Forest Fire | Day 11 | #NaPoWriMo

Forest Fire Some loves arrive as quietly as mornings in a forest. Jets of daylight burst through the foliage and trickle down branches, gulping along their way the minty night from cold leaf-tips. It then sips into the ferny bed, caressing our fallen leaves with a rekindled hope. Now when such love sets on us, it is obviously no regular dusk. For the receding light...

Absolved in Jhelum | Day 10 | #NaPoWriMo

It had been a year my eyes last met your wounded glee in the windy murmur of thawing snows. This April sun wilting the plains, there tints the white rivulets of Jhelum in gold. As they sigh down valleys and jingle past forests, like the ankled feet of a gliding woman. Apple yards of Pahalgam must be back to flowers. White buds lacing shiny green canopies, gearing for the September...

LoC | Day 09 | #NaPoWriMo

Betwixt my soul's dire yearning and a mind that cannot let go, you preside like the bewitching Kashmir. This savage battle of possession though depleting my existence, it is at the line of conscience that I contine to bleed for you. © Sobhan...

Pacific of Desire | Day 08 | #NaPoWriMo

With a wink, you let the robe slip from your shoulders. And I gape at a sparkling bead of water, furrowing down your seashore back. On me you slowly bend, inching forward on toes. Your oval dunes, moist in their silk cups, hang in my face. I let my hand inside your thong. In your dark traingle, my fingers tip over a round wet pearl and make you pant with...

শুভ নববর্ষ | Day 07 | #NaPoWriMo

The new year sevai simmers on the flame. Sweet aroma of milk thickening in the pan, juiced with raisins and nuts, overhangs the house. A singing procession of men and women drift through the cypress shadows. In their chorus rings Tagore's songs, welcoming Boisakh, the first summer month. Conch shells are blown. Its echo thinned by a splitting wind, as Bengal wakes...

Falling Skies | Day 06 | #NaPoWriMo

To my new lodging, I have finally moved. And oozing from the mauve colored walls is a dank odour of drying paint. Wafting invisibly, like heat from asphalt on blazing summer days. Its rancid stench nooses my breath, and stirs my guts. So unlike the easy air homes always wear. In my duffel I have carried the lavender air-freshener. Its whiff, I remember, you loved in our room - hanging, textured...

To Mothers | Day 05 | #NaPoWriMo

This era of readymade woollens easily available in myriads of varieties, like friendship on the internet one click away, had put our mother's needles out of use. Still whenever a button breaks from the plackets of my new era shirts, it is to my mother that I retort. From her old sewing box she picks out spools of thread and selects needles, closing our ripped hearts with gentleness and affection, every time our new age loves turned us to tears. ©...

Hunters of Night | Day 04 | #NaPoWriMo

Hunters of Night | Day 04 | #NaPoWriMo In the grey Kolkata skyline, Vidyasagar Setu looms broadly like wings of Harps, softly played on by the darkness. A bustling strip of NH 6 arcs over the river, streaked in blue fading lights, connecting the twin cities that make for its heavy shores. Even with the night at its darkest and the surrounding roads emptied, the bridge is strangely never still. Cars with...

Requiem | Day 03 | #NaPoWriMo

Requiem | Day 03 | #NaPoWriMo We have burnt holes in the Ozone, cleared forest and contaminated the air. Global warming has made summers worse and rains seem to have bid us adieu. The ecosystem is now permanently impaired, shifted towards an inevitable catastrophe. In a world that has caught fire and melting at the poles, here I am – incompletely complete, grateful to your damage, making clouds shift and...

Love Like a Bibliophile | Day 02 | #NaPoWriMo

Love Like a Bibliophile | Day 02 | #NaPoWriMo Purest of loves often leave no trails. Like a Bibliophile’s books, of titles read over and over again, starchy still, between creaseless jackets and not a speck of dirt at the corners, gleaming like guns in an armoury. Unlike someone who reads to kill time where there will always be a piece of paper stuck somewhere containing address or phone number serving as...