Ajit Das

Eklavya, the forest dweller Nishada, motivated
by his intense desire to excel in the art of archery,
approached Dronacharya, the royal Astra-Guru,
imploring to accept him as one of his disciples.
...

When the sky is azure blue,
the horizon draws a line
between heaven and earth.
...

The dark thins out, the landscape
stirs slowly with hints of life;
the day begins for the old man living
in the house across the road.
...

When they were butchering innocent children
for revenge or using them as human shield,
enacting the most gruesome act of inhumanity,
another scene of a child giving life and light:
...

When I am alone with myself,
your face still surfaces
from the heaps of old memories.
...

Thick December fog wrapping around,
she had left the office after night shift.
Suddenly she found her bank card missing
and no money to hire a taxi or board a bus.
...

‘You said it' - this discomforting reminder
to big egos, stripping away their masks,
bringing out the buffoon from leaders,
outwardly hallowed, inwardly doublespeak,
...

Mother India! We are all your children,
adoring you, chanting ‘victory to thee'.
But, as in a family, we grow unequally:
many privileged, many more neglected.
...

Bent on a pair of crutches
he makes his tentative move.

Stretching the left crutch
...

A bony figure in tattered dress,
hair dry, unkempt, face unshaven,
but his eyes in the sockets burning –
is it the fire of hunger or rage?
...

World Heart Day! What’s it all about?
I know of human heart, animal heart,
but never heard world having a heart.
They say it is human heart, merging
...

Brute of a word! Why do you never
get off the back of my mind?

All day long I am tied to you.
...

If you're a lesser mortal, have you ever tried
to get through a bureaucrat
who somehow supposes taking calls,
picking up the phone himself, dwarfs his official status?
...

We may not have fear from friends and foes,
nor be afraid of the past, the present and the future,
nor harbour fear during the day and the night.
So says the wise man in the pages of the scriptures.
...

Subverting the system yielding no escape route
and law, finally, taking its own course,
the VIP feigns chest pain, moves in an ambulance
from hospital to hospital for urgent medical aid,
...

The snow-white body, red beacon, siren
fitted on the top,
the ambulance waits at the hospital's gate
for emergency calls.
...

Let us face it squarely: what exactly
is the job of a poet?
Perhaps this much is conceded: to relay life.
...

Outside, the night thickens
its wall of silence,
dissolving all echoes of sound.
...

Peaks, and still higher peaks
towering into the immense blue
beckon us as ever
from the height of their majestic splendour.
...

With so much of kneeling in obeisance
or perhaps only in ritual of habit
throughout my life,
praying for your benevolence
...