Επιμέλεια: Εύα Πετροπούλου Λιανού
Bio: Dr. Tamali Neogi is Assistant Professor in department of English, Gushkara College (Affiliated to the University of Burdwan), West Bengal, India. A Gold Medallist alumni of the University of Burdwan, she has authored Woman of Patashpur and presented/published more than a dozen research papers/reviews in UGC CARE and WEB of SCIENCE journals during her eventful teaching career spanning over eighteen years. She has authored the book titled V.S.Naipaul’s Dark and Comic Vision, published by Authorspress, New Delhi, in 2023. She is the editor of Postmodern Voices, Volume Viii, Earth Vision Publication, 2022. She is the associate editor of An Anthology of Ethical Poetry. Her poems and research articles are translated into Chinese and Romanian languages by the respected editors.
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Epic Hunger
The smoke of our wastes, like dark elephantine cloud, is smartly going upwards,
And I can see the blackened figure of the old tree desperately trying to absorb the heavy shock.
The sad faces of the street children in rags,
Makes me thoughtful. Who is there to blot up pain and offer happiness in return?
The soot on their body, as if an insect caught in a spider’s web,
And their epic hunger, more powerful in aggression than Kauravas and their conspiracies,
An ever-burning, dehumanizing sensation.
When two pregnant bellies, a woman and a four footed, jostle with each other to collect food from Corporation vat,
Goddesses Laxmi asks God, “Father, why have you induced hunger?”
“Daughter, just not to be confused among souls while they are kept standing on the shore of Lethe”, says the Father.
Animals fight and kill each other in compulsion, whereas,
Man kills the human in himself and becomes an animal.
The DJ music, loud, awakens the drowsy beggar,
Who instantly starts walking . At the gate of the marriage hall stands he,
Hands gathered to his breast, in the gesture of namaskar,
I have heard that he was once a factory owner.
A tamed animal, in indignity and humiliation; nails and teeth chastened
By the ring master, Life,
A grotesque circus; the stunts make no sense,
We end where we start from. Complaints meaningless.
He offers, He withdraws. But is He beyond suffering? I wonder.
Agony of children hits the parents,
With a power three times stronger than it is in germination.
Same it is to the Lord, when we are in pain He suffers the most.
Someone throws a piece of bread to the beggar. A child comes out of the hall vomiting the excess.
The beggar consumes the bread hysterically. He asks for more.
Standing at a little distance I feel,
Suffering is inescapable. Perhaps hunger is the most degenerating human misery.
A mother dog sits by the corpse of her puppies;
Our mother prays to Him when all six of her sons, dead.
The smoke of our wastes, like dark elephantine cloud, is smartly going upwards,
The all bearing Tree of Existence,
Life is His, Happiness is His, suffering His,
In Him lies peace. Our
Ultimate happiness.
Om, the primordial sound of the Universe originates in our nabhi chakra,
Attached with it, the umbilical cord that feeds the unborn.
* Laxmi- the Hindu goddess of wealth and prosperity.
* Kauravas – hundred sons of King Dritharasthra and Queen Gandhari in Mahabharata.
* Namaskar- the customary Hindu non contact way of respectful greeting.
* nabhi chakra- navel
Parashurama
Did the earth stop for a micro-second,
When Parashurama, on his father’s command, killed his mother?
In hurry to leave the scene of crime, when the murderer stumbles,
The Mother Skull asks lovingly, “Are you hurt?”
Death, the great equalizer must not be pardoned;
The second best creator after Him,
How can the remnants of a mother be permanently removed from earth?
Even the Lord bows to a mother, the portfolio of selfless love.
Hence, beware sharp tongued. No crime parallels yours when a mother’s honour is disrobed.
Yet ours is a grand system; Democracy after all !!! Abused, humiliated, beaten, raped,
Still flow the milky maternal sentiments to paralyze our Law.
Oh Death God! how many times will you ignore the prayers of an innocent heart?
Send your messengers in multitudes,
And take to your bosom all the mothers and motherly souls at a stroke,
If once more a mom is maltreated at any remote corner of this ashy globe,
Where deterioration of values is faster than the speed,
In which sunrays reach the soil,
Ancient mother who feeds the inhuman selves as well,
Who pay their loans by strange ornamentation, sorrowful.
Or Mothers, why not let the tormentors understand
At least once in the history of creation,
What you are and what you do stand for.
Mothers, go and beseech Limos to open her wide jaw and drink your milk,
Or Mother Earth, as you haven’t tolerated the humiliation of Sita,
By your cleavage divide yourself once more, to shelter the unhappy wombs, old or new,
That have nourished unknowingly, the ungrateful demons.
My readers, behold how a few cockroaches can dismantle a mob, powerful !
Our religious leaders and their exciting speeches, are gunpowder of negatives that ignore
The cry generated in the dark interior of humane minds.
Let us rebel together against the post death rituals,
So that no son, only a daughter, a woman be present in the burial ground, when she departs.
Oh God! Distribute and recycle the genes of a mother in such a way,
That the newborns and our unborns can one day,
Make our planet as blue and beautiful as it outwardly appears.
*Parashurama- sixth incarnation of the Hindu preserver god Vishnu. As per one legend, ordered to do so by his father, he killed his mother.
* Sita- wife of Lord Ramachandra in Ramayana.
Dolls of Disneyland
We quarrel with each other,
Oh no! Not as beasts,
Lesser beings in intelligence and heartlessness, how do they match us,
Malicious and stingy? As,
God vs demons? Again wrong. Like
Stupid, illogical, unheroic insects on heap of urea,
Not to support but to eat each other’s flesh and bone,
Here we are stuck together.
In Hell, perhaps there is no disintegration; Hell is never lost to Satan,
No need to check the history of imagination.
Unified stand the fiends, against their superiors.
Man, why do you misrepresent them as proud, wanton fools?
Don’t you nurture anti-administrative venom?
Justified or not,
They are self-competent to raise voice against the guards of holy drink,
Each sip of which bestows non perishable beauty and power,
Gods are immortal and lazy. And after all,
A demon is not a man who shamelessly appeases his Boss,
A fly in the milk, by its own presence, praises its density and taste.
We quarrel with each other.
Benign feelings and sentiments melt into air like kindness,
When the monsters of jealousy and cruelty start the mockfight to ignite our minds.
Ha! The ferocity with which we burn honour and destroy each other’s peace,
Defeats the atrocities of the germ wars. Yet no regrets !
Snakes eat their own infertile eggs so that they capable not to
Contaminate the clutch. Learn
New mothers and do not pardon the first signs of unkindness ever,
For soon it will grow into a poisonous tree
The fruits of which are detrimental
As for all, the whimsical Master who has sent us here;
The programmed dolls of this Disneyland, in interventions the deluded fools love,
Quarrelsome lot, they spend most of their time in conflict with each other.
