BASAB CHAUDHURI

If you belong to everyone,
You belong to no one.
That's the design.
That's how it's built.
...

The pleat speaks volumes about the effort
To maintain and express
Like a chisel on the marble floor
Making a surreal design.
...

Death is a leveler
An equalizer among unequal,
Even among all odds,
Certain among all uncertain,
...

A feeling -
Poetic
Or noetic,
I cannot discriminate,
...

Beauty is neither positive
Nor superlative,
It's comparative.
...

A point won
Is a point lost.
It is zero sum
On which you build
...

Stay.

While life is here,
stay with it.
...

He wrote, 'D-Ey-light'.
I said, Delight or Daylight?
He explained, 'Fusion.
Combinatorial.
...

Things fall apart,
The poet was spot on.

Things are falling apart.
...

Only when the sun sets,
It can see the day's travel.
Did cloud cover it,
or the rays touched all over!
...

Do not ask me why
This is how I hold on to -
A few words in the morning
Doesn't matter whether they
...

The first train and the last -
fully packed.

The first brings maids to the city.
...

Symptoms, yes
but diagnosis incomplete

Tension, yes
...

and then
gradually they moved to nearby towns
where they were mostly unnoticed
kind of burden
...

Class:
broken glass,
sharp edges
cut, bleed.
...

A pendulum
sways, left to right,
then backwards,
on and on,
...

Trash bin
in the kitchen,
under the sink.
Kitchen waste
...

You leave:
a vacuum
a sigh out of sight
an absence - palpable.
...

Search -
a word, an event, a face.

How many are ever needed?
...

You may disagree.
We are moving away.

We came close.
...