Dibyendu's WallScript

In emptiness I grope for dreams, footsteps fall unknowing into a lotus field. A tree of images rises— yet mud and silt strip me bare, shred me into filth. Wherever I look— distance, only distance. A tunnel appears, thick with stench. A cunning rat— its one-pointed life hums a tune of debauchery. It searches for holes, slick with fraud, treachery sharpened like instinct. Night shadows coil over lotus fields, while the rat leaps, chasing the comfort of an easier life. But every tunnel leads farther away, lotus drifting out of reach. In the hope of selfish survival one day that greedy heart will be caught— inside the cage, the machinery of the rat-trap snapping shut.

I found a tunnel in the wall, and the mind longed to crawl inside.   So many days in hiding already, eyes avoiding eyes, slipping toward the shelter of darkness.   Ants enter— one by one, in strict procession, carrying food for their winter sleep.   I too fragment, become smaller, as small as possible— as if arrogance itself were peeled away.   At the mouth of the tunnel I strip off the body’s so-called divinity, push aside the armor, become a sliver, barely human.   Yet if a man finds a tunnel he too will slip inside— not as a hero, but as a fugitive.   Into the eternal hiding place, following ants, step after step, toward the vanishing.

On an evening walk the mind opened its wings, while dormant existences lingered waiting for some ambush along forgotten paths.   If there were words to tell, they could not be fabricated. On a lakeside bench Subodh Babu asked— “ How are you?”   How to answer truth with more truth? Too much of it becomes unbearable. I said—“I’m fine,” though eavesdroppers multiply like shadows. No oil, no salt— doctor’s orders. This burning inside the body has no other reason.   Time drifts away in hunger, a single plate of rice at noon— not insufficient, yet not abundance either. This is life.   From years of struggle so much was earned, yet nothing essential. Perhaps life could have been lived without all this— the medicine, the clinging to survival.   Labor consumed the body, but never became the reason to live. The household stayed orderly, each member in their own delight. A “successful life”— they call it. Anyone might have rejoiced in it, dreaming their sky in colors. ...

The banyan’s hanging basket builds its home on the clay ridge, above the grass’s chest. Sunlight breaks into fragments of glass, opaque, uncertain, trembling.   In this impossible jungle of half-darkness, life’s morning stirs with secret breath. Two young bodies, raw and ungoverned, slip between trunks with savage intent.   They twine, serpent-spiraled, their embrace like the banyan’s roots descending. The forest closes around them, a chamber neither holy nor profane.   In that tangled clasp, unmarked by law, tomorrow gathers itself—seed in shadow.

I knew at the tip—  a flicker,  a micro-light,  already gone. dreams / calculate / themselves:  how many must ignite  before a star-eye  registers—presence? centuries collapse:  light-years → ache-years →  I glimpse (too late?)  what love might mean. I grew dew—  beads on leaf-edge,  a geometry of falling. then suddenly / your body /  around mine: flame → wick → Shivaratri midnight. your skin = yellow smoke,  climbing trees,  an incense trunk. I burn—  joy, grief,  womb of fire. sleepless / tonight / equation:  what penalty = desire + spark? Night-Jasmine sweats:  each drop = tenderness,  each drop = betrayal. a moth—dark, wing-frayed,  released—  flies blind /  straight into fire. I—burn—  locked room / of love /  no exits. yet— I turn to be held was enough. knowledge remained,  like a shard in the mouth: before the sprint →  death is rehearsal,  a wound of love  never ripening,  never closing. immortality =  dying / once /  with you. ...