Mandakranta Sen

Standing beneath the balcony
I'll flirt with the boys at the bus-stop
Look intimately at some other man
Standing next to you
Take his hand, giggle, say
'I'll see you at the Academy,
You'll go, won't you?'
With a small wave at you
I'll cross the road quickly
Alone, or with someone else
In no hurry at all, in no pain
You've been smoking an indifferent cigarette
For the longest time
The bus-stop has emptied out
The young men have left for the Academy
Whose production tonight, by the way?
Standing beneath the empty balcony
I'm flirting with the posters
...

The heart's a disobedient girl
Don't explain her studies to her
Her textbooks are ripped, with her spit she has
Rubbed off the indelible script of fate
In the blue grammar book
She's scribbled boys' names
Even their pictures
The heart's a disobedient girl
You want to punish her? She won't care
...

Wait, before being torn and ripped
Let me memorise your lips
The border of grass beyond
The lips; the slightly fragile
Intensity; the danger-engendering
Heat; the irresistible, excellent
Rain; so much of it, so much
And, on this bursting summer day,
From the northwest corner of your lips
A storm arrives

I stand with my feet on the frontier
Within our lips there's a growth of
Barbed wire. Suppose I'm dying to visit
Your lips today, I think it will
Take many years. Still, tell me
Try to remember and then tell me
What was it that really changed
After our lips were partitioned
Besides our kisses?
...

I can tell from a man's eyes
Whether he will ever
Be my lover

On roads, in buses, at friends' houses
Sometimes my eyes are pinned to
Vulnerable faces

I know one of them
Will make me drown
In salty devastation

Bursting irresistibly through the noonday earth
A sweat-drenched back will rise
One day

I can tell all of this
When you've only just
Appeared on the stairs
...

I can stop wearing jeans
If you ask me to. I'll become
Another woman quite easily
That the girl who loves you
Has short hair, not slicked with oil
(You told someone, I think)
Is impossible. Very well
I'll be a stranger to myself
From tomorrow, if you tell me that
A river will flow around your feet
When a blue sari is unfurled
I will toss away in the breeze
Each of my masculine habits
It's easy to give up wearing jeans
If I have to turn into a river
You know how to swim, don't you?
...

The Arjun tree stood alone in that field
An Aryan male - a pillar of aristocracy
All the other trees bowed to it
This was merely the beginning of the story

From somewhere came the Krishnachura seed
A few years later she was a young woman
A Santhal girl, with crimson in her hair
At once Arjun wanted her as his own

She was not a girl who would submit
In spring she dressed up without help, alone
She wasn't drawn to the Aryan male
She was busy making the buds bloom

Last night's flowers had fallen from her hair
Rippling leaves had woven clothes for her
Arjun - he was an Aryan male, who thought
Only he could claim beauty so fair

From the distance the Arjun tree could see
The Krishnachura's cascading heart
Bewitched by beauty, his perplexed eyes
Wondered when he'd find his way to it

I'd better finish this story quickly
The Krishnachura is far too obstinate
Her pride won't let her sell herself
She'd rather be a neighbour or a friend

The story isn't quite so simple
Arjun shed his bark, sheds it still
But the Santhal girl can shed blood
The Aryan male accepts he cannot win

Be reborn as an Arjun tree
Consider the Krishnachura a friend
Don't confuse me with others, upright one
When I bleed, shed your bark and call me then
...

The neighbourhood was talking in its sleep
With the rock of night on its head
The impenetrable lane was frozen
When quietly
The flying nightdress
Leapt from the terrace
As though it had wings
Or at least was supposed to have wings
In most homes in town
The last scene was playing
The advertisement for which
Had shrivelled, wet with sleep
In every sophisticated window
At that moment, without telling anyone
The sleeping nightdress
Set off in the sky
The curtains went dark in the windows
The red and blue lights went out in the masks' eyes
A strange sleep all over the city
Mistaken advertisements moist with sleep
Ignoring all this, the burning nightdress
Flew away, wildly astray
...

It was just water and more water
How long can you savour such depths
I was lonely all over again
So I drew a wooden ship

Did the ship have a mast?
I really cannot recall anymore
It probably didn't have all a good ship should
In form, just barebone

Everywhere just water and more water
I kept losing my way all the time
The sky was dark too, in the shops of stars
Sales were dull beneath the roof of clouds

The wooden ship that I drew will sink
Will memories of the shipwreck make you weep?
In the darkness you had grown distant
Tomorrow you too will be an abandoned lighthouse
...