Poems - Anchit

Anchit 
(A poet)


Gauraiya

(the hundred and fifty years old heritage building and campus of harisabha temple situated in sabzibag Patna was demolished to build a shopping mall. the well was destroyed, all the trees were cut down and during the process many birds lost their homes, many fruits and flowers were deleted from the common memory and all sentiment had to submit to legal formalities and capitalism which devours on every scope of human selfish greediness and materialistic gain. this poem is a tribute to every single memory that has been lost. to home and to the skies which rested on the top of the jamun trees- )

she is there -
as far as my memory can go back.
back - to long overstretched windows
and sun filled Sunday mornings.
if i tried i can fondly remember,
her fluttering of wings on those innocent early mornings
and my father playing the flute,
sitting unaware of the world, eyes closed,
lost in, probably , another world of memories.
(his hands did not tremble those days
and i can't recall a single grey hair in his mustache)
her flock infiltrated every imaginable space,
the guava tree by the well,
the small openings in the giant temple dome
the skylights of the strong seemingly imperishable roof.

wherever she could not go, her songs seeped.

the mighty domes of harisabha are gone now,
two small ones and
one majestic, could-be-climbed-upon dome of harisabha temple
(how we rejoiced in counting and i knew every petal that was drawn on them)

i could do nothing
and so there is no forgiveness.
a humble lasting perishable string of thoughts won't suffice,
i know.

the gauraya sings in my memory,
playing hide and seek on the jamun tree.
and like a child my father was when he was playing the flute,
every night, i go to sleep,
hoping to wake up to them loitering around
in their own landscape,following trails of their own.

Yearning for a particular postcard

dark clouds circle
the majestic clock tower in harinagar but it never pours down.
the wide road of jawahar nagar
ends in a disease-stricken cyber cafe with old computers.
the steel containers in the adjacent dhaba are empty.
buffaloes roam.
the leaf enfolding cheap tobacco slowly burns.
a beedi is the fastest way to die.

I make out with a lonely girl on the last seats of amba talkies.
it is not Paris.
no heavy metal eruptions follow.
no dark room self inflected paranoia, no cocaine blackouts.
the red bricked walls of university exist nonchalantly.

bus number
do sau barah
carries the woes of
whole teeshazari.

lehna singh market
is named after the greatest lover in our literature.
i feel meager.
places after places, ruins crumble. i understand the smell of chlorine.

there are no doors in my mind
where i have pinned a few faces from the crowd;
neither have they, i am certain.

nothing is ever forgotten.

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