Indian Review

Literature from India and the world over! Indian Literature Magazine

  • Fiction
  • Nonfiction
  • Poetry
  • About Us
  • Submissions
You are here: Home / Poetry / Do not tamper my Blackboard with Pencil | Chandril Chattopadhyay

Do not tamper my Blackboard with Pencil | Chandril Chattopadhyay

September 10, 2016

11     

Blue
Is the sky;
Red is the sun;
Green are the leaves;
Yasmin: do not touch my new colours
Abbu bought it from Board Bazaar yesterday.
                     
                         We had five dreams meeting
At the University Road in “Peasha-War”:
Where on days of strike we played cricket
I am in my sixth grade-
Making mistake while spelling my homeland ,
Where in the morning Ammi cooked Lacchas;
And I was used to fly kite with the neighbor boy Akbar.
                         
                My elder brother learns history at Home,
With the two index tops into his ear labyrinth,
Infusing memory with each passing word
That sounded like Gospel –
They glorified Peshawar in each dynasty he said;
Yet he does not know where the Kawalis sing at night.
                          
I had never been to Khyber pass
 Or the Kabul river
Or where the Talibans stay
They are bad not because they carry Guns,
But because they paint my Allah black
with each heinous day in their pejorative calendar.

I am with Yasmin,
From the Hindi movies, I have learned to love
And look for references in the library
Where she waits for me with two ponytails;
Swinging to and fro, unlike the cascades they show in movies;
We have read Oliver Twist, Nancy Drew and Tintin together;
But forget every time how to tie our shoe laces.

In the classroom I was hiding under the desk,
When Miss Fatima swooshed her poonchy ponytail to scare me away
Before the scribbles of the illegible homework-
Lay a dormant seed of carnage
Dead before my eyes was the plant I had watered on Vanmahotsav day.

I forgot to use my copy once the bullet stroke away,
The last smiles form the minds ignited by Kalam.
I could hear the blackboard crying with the whitewashed ceiling-

In mode of whisper, lest they shall be fired at too.
I saw no Red, when they fired at us
All that was lying were the pencil chips and collages
For the Winter Fete next month
Only my brother Shamim was dreaming of ITHACA on the window pane,
With wide opened eyes towards the sun;
Capturing the last sunlight of the day;
And in his hand, a pencil raised as a toast
To the stolen lines of being,
Mightier
Of being Juicier,
In the years underneath,
And here on my beautiful little black coffin;
Pinned was my first poem-
“A For Apple
B For Ball
Muslims are Humans, Yasmin
The world shall never know at all.“

 


Indian Review | Literature & Poetry | Chandril Chattopadhyay

Authors : Chandril Chattopadhyay 


Indian Authors & Poets | Chandril Chattopadhyay writes on Indian Review

Related posts:

  1. Do you know that this room has been mine | Chandril Chattopadhyay
  2. Scooping Out the fidelity | Chandril Chattopadhyay
  3. let no sms speak for thy guilt | Chandril Chattopadhyay
  4. Something Hollow Inside…!! | Vibhor
  5. If There is Death, Certainly | Taslima Nasrin (Trans.)

Categories: Poems, Indian English Poems

Comments

  1. Rituparna Khan says

    February 21, 2019 at 2:03 pm

    Beautifully framed. The pathos has been pictured like a landscape.
    There are influence of Kite Runner of Khaled Hosseini and Ignited Minds of APJ Abul Kalam. These inspirations have been very braided in the strings of a harmony in a concerted order.
    The ending is but obvious but it is just beautiful.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Join the Literature Newletter

  • Facebook
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Selections…

The Noose | Naresh Kumar

Thambi | Jeyamohan

Educating Manju | Richard Rose

Water Wars | Priyanka Mathur

Water Wars | Priyanka Mathur

Corporate Ladder | Swapnil Bhatnagar

Translated Poems

Murder | Subodh Sarkar

Bribe | Subodh Sarkar

Tumi Robe Nirobe | Rabindranath Tagore – A Translation

Nothing new | Irsa Ruçi

Timeless…| Irsa Ruçi

Continuity | Irsa Ruçi

Translated Fiction

The Scape-goat | Indraganti Narasimha Murthy

Scape-Goat | Indraganti Narasimha Murthy

“Hello Mr. Murty …” phoned in Sadanandam, the General Manager of ABC bank. “We have reviewed the … [Read More...]

Gratitude | Dr. Veluri Rama Rao (translation)

Gratitude | Bhagavatula Venkata Radhakrishna

If ever you go to Laxmipuram and ask for the house of Veera Venkata Satyanarayana garu, nobody will … [Read More...]

Being and Nothingness | Rabeea Mahmood Rabeea

Being and Nothingness | Rabeea Mahmood Rabeea

Sir, I assure you and I repeat it for ten times: "I am not MAD" … "Though I am not looking in a … [Read More...]

Copyright @ 2009 · | BanyanPress · | About Us | SiteMap