My Anger is Rising Like the Brahmaputra 

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam
Flooding its banks, drowning, destroying everything in sight 
My anger is like the bloody sunset on the river 
Glorious, ferocious, burning, sinking only to rise again 
Nature’s fury is as merciless as man’s against nature. 

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam
Anger at politicians touring luxury Assamese resorts
While commoners, sighing dying, make another trip, Pay lives as cost 
Angry that those with fake histories and forged marksheets
Serve protesting Miya poets with chargesheets 
Those with fake qualifications and degrees
Expect the precarious poor to produce proof for NRC 
Angry that parents kill their own children 
For the honour of a girl or an inter caste union 
Angry that sewers reveal dead Dalit body parts 
We have reached the moon but not their hearts 
Once, we had unity in diversity 
Today, hearts divided, only relics of unity

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam 
Temples of solid gold, opulent towers, masterpieces 
Farmers dying, children starving, death in the gutter, death in the penis 
Angry that little children die crying for food
that rapists go scot free and girls are abused
Angry that workers are humiliated with cruelty
When corporates are culprits, criminals with impunity 
Angry that lakhs of mangroves are cut down 
For a new metro station, or a tinsel town 
Angry that we learnt of lynchings from Alice Walker
Today’s children must cry “Oh no! Not another!” 
Angry that cows and people alike are used as pawns
For evil machinations with no sign of a dawn 

My anger is rising like the swelling Brahmaputra in Assam 
With the force of Kerala’s floods, Chennai’s tsunami and Odisha’sFani
Like a dancing serpent raising his hood
As my anger reaches epic proportions 
This poem remains castrated, impotent, no promise of fruition 
***

The All Consuming Question

So let’s settle this finally.
The all consuming question
as vital as the difference
Between breath and death: do you
Like me or dislike me? The gravity
of this may escape you, but consider
the weightiness of a world built and
a world destroyed, a life born
and a life broken. My heart
speaks two separate truths,
one immediate, the other analytic.
The immediate says- you fool!
She stays away from you, cannot
See you nor speak to you, of course
She dislikes you, it is clear and simple.
Thus saying, the immediate proceeds
To be deeply jealous, to break itself
With its own immediacy, the haunting
Terror that you like her and her and her
And her and him and all of them
Whereas you choose to banish me to exile.
The immediate is a candle which burns itself
Out and dies. The immediate lands itself
In deep depression.It wants to become you
In order to desperately clutch at you. But that
Path is murky and dirty and all messed up.
The analytic tries to ponder. It wants to revise
The earlier notion that you are a sadist,
That you get pleasure out of
hurting me. The analytic
Says that you do this to save yourself,
Not to punish me, just as I
did not mean to cause you injury.
The analytic says that you have been
Patient and forebearing for a long,
Long time. The analytic says that silence
Need not necessarily be war. It could
Be peace too. The analytic remembers
That you did not tell them the secret
Between me and you. It recollects
The times when you looked at me
In the distance, even while surrounded
By them. How you even smiled, though I
Was not meant to see. How you refrained
From hurting me back in return all those times.
Some say this is forgiveness: not hurting the
One who hurt you back in revenge.That you
Are there with me in spirit, that I need not
Desperately clutch at straws in panic.

I like to believe the analytic
Even as the immediate runs
After me lashing out at my heels,
Baying for my blood, spreading terror
Saying the analytic is a lie.
The all consuming question will never
Hear an answer, the battle between
The immediate and the analytic rages on
Though the analytic still nurses hopes
Of faraway, distant dawn.
***

Frankenstein

Your fearful eyes
pierce a hole in my heart. 
the red mess oozes out
There is paucity of oxygen. 
I struggle to breathe
The air is suddenly cold. 
Too cold. Sadness has replaced oxygen.
My heart fills with deep grief which expands,
pushing against auricular and ventricular walls,
Am I Frankenstein, or the monster?
Do you see me as such? 
Does fear indicate aversion?
That is the primal question of my life.
An affirmative answer could lead to cardiac arrest. 
The memory of you, the idea of you 
is my pacemaker now. 
You are also the womb, giving primal womb nurture 
But I have been selfish. I am astounded 
At your extreme fear.
The Creature that Frankenstein created 
Brought him grief, guilt and finally death. 
That is the monster that chases me.
The revenge of the monster on F. 
Long ago, you compared it to Tom and Jerry.
Today I liken it to Frankenstein. We have come so far. 
I rehearse the act of shattering and breaking with grief
over and over again. I love you.
***