Dibyendu's WallScript

A draft treaty on nuclear disarmament was tabled recently in Geneva. However, with India and 61 other participating countries unable to reach consensus, the session was adjourned. The initial plan had been to finalize the treaty by 28 June, but India’s representative, Arundhati Ghose, made it clear that New Delhi had serious reservations about the neutrality of the present draft. Until those doubts are addressed, India will not sign the agreement. As a result, implementation remains stalled, and questions loom over the treaty’s viability. Diplomats are now pushing for a fresh round of talks on 29 July, though prospects for success remain uncertain.   The debate raises a series of difficult questions about the credibility of the P-5 nuclear powers (United States, Russia, China, Britain, France) and their ambiguous dual role.   Doubts Over the P-5 Motives   First, there is widespread suspicion about the selective approach of the nuclear powers. Nations like India or Israel,...

It was always known— he would return by this road, some other day, for there is no other road to return upon.   Dasharath walked that way, past the familiar tea-stall of Madhur, turning left into the lane that led to Mamon’s house.   Upon his shoulder rested a sack of rice, saved from the month’s expenses, so little— yet perhaps of use if Mamon should be in need.   Before her house lay the yellow field. This year the harvest had failed to prosper— the rain was erratic, and the farmer’s fate, more severe than ever.   At the edge of that field fear seized him— the market of buying and selling, creditors, brokers, spies, all sat waiting, ready to seize what was not theirs.   With fear he passed, beneath the burning sun; his skin was scorched, yet in his skeletal frame the courage of the heart endured.   So much had been declared— that everything would change when the government of equality arrived. But nothing had changed, and nothing ever would.   Yet mu...

All subjects of the Eastern king are mortal, yet the king himself had died long ago— still he leaves his shadow upon the throne, still he lends his hand to the business of the realm.   But deaths crowd daily at the palace gates, and the work of rule grows heavy, for fear of death rules the people. The learned summon speechless phantoms, the unlettered elders call from the abyss, and the king—dead yet not dead— conducts his royal labor amidst the dark, with half a belly fed, in seas of law and knowledge, in rivers of blood, his conscience trembles, while the people are deceived once more.   Those who wipe their tears, wash their dusty hands, and labor still— they too must one day die. For who is immortal, and where, and when? Each day survival is itself a death, struggle and protest the rhythm of life. Better perhaps to die a little every day than once for all, for who became immortal by one death alone?   The king dies every day, dispensing knowledge even in decay. You re...

In the attic room, while trying to catch a pigeon from the ceiling, an upturned pin pricked Tukus’s foot. The day before, when Didi was kissing her Mathematics tutor, Tukus had suddenly barged into the room. That sloppy, slurping kiss, and then the teacher’s desperate grappling at her chest—clawing, tearing, as if he could rip her breasts apart. Tukus marched straight in, his voice heavy with gravity: “Hey Didi, what’s going on here? Wait—I’m telling Mother.”   He bolted from the room, Didi racing after him. “You have no shame,” said Tukus. Didi twisted his ear sharply: “I’ve told you not to come into my room. Idiot.”   Tukus shot back, “What were you doing with Sir? Wait till Father comes, I’ll tell him.”   Didi softened. “Oh, nonsense. A cockroach had crawled on my chest—that’s why Sir touched it. And even if he did place his hand there—what of it? Would you like to try?”   Didi took Tukus’s hand and pressed it against her chest. Just then, the pigeon flew off from...

On the last day of the festival, Arpita, I beheld thee— behind the veil of thy hair, thine eyes did shine, like basil leaves anointed with sandal, pressed gently upon thy sacred form.   Now, when the harvest of paddy is ended, and the sweet rice lies steaming upon the veranda, thou walkest the path of milk, and I stretch my gaze as far as the eyes can wander, for in thy shape I see the gentle cow, pierced by its own horn of destiny.   In this land of the Mother-river, where exiles love the road more than the home, lightnings of longing gather in their hearts; upon the endless streets of swelling cities, lovers stand in rows, afflicted by fevers of desire.   Doubt awakes in me, for in thy silent breath the breast doth rise and fall; in thine oblique glance is irony and pride. This earth is not mine, I know it well— and unto him to whom thou gavest thy soul, thou art Arpita.   Or is it I who, pouring lemon’s sour into sugar, have wasted life in hypocrisy? This soil bel...

The opinions of class war and revolution, armed frenzy, fury, peasant uprisings, death camps, purges, civil unrest and change— where your shadow falls across my life, is that a sign of joy? Surely some hypocrisy lies within.   Opposing opinions, our communal orders— you speak with your tongue, while I hold on to my labor. Your feet climb my highest horn— what darker day could yet arrive?   Why does it take courage for gun and glory, while these dividers measure the world with sickle or hammer, and if they behead the thinker, is the world so much diminished?   On the dead body falls the dripping mark of central control; yet the mind of a free man they still search for endlessly.   My foolish head, reading ideologies, like an idiot turns the pages of power— and still man believes, still man loves to think. Will thought be halted by tickling provocation?   The hammer strikes, and the share of the plough becomes the sickle. Ah, if only I could love you instead, if o...

Now I think—this is the game, poetry itself, pages filled with erasures and crossings-out. If you remember, you were like a metaphor, seeing everything as play, all the innocent chastity— and is all this to be called a game?   I know what must be spoken, whether I go or not— I wonder if I shall return upon the same road. My mind floats, lying idle, thinking in a life too lazy to create anything new. All this is but mist, a sorcery of civilization, where the whole sky falls into darkness. When disaster enters life, a light glimmers for a moment, and silently the eyes behold— but then it sinks again beneath the quilt, in shelter.   Yet when you awoke, I had not thought it was only a dream, only a game. Upon the soil of reality imagination was destroyed, and love became a harlot beneath the insult of lecherous eyes, beneath the smell of wine. You had thought this was still a virgin life.   The day her menstruation ceased she knew the poem was finished, and a new story had be...

The whole city pulsed with dampness, as though the walls and pavements and sleeping bodies had been steeped overnight in fever. A rain of dawn had washed Calcutta, leaving her sweating and swollen, heavy with her own breath. Sunil leapt across the water with three quick bounds, landing on the pavement like a man who feared the earth might swallow him whole. Winter rain perhaps, but in Calcutta every shower was the same: the streets turned treacherous, the stones dissolved, walking fast became a crime against gravity. Yet the girl—ah, the girl moved as if the city were her conspirator—darting like a kingfisher, skimming, leaping, her feet accustomed to Calcutta’s wounded body, the city that both betrayed and carried her.   Mud gripped Sunil’s soles. The potholes yawned at him like the mouths of beggars. Communists had promised to mend them, but the streets had not believed. His shoes were new, two and a half days old, bought at Dharmatala with a pride that already felt foolish. Thei...