Dibyendu's WallScript

The New Face of Bengal ( Exiled Jibanananda)   I saw Bengal’s face once. Now— only the mask of men, ashen, leafless.   At midnight a jackfruit tree— its branch dangling— not fruit, but a man’s body, spinning slowly in the wind.   Scholars in silence. Professors sipping tea, poets turning pages of emptiness. In the thickets of snake-plants the shadows of brokers lengthen— in alleyways, clubs, parliament halls.   Teachers sleep hungry under the winter sky. The farmer gnaws at air, ties a rope of silence, hangs from the granary beam. Humanity’s pulse sinks into the riverbed.   I have seen: educated boys digging soil with rusted spades, their futures drowned in coal pits, their lungs coughing up centuries of dust.   Beside golden rice-fields stand a thousand sly merchants with their mouths red from stolen harvest.   I have seen: labourers tearing off their names, boarding night-trains to nowhere, their children left weeping beside broken tin roofs.   ...

Not every suicide you can see with your eyes. Not every suicide gets a postmortem!   That boy—scored ninety-four in Madhyamik. Still ran to basic training, so the Primary School job don’t slip away. Silent Suicide!   Boys and girls with Master’s degree, waiting, waiting like thirsty chatak birds— crossed the border of age. Suicide in Broad Daylight! But no postmortem was done.   That fresh twenty-two-year-old, proud B.Tech in his pocket, applied in thirty-two private firms for a 4,000-rupee job. Now gaming PUBG in tea stall. Happy Suicide! Suicide in Delight!   The farmer who grew potatoes on three bigha, sold at five rupees kilo— today buys at thirty-five a kilo. He decides, “No more farming next year.” Clean Suicide!   Four, five hospitals—he knocked all doors. No bed for him anywhere. An eighteen-year-old left, slapped the whole System on its face. Meanwhile, intellectuals swallow cyanide to “protect” themselves. Open Suicide!   And yes— there will be po...

In the mirror of fire I glimpse my own reflection. This body, too, must one day burn— those who gather at the pyre will define a life in endless adjectives: who stood close, who stayed away, how far honesty endured, how sinful, how flawed in nature, how much of the earth’s torment was carried on this path. Every man becomes a mirror in the life of another. I was watching myself in that fiery mirror. I carried debts like a dog— to those who tossed me bones stripped of flesh. Out of sheer hunger my gratitude is owed most to them. What they saw in me— though I knew— I never began a revolution, never raised a protest, never tried to be otherwise. With this dog’s life I agreed, a hundred percent, and I made it my pride to conceal this truth. Selling the values of life for the cheapest price, yet surviving— when I looked into the mirror, the reflection was that of a stray, gazing sorrowfully at the soul, seeking the true face behind the mask. In this world ...

I have always known how to suffer in silence. I can hide my pain. Even when the heart splits into two jagged halves, my lips still keep the smile stitched tight. No one ever notices. A small, unnecessary sorrow—yet perhaps never before had it come so piercing, so absolute.   When I first saw you, your cheeks were swollen with pimples. You were not beautiful—not in the way the world calls beauty. Yet the innocence etched across your face enthralled me. All my life I had searched and wearied myself for something nameless; suddenly I felt as if I had found it—within you.   Perhaps I would never have carried any expectation to your door, if not for the stubborn endurance I have always borne toward life. And then, in that deep forest—mist-choked daylight, where no sunbeam could pierce, where silence itself grew like moss on stone—I discovered you. Shilbhadra had warned me: that jungle is a labyrinth, a chakravyuha. There is an entrance, yes—but once you walk inside, there is no ret...

He sits alone, in quiet solitude, on the balcony. Around him, the world moves on— days unroll as they always do, mornings spilling into weary afternoons, time dragging its wounded limbs. He never imagined life would pass in such despair, each day dissolving into the sameness of the last.   The rush of time, the weight of progress, is like a river striking against a frail earthen dyke— the banks collapse, homes are torn apart, and life is scattered into exile. Days come, days go, the body weakens, even as the world pretends to flow forward. Is it motion, or only a metaphor that deceives the senses?   Once there was a heart that lingered on the banks of the Padma, restless, grieving, searching for permanence. Now the shores have drifted away— or perhaps it is only he who has grown old. Locusts swarm upon the modern mind, gnawing at its spirit, while nostalgia clings like a fever.   He remembers being a migrant soul, an exile returning from the other Bengal, bringing family ...

Indifferent, I drift through life, sliding along its edge, secretly hidden within the womb of darkness.   Here, the famished beasts tear and claw apart, as swarms of fleeting insects ignite a blood-red fire.   This pain— one day I will repay it. I will hurl my cold, blue blood upon the earth, a curse of flames.   One day I shall shatter your detached pride, your arrogant departure, your illicit, whorish gaze— I will smother it in the darkness of destruction.   Where no tenderness dwelt, where you erased all ancient divisions, when this fugitive life expires I will wash away every stain of sin, blood, and fat.   Detached, primal, I remain alive, friendless, abandoned of love. My hands, my heart— burned by fire, tormented in silence, anguish unspoken.   For long, for ages, harder than the hardest stone, my fists have clenched. You too, be prepared— for a new day, for the inevitable jihad. ...

Krishna Angelina, I will leave— wherever my eyes decide to wander. The same eyes that found you once beneath the martyrs’ monument, where a single word could cost a life, where desire bled into dream, and pain returned like an old lover.   No! I come back, pressing my eyes against yours, sharpening memory like an unused, rusted sword. I will strike— somewhere, in rage. Or perhaps, briefly, I will only lose myself.   Krishna Angelina, I will leave— wherever my eyes decide to wander. Because here, in this country of place and time and choice, I have already lost too much.   Your eyes— their call was a theft. Jealousy carried off my heart. And you— you spoke with an unfamiliar boy, closer than a whisper, while the astonished earth pretended not to watch.   Krishna Angelina, I will leave— wherever my eyes decide to wander. A sharp blade hidden, in Othello’s fury, I may lay it down somewhere, or keep it swinging from my side— my ancient Kurukshetra.   Or in some othe...