Beauty on the streets- A tale of Love

People around the world have different hobbies, I have mine too- 'People watching'...nothing fascinates me more than watching the man on the road..the most fascinating stories I've come across are that of the man on the road the common man...an oh I forgot to mention that my people watching also has a method in all the madness! Usually I'm in the shabbiest of attires, not really by choice, but because it really doesn't matter most of the time, either way. I'm usually accompanied by my good old friend, a paper cup holding the finest of Coorgi coffee, brewed at home and my phone camera, that serves as record for all the quirky, happy and fun incidents that happen on the road.

The story that enfolds in my mind right now, was on one such evening walk in the city of Chennai, India. For those of you familiar with and in love with the tradition that binds Chennai, you would know of a little nook called Mylapore. A traditional's delight, Mylapore is what brings out one of the most beautiful favors of Chennai, apart from the coffee of course. Full of tilaked Brahmins, small temples here and there and little shops selling, the liitle nitty gritties of life, God and living.

While strolling on the pavement this particular evening, soaking in the sights, I chanced upon a rather strange scene. A beggar couple lay on the pavement. In the early evening light, their pain, poverty and unhappiness seemed to be even more highlighted. As I peered closer, the woman ( I am assuming its his wife/lover..whatever) sits up, with the support of her loved one. The man suddenly turns his back on her..mutters something beneath his breath and guides her hand to his back. In one of the most spectacular gestures I'have ever seen, the woman's face lights up with a smile and love...her hand in motion with that of love, caresses and scratches that of her partners back..there is so much warmth, love and affection in that gesture that it leaves me numb. It strikes me that love, beauty and purity does not need the riches of the world, nor the fanciness of gifts. In that one humble offering, she gave to her man what was indescribable love..and beauty par excellence in its very simplicity...my camera, which is usually always ready hesitated and the hands pushed it inside my pockets once more..some scenes like those created by God cannot be replicated nor captured and are beautiful in their privacy..it remains in memory as one of the most purest and beautiful moments that I have witnessed.

A minute or two later, the woman notices me, she smiles at me indulgently, a queen in the supremacy of her love, she falls back on the pavement and lives on in the moment of poverty drenched sleep of life...A bell from the nearby Santhome church rings..the statue of Mother Mary comes alive with the little lamps that surround her..

There is and will be nothing more beautiful that that moment for me..for in showing me this, the lord also showed me LIFE!

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

There is nothing as beautiful as the simplicity of life which is what I share here as a part of the Yahoo-Dove Real Beauty contest on Indiblogger.

( Image courtesy Google)

To the Varanasi of the old

I'd like to lie with you

On starry nights

On ghats so old..that each step talks of a story well told

Where incense of the dead mix with sacrament for the new

To the Varanasi of the lost shall we?

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

( Image courtesy Google)

A slow afternoon breeze

Theres a slight afternoon breeze blowing in the hot summer of the Carnatic, she can see the curtains blue, green and yellow doing their slow erotic dance in the distant yonder..her raven hair spills all over the floor, A red bindi adorns her forehead..splashing past its prime.. and her white bare nothings that cover her modesty bloom in their sweet desire..she s full..full of desire of wanting someone so badly, so madly that she wants to run across the many people..the many boundaries and make that clarion call of come away..and yet as her mist laden eyes turn hither and tither..she knows she won't..she is after all pregnant with the burden of society..the wind mocks at her come away, fly will you? Tell him of your desire...of the longing nights..of the champa by your bedside fueling your want...she picks up the phone and stares at it for long..making love on the phone? but wheres the touch..the maddening touch that seals him to her..the burning skin that proclaims you are mine for whatever time you wish..if only she sighs..there was a day..when she would have him to her ..alone.. fluttering away from the world, from the burden of those who frown..from the paraphernalia called society, family and all...in songs of Jasmine she would decorate him and in the musk of his manliness she would yearn..her hair covering their modesty in the chimes of orgasmic bells..the lord would declare them wed!

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

( Image courtesy Google)

When Mr love came calling..

When Mr love once knocked on these doors

I opened them with creaking hesitancy

To eyes full of wrinkles and skin in shackles

You’ve come a generation late I said

In bespectacled smile of my toothless sing song

Tidy up your hair he said...

Cheer up that frown...

Let me take a look at that face grown so brown

With tenderness of the bud I unfurled

Into arms so soft..and wept in the rhapsody of

Love that came in an age too late...

The flowers had fallen, the leaves all but yellow...

The girl you grew in love and with love..misty eyed & creaking yet

And yet the birds they sing and rainbows they spring too in backyards old..

In eyes that dream of dreamers still

Some dreamers lie but tender still...

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

Submitted to Jingle’s Thursday Rally Week 43:

http://thursdaypoetsrallypoetry.blogspot.com/

The distance between tears and rain

I'd like to walk with you


The distance between the rain and my tears-


Flowing in the same tandem..so profusely


That you wouldn't know which ...is which

© 2011 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

Submitted to Jingle’s Thursday Rally Week 41: http://thursdaypoetsrallypoetry.blogspot.com/

I nominate Paulami http://ifdreamswerefireflies.blogspot.com/2011/04/seasons-first-rains.html

When we are young, wild and carefree,

Little do we think of what will be. . .

Maybe when we are each eighty or eighty-three!

In the beautiful and sing song journey of cocoon to butterfly

No one thinks of the times that fly

Once while on one such walk,

The walk of introspection I call it-

My eyes chanced upon a moment of frailty,

His was a gait of cautious steps,

Oh so careful, of a life bound together,

The little eyes, in a crinkled smile, spoke of the dream and all the fun. . . Of wishes unfulfilled and goals yet to achieve,

Of the forlorn saga of being branded old.

Why do we imagine the old always as old?

Haven’t they danced or run or been bold?

Why are Grannies always just so…

Let’s look into their eyes and let their story unfold.

For all those old, yet young at heart, we meet and then forget,

Lets remember the eternal song of young hearts and old minds..

And then let’s dance to the joy of such tunes, offbeat yet bold

Listen to their stories, without any goal,

Just the feeling of experiencing an age, of grey hairs and steps

That seem hard to control ..

Lets just once all of us be a bit old,

And feel their journey together and as a whole

© Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury

( Image courtesy Google)

The orbit of Sex

The orbit of licit sex is full of violence, sadness and boredom-

It is the illicit sex that inspires the gentleness of poetry....

© 2014 Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury