Dreams [end of 2011]

You dream of your life in waves
In
Your dreams of deaths
And
In
Your dreams of homes

And
Then you dream
And
Then you dream of dreams
As you walk down the gray aisles of your mausoleum of dreams

Your dreams change
Your life does not for you have no life without dreams

You dream
Of a wooded villa
Of a sunflower field
Of a paddy field
Of rain frozen on railway tracks
Of heat rising
Of a bunch of crows waiting on a electric wire
Of an empty stadium on a moonlit night
Of faces – sparkling and emaciated
Of bodies – scented and decaying
Of hunger – shooting
Of thirst – cracking
Of lust – animal and familial
Of shadows and shafts of light
Of closed spaces, of abandoned spaces
Of hooded faces
Of arrows, machine guns, harpoons, landmines and rocket launchers
Of funeral pyres, coffins and excavated pits
You dream
Of you chasing and being chased, in spiraling loops
Of you jumping through air and falling
Of you leading a heist
Of you managing a wild circus
Of you dancing across oceans, clouds and continents

You dream of your life in waves
In
Your dreams of deaths
And
In
Your dreams of homes

A faceless man croons in your ears:
Our planet is a stage, overflowing
You are a phantom in an endless opera
Entertaining the faraway stars, constellations and galaxies

You came lonely from a faraway mist and will certainly vanquish in that mist
In between you are torn between a billion dreams

Few Posts and Consumer Reviews relating to my Books

Posts

http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/11/abyss-by-sabarna-roy_22.html
http://www.anaggh.com/2011/11/27/pentacles-abyss-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/12/pentacles-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://www.anaggh.com/2011/12/11/frosted-glass-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/11/pentacles-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/11/abyss-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/11/pentacles-by-sabarna-roy.html
http://bookreviews.bookrack.in/2011/11/abyss-by-sabarna-roy.html

Consumer Reviews

http://www.flipkart.com/books/9380154824
http://www.flipkart.com/books/9381115091
http://www.flipkart.com/books/9381115367

Kolkatadreams

http://www.kolkatadreams.com/2011/10/author-sabarna-roy-books.html

A recent interview given to iSahitya

http://isahitya.com/index.php/english-sahitya/interviews/193-talk-to-isahitya-sabarna-roy

On a few General Cricketing Matters.

1.      According to me the 3 greats of modern cricket are Sunil Manohar Gavaskar, Viv Richards and Imran Khan. They apart from playing the game to the best of their ability, have also left an indelible imprint on the game: they snatched the imagination and aesthetics of the game from the colonizer’s universe to the ghettos of the colonized and not only that, they had taken head-on the machinations of their respective national cricketing power-centers during the peak of their careers without ever caring for their own future [and in doing so changed the course of the game completely in their own countries]. My words are euphemistic to an extent, I agree, but they are true in spirit. When I was growing up I witnessed these tigers prowling on the cricket field [most of the times conjuring great battles in my soul listening to radio commentary – extremely evocative in those days] and feel very strange [almost convulsing] and implicitly life-changing sensations and emotions akin to what I undergo when I read the greatest of the novels. Mr. Gavaskar has had the greatest impact on me. I have rarely idolized anybody except this man. In many critical situations of my life I have asked myself silently: What would Mr. Gavaskar have done in such a situation; how would he have responded to the impending ambiguity that I face? Nowadays I feel sad when I find him, incipiently and tacitly, furthering the interests of the cricket establishment without cautioning the death of the game in the seductive hands of the T20 format. In that sense Imran and Viv have been very vocal; in fact, in India Bishen Singh Bedi has been very vocal too. Imran has traveled to a greater stage; I hope [I more or less believe] there is a part in his soul that genuinely bleeds for the sordid situation Pakistan is in at present and he is not just creating a crescendo to get a slice of the cake in the power corridors of Pakistan. I do not know much what Viv does nowadays. I was delighted to find him expert-commentating on TV during the recently concluded World Cup. He has mellowed, no doubt [collateral damage of being sired], but one can occasionally trace that familiar strain of the ‘King’s’ irreverence in his tone and body language.

2.      I must confess I am a great admirer of Sourav Ganguly, of his batting style as well as his leadership flair. However I believe Greg Chappel’s quotes [based on the extracts I have read in the media] about Sourav to be essentially true. In his struggle to remain captain of the Indian cricket team he jeopardized his own game. He became a prisoner of the ever-powerful-syndrome; I suspect this has something to do with his privileged upbringing. When somebody becomes more anxious to remain the captain instead of improving his own performance and aspires to manipulate the system to achieve so, it speaks equally of the system that generates such individuals as much as it speaks about the individuals. The fact is the sensation of being powerful has defocused many a great in the course of history. Yet there was something in Sourav’s cricketing personality and style of playing the game which had lent a very appealing, attractive, edgy and restless quality - very similar what a rock-star does to a song. He had the natural flair of leading greater players than him, he could bring out the best in the minions, and his instincts on the sinusoidal course of a game were brilliant.

Most Recent Observations

1. Former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam by commenting on the Kudankulam Nuclear Power Plant has clarified where he belongs. It is perverse to note that while supporting the Nuclear Power Plant he does not put forth any scientific argument of credibility or merit and in fact, he has dished out a grand rehabilitation package thereby creating more room for attendant businesses. He makes a show off of this package and justifies the Plant, retrospectively, in the light of this package. He does not address the fundamental questions relating to long-term emission / radiation hazards and dumping of nuclear waste [among many], especially, the fears and anxieties arising out of and in the backdrop of the Fukushima incident and a few significant European companies exiting this business. The resistance of the local people and the environmental activists has been traced to the ‘foreign hand’ – that is what he alleges. But my view in this case is: the former President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam is the ‘foreign hand’; he does not represent the concerns of the people of Kudankulam; he is the high profile representative [comprador] of big corporations.

2. The mainstream media in India does not update us on the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement. Is this a deliberate move? One will doubt considering the space and airtime it gives to the Team Anna and Mr. Advani’s bogus yatra. Well one can argue its [Occupy Wall Street’s] relevance to India. I think ‘Occupy Wall Street’ in more ways than one is critically significant because of its nature: it is a political movement at its core without an aspirational and conventional political leadership – it is trying to hit at the classical motive of all big corporations in the world, which is, unhindered moneymaking by subjugating the natural resources comprehensively to its whims and fancy, by converting political systems all across the globe to its business development and marketing teams thereby ruining the planet in the short term – unrelenting economic recession and food crisis – and in the long term – ecological devastation and climate change. If the mainstream media in India can cover endlessly [at times exceedingly and using jingoistic jargon] skirmishes / infiltrations on the Indo-Pak, Indo-Chinese and Indo-Bangladesh borders [without for a moment understanding the underlying economic, territorial and long pending political disputes] why cannot it cover this movement round-the-clock and from all across the globe? Because the media [mostly] beyond a point does not want to paint a destructive image of big corporations [of which it is a part]; it plays out either its developmental image in the times of good business or its victimhood in the times of recession. The media covers the cotton theme in the Lakme Fashion Week with aplomb, but fails to tell us the story of suicide-deaths of cotton weavers with equal intensity. Will ‘Occupy Wall Street’ be a winning movement? The answer is simple – of course, not. My answer is – human greed is all pervasive and million-times more cunning than melodramatic.

3. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has shamelessly [without any visible shade of remorse] reacted to the surging food inflation. He says – food prices are increasing because there is an unprecedented rise in demand; which means, we are eating more because we can afford to eat more. This is far from true. It is an insult to the people when its leader endorses falsehood thereby erasing all hopes of economic corrections that could be made in the future to ease the burden of the people.

4. Ms. Mamata Banerjee is a specialist of somersaults, this time she did it in the name of withdrawing her support from the UPA Government at the Centre on the issue of rise in petrol prices. She is bargaining a special economic package for the state of West Bengal; the idea is noble. The package in one form or the other is on its way. But West Bengal should not rejoice which despite, all the mandatory caveats and cautions, it will. A sizeable section of the money will be siphoned out in the due process of executing capital projects to make TMC guys among the wealthiest politicians in the country [well, owner’s pride neighbour’s envy!]. Once the Left is out after 34 years what has come to light in its entirety is the holistic extent to which the Left had depraved West Bengal in this time-span – especially, in the health and education sectors. However, TMC’s response to the recent child deaths and only concentrating on the Presidency College / University to make it a clone of the Oxford University is terribly depressing to say the least.



3 Poems - 1 from a friend and 2 from her friend

Unmasked [Deepa Vanjani from Indore]

The mask I wore for you was not good enough
Though different, from the masks I put on for others –
Different masks for different situations and people
Gradually cracks appeared in it.
The gaps became wider,
From within the pains of the past could now be seen.
The ugly face behind the mask repulsed you.
You were not prepared for it.
You shrunk.
You seethed.
You hissed.
You shunned me.
And now the mask has fallen apart.
The lines on my face are clearly visible.
Deep aberrations, lacerations on the soul,
Manifested on the face.
I don’t put on masks anymore.
I have left the lacerations to bleed openly.

Illusion [Rashmi Sahi from Hong Kong]

Farce is the promise of love

Misleading is its desire.

Mirage is the call of heart

Masquerade, the emotion.

Masked are the real faces

Enveloped in passion

Veiled are the hearts

Caught in the treason.

Time [Rashmi Sahi from Hong Kong]

It’s time to move on,

Time to change the nest

Time to dry the wings

Time to fly again.

Cheetah and Blast from the Past

1.

The Immortal Cheetah

A cheetah given into leaping by nature

Leapt across swamps of grief

Crossing miles in air

Feeling the rush of wind in his eyes

He was crying – tasting the salt of his tears in his eyes and on his tongue

The indigo stars illuminating the silence of the universe with a strange tinge of blue sighed: Oh god! The cheetah is crying!

The cheetah flies in the air almost daring to cross the planet with a half-leap

Falling all of a sudden through midair as if he had crashed into an invisible cliff trapped within a canopy of clouds

Falling inside a jungle: a boiling cauldron of darkness, incessant rain and violent vegetation

The celestial bodies in the sky prayed for the cheetah – with the finest bones and flesh ever to find their unified life – to make his final motions against the entrapments of this fateful jungle

Nobody knows what happened to this cheetah

Except that we make yarns about this cheetah, who leaps inside our souls forever

2.

Jump cut – in the past – 25 years – almost – approximately – a full-moon night – after midnight – on the terrace of a G+3 newly built apartment block – on the fringes of the city violently pushing against the margins of a crumbling suburban landscape – full of dreams – a series of conquests – a bright disc of silver hanging in the sky – an elderly friend of mine and I – a telescope in between us – a gazer of stars and galaxies – well, planning to show me what is a sky and infinite continents of space – a wise man – hating my absolute love for rock music – dismissing it as ‘boyish elitism’.

A night redefined!

We smoked hard. We smoked hard – only nicotine fellas! We discussed Dakghar. We recited Wasteland. Death was looming large on our sub-conscious.

Then he asked me to take a drooling walk to the phallic instrument chilling in the night – his love and work of love.

“Boy you could look at the moon both ends from! This end from it looks like a shining piece of nut. And this end from it blazes on you like a scorching sun … So you see; there is nothing right or wrong!”

I asked parched in smoke, “Is there no perfect way of life on earth? Ideals to follow? Creating and adding on to the civilization of men? No right and wrong! Live like dogs, do we?”

He whispered in my ears, “You hate dogs, don’t you? There are ways. There are no ways still. A creative man must learn to suffer multiple takes on life. A creative man must strive for his absolute solitude to unburden his load on us. He walks through the world but returns to his cave. Your cave is this universe of galaxies, constellations and pacing heavenly bodies. You are a banished soul attempting to be a part of this colossal space. Don’t you feel like that? How tiny you are, my boy!”

We fell silent for a long time – looking at the sky – and then we fell asleep! Dreaming: this sleep will take us away …