Nail Cutting And Love Poem by Malay Roy Choudhury

Nail Cutting and Love


Tagore, this is for you after one fifty years:
who clipped your nails in offshore lands-
that foreign lady? Or the chick adulators?
There isn't any photograph of yours with
your hands placed on laps of young ladies
cutting nails; your feet on Ocampo's knee?

May be the girls on whose shoulderGandhi placed
his wings, cut his nails. As you know, it's so painful
to reach the nail-cutter up to one's feet atold age-
oh, men like me without young girls for company
are aware. Love's strange demand from senile age.

Gossipers say Sunil Ganguly did have for each nail
a struggling poetess. Joy Goswami also have had
the same; the girls closed eyes and jumpedinto muck.
I'd seenShakti Chattopadhyay's lover clipping his nails
in the small Chaibasa room. Does Sharat do same for Bijoya?

Yashodhara, did Trinanjan ever cut your nails?
Subodh, have you ever took Mallika's feet
on your lap and cut her nails? Just a glance
at the feet of a poet tells you how lonely he is.
Think of Jibanananda; he has been searching for
Banalata for thousand years for his nails to be cut.
(Translation of Nokh Kata O Prem)
Mumbai 2010