Dibyendu's WallScript

Too many words— I cannot bear them. Darkness pleases me more, sitting alone with an old desire for quiet.   Too many voices— I cannot endure them. I search, almost to death, for a friend who will sit with me, face to face, without speech.   Complete surrender, solitary practice— the language of joy slowly fades away.   Disciplined air, a portrait of sunset, rises in fierce lament. Mute, I sit and think.   What need to know the depths of water’s story? What use in this chatter of restless curiosity?   Can you sit before me— speechless— for a century?   Bitter grief turns corrupt beneath the weight of relationships built only of words.   At the clang of language, institutions tremble, their wires snap.   What if no words at all? Only eyes locked with eyes, lifelong, between you and me.   Silent love-speech— in the courtyard of a new sun, quietly, we love.   If words fall away, let bridges rise in thought, let all conversation be understood...

A budget was announced.   The old woman, wrapped in a greasy quilt, slipped into the shadowy room by the roadside. Outside, winter pressed heavily; winds whistled through the city’s hollow bones. She left the entire room aside and curled herself into a corner against the wall. No one in this world knew whether she had eaten tonight or not. Perhaps only God, in His secrecy, knew such details. The moment she lay down, the old woman was absorbed into deep sleep. Beneath the quilt there was no stir of movement. From the outside one might have mistaken her for some inanimate thing, covered with a discarded old blanket and thrown away in a dark corner. Believe firmly—it was the merciful Lord Himself who had designed this illusion. In the budget it was promised that in the next five years, fifteen million jobs would be created.   On the main road of the city stood a two-storeyed, well-decorated house. The front room on the ground floor was being demolished to make way, perhaps, for s...

Soft leaves fall upon my chest— come, let us kiss, after so many lifetimes.   So many births have passed, so many days I have not entered your room.   Your breasts, filled with milk— let me drink, press my lips to your nipples, make the green greener.   From your red river flows desire, its current surging. Blue blood pulses through veins of thought. Let me enter— into the endless cavern.   In the folds of sweet sugar desire gathers, layer by layer. At the doorway of your womb joy’s nectar churns unceasing.   I drift— bodiless, borne upon the world’s illusion.   And then— looking into your eyes, leaving a kiss upon your lips— love, passion, the body’s own tenderness fills the earth’s perception.   This, the household, the infinite mercy of a woman’s body. Here, on this shore, life leaves its gift.   After so long, I have found joy. Do not send me back empty-handed.   My heart—saffron, my path—summoned by life.   One drop of seed I must l...

Only manual well of the village was running away! Napla was chasing after it. Or so Ratna claimed to have seen. Whether she had witnessed it awake or in dream, that she could not swear upon. To uncover the truth, perhaps the CBI—or at the very least the CID—was required. Otherwise, the public would simply have to go on living inside a lie.   But where did Napla go? It has been three days without a trace. His wife, his children, and his old mother refused to believe that Napla had gone walking down the bypass after Well, toward Calcutta.   The most boastful boy of Tili Para, Nidhiram, declared that he had seen Napla being chased by two civil policemen. One was half-starved, the other a cripple—so how could they ever catch him? After a short sprint, the policemen too decided that for the salary they drew every month, such exertion was not worth the sweat. Instead, they slipped into a park along the highway and fined the couples hiding in bushes fifty rupees apiece.   But wh...

I thought to leave a stone behind, to mark the stream of joy I’ve known, the tears I saw, the wrong, the love— all etched upon its rugged bone.   Would such a gift be just, or vain? I wonder if a life’s divide can be accepted, closed with words, yet commas urge me on to write.   At midnight, by my mother’s feet, the hibiscus folds its scarlet wings; the water lifts, the air grows thin, and age takes breath from living things.   No one has kept their secret thoughts, and still I sketch tomorrow’s face— yet what is future? Will it come? Or yesterday’s a truer place?   A shadow calls me to the ghat, a beggar’s form, her hands extend; “ Leave me a grain, an endless gift, your burden carried to the end.”   But is it simple—leave a stone? Who bears its weight through all the years? What man would take another’s grief, and guard it close with silent tears?   At night, no sleep will visit me, my mind half-closed, my eyes still wide. Who scattered grain along the st...

Salvador Dalí’s clock, with its ticking like acid drops, announces: midnight.   This time is a snare, woven in strange meshes, a three-dimensional carnival where democracy pretends to dance. The minute hand swings like a pendulum, obedient to gravity, unchanging.   They dragged a young man from his home— into the still night. Everyone punished, each according to his labor.   Civilization changes, voices demand change: “ Let us walk, let us roam— now is the right time.” But time itself spins in half-circles, like a kite in crooked flight.   Let this time not change for politics alone. In the dark foundations of this land, a blood-red future blossoms, a double-layered snare of hours.   A girl raped. An old man starves on a roadside corner. A thief tied to a lamppost, beaten. Migrants torn from villages, scattered on city pavements. A girl dressed up, waiting on the street. A boy, educated, filling forms on the steps of the GPO. A farmer’s body hanging from the bra...

At the speed of light through the void of space a girl in a frock once sketched a cloud of fleeting blue. But in the weight of our busyness, the machinery of daily life, we failed to notice spring’s trembling heart. When sorrow comes, when every horizon darkens, the clouds themselves begin to sweat. Then I looked at you: by the bend of the river, wind unbridled, you painted rain upon your face and eyes. Is time even there— or is it gone? The moment after arrives, the moment before vanishes forever, leaving only the false syllable we call reality . Years passed, calendars shed their pages. To hold back time’s light-speed flow is an impossible burden. One day, I sat thinking of ancient times— drifting in imagination across ages. What had it all been? The pulse of love, the drowning rival of tears— were they only still frames, two-dimensional images, a single camera-shot of eternal life, where nowhere was written the touch of your hand by the riverbank?...

Whether I go or not, the Ajay flows south. Whether I come or not, autumn’s last night brings chill.   In the air, a fragrance of flowers drifts; in a spring evening, her thick black hair carries a fair of colors and kohl— whether my breath receives it or not.   Down the riverbank she stepped, her sari red with alta, the strange, unreadable girl. Did I see her? Did she not look back at all?   Layer by layer, the kash-flowers break, blue-throats shiver in the southern wind. I too break, or am perhaps still whole— like Yudhishthir who never turns back.   So many roads, roads upon roads, a sorrowful city in the plains. I walk on— two, three, forty years— who knows when it ends? Beneath the endless sky, wildflowers remain.   I loved, clutching at straws; perhaps I never showed it, perhaps I withdrew in hatred, vanishing into distance. And still, the shehnai sounds— then and now, again and again.   Nothing at all, or perhaps something once— you came, with sweet r...