turned, never looked at her, never smiled.

He reminded her of the dark clouds, their audacity to bring the shadows home and yet not to yield rain in spite of all the expectant hearts, the prayers, the immensity of their cries.

She wish she knew what she had to do to move that shadow and turn it towards her, to envelop her in its darkness..she would scream through the nights, hit the walls, scratch herself and wish that love as such could be got from within or from anyone willing to love...but she knew anyone was not the rain cloud that mattered.

She moved her legs a bit then, blew some smoke as she turned tired eyes to the ground. She wrote some songs there, songs in the sand that she knew would vanish at the wiff of a wind..and yet she wrote as if possessed..She looked calm after a long time as she looked the well nearby. She walked up to it then, looking at the clear waters..wondering if a splash would make the dark clouds take notice that there was one soul less that he had to water.

The wamth of a butterfly..the dance of a woman

Dance is something, a dancer never misses, because it usually never leaves you, with time you add to it another facet of yourself..While on my on and oft dance routine today, I was reminded of Cleo de Merode and sat down to write a few lines..urged by some unknown urge-

My dance, its elegance, its waywardness,

Its slight intimacy,

Is like you and your caress-

Your touch so profound

Like the khol in my eyes,

My circle of love complete,

In the balance of forces-

Both yours and mine.

And yet all too sudden and short.

I kiss your shadow,

Flitting and suddenly incomplete-

Without the lust of whispered edifices,

into you-

Your eyes shut, to my tremble of resonance

And warmth like a butterfly

In some belly.

And now when I look back,

Curled up like a cat,

I'm content, rendered useless

Of all that needs to be done-

Careless and seem-less in my crawl.

© 2012 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

( Image courtesy Google Images)

The song of the little wild flower

It was the mid 80's, when as a tiny little girl I took my first trek. A medium sized hill, one of the many surrounding the little township of Digboi. It was a climb of about half and hour and we were about 5-6 kids accompanied by my father. Armed with sticks and water bottles, we quite fancied ourselves as climbers. There are certain memories of childhood that somehow manage to remain distinctly fresh, no matter how old you grow, this was one of them. I remember that the entire hill was like a basket laden with flowers, blue, violet and yellow. We had to push ourselves through these little shrubs to make our way up. My first and only question ( from a slightly non-talker of a child) to my father was, "Is this what a park looks like?" Digboi being the wilderness that it is, needs no parks and we hadn't had a sighting of a park as yet. I remember my father's laugh and ruffle in the hair, while he explained that "no, but this is better"...The little climb, yielded in one of the most spectacular views I have seen. Acres and acres of nothingness embraced the little hill with blue, yellow and purple, mingling with open skies....it remains till date one of the most important days in my life, the day I fell in love with wild flowers.






My fascination for Wild flowers, led me to visit the Yumthang valley, in Sikkim..much later in life. True to what I had imagined, the valley and the meadow surrounding it is full of absolutely fascinating riot of colors! A strange smell surrounds some of them, much like the smell of passion in a woman..of the wild wet earth on certain nights, lighted only by the moonlight. ..something so heady, that I've often wanted ot bottle it..and yet at the same time been immensely grateful that not everything can be packed..or bottled. The thing about wild flowers is that they are rarely like the grand rose drawing singular attention to its grandeur..but these arelike tiny little dots that make a spectacular graph all together...The Yumthang valley is full of rhododendron trees, made up of different colors, as well as other tiny flowers blossoms in clumps amidst the green grass, little patches of yellow and purple wherever you go.






My experiences with the fascinating flowers made me want to plant them in my garden too. I planted saplings, seeds..some plants survived, I got a flower or two, that would bloom sometime once a year and suddenly wither away. As a gardener I couldn't understand where I had gone wrong wrong..and then it dawned on me one day, that I was trying to capture a spirit in a bottle..a wild & free something and make it into a mannequined piece of art...Somethings are not meant to be tamed..if you try to do that they would rather whither and die...Have never tried to plant a wild flower since then..they belong to the wild..in spirit and form..whenever the call is strong to see them..I slip away..and they sing their beautiful songs and pass on their fragrances..free, uninhibited, lovely and un-tethered.

( Images courtesy Google)

Hour of worship

Purnashya Purnamadaya Purnam Eb Abashishyate

( Take away the Nothing from the Nothing...and yet Nothing remains...)

In the hour of worship your faith is your deity
In the hour of need the stranger your Love,
Seeking familiarity in faces new
Seeking permanent images in waters untrue

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

( Image courtesy Google)

There’s something about loving

I know loving,

The only act that comes naturally to me

The rest are all conjured specs of moonshine

There was a time when I thought

I had reached deeper than the deepest..

But the more I love..the deeper I dive

Till I discover, I’ve reached deeper than the deepest

And yet there is scope for more-

Eternity is a small sphere

The future but full of possibilities…

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

written for Thursday Poet’s Rally week 47

( Image courtesy Google)

Beauty is a brief season

Beauty is a brief season

And the soul an eternity in time

If your love for me is truly ..true

Love me without the seasonal hues

The hair shall fall like Autumnal change

And spring bring forth wrinkles new-

The lines..a creak shall sound only louder

Where Green be mixed with Grey

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

( Image courtesy Google)

In one breath I- The Allah, the Chrish, the Radhe Shyam

In one breath I am the Allah, the Christ, The Radhe Shyam

Swallow me if you will and still I shall sing O Hari O ghanshyam...

Stash me not into closets deep

Seek me within a heart that sleeps

And when it awakens from a slumber so deep

The Allah, the christ they are still within your deep

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

( Image courtesy Google)

In thy Madness My lord

Let me be mad in the things that I am,
Let me be MAD!
Let me be mad in the music that is the Lord
And things that strike a chord-
When madness is but sanity
And things too simple, yet deep
Let me be MAD O Lord
For then I am bold....
To live a life of cowards, let me not be told
Save me from the serinity
And let the madness unfold.
If kindness and hapiness of MINE be mad,
Then let me be mad once more-
For a life without depth and passion are assylum bound
And in such madness Lord
Let me not be bound!
To touch the hearts, to visit a soul, of things mundane and free
Let me be MAD in all my songs
That speak of thy eternity...
If keeping quiet, were sanity as PEOPLE sayest
Let me not be sane,
I'll just be MAD and love loud instead!

© 2009 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

TODAY AND FOREVER

When you and I are young no more
Will you be by my side?
To share some pensive hours hereby?
Will you be there to hold me tight?
To tell me that you and I
And have grown together side by side.
Will you there to watch me sleep
To nestle me in your arms
While the world moves
At its own pace -----
Human minds do drift apart
But tell me you’ll be there
When the children need us no more
When the world is but a passing fantasy
To watch as it glides by
Tell you’ll be by my side
As the burning embers glow
To remember things sweet and good
That have become cherished memories of yesteryears

Tell me love you’ll be there, by me
To watch the sunset in the western sky
To see the dying glow fade
And merge us into things ---
‘Past and Present’

Just tell me you’ll be there
To reassure my searching glances
That you are real and by my side,
For today and Forever.

© 2007 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury