How do you define poverty
Where do you draw the line
How do you define this concept
To stand the test of time

When a rich man wastes food
And thinks nothing of charity
Would you call it mere selfishness
Or a variant of extreme poverty

When a man in need of the basics
Doesn’t have to think twice
About sharing meagre resources
With a heart warming smile

Would you still call him indigent
Crippled with dire poverty
Or would you think of his affluence
In spreading his generosity

Would you place him a notch higher
Than the rich who care to donate
A tiny fraction of their earnings
For gaining heavenly probate

Would you admire his courage
For sharing his all
For daring to make an attempt
And standing really tall

Subir Chakraborty / 1st May 2018

It takes almost a lifetime
To graduate from the earthly to the divine
From sheer lust to undying love
From the material to the sublime

The greed for the body
Has to step back a feet
For true realisation to emerge
For instant gratification to recede

For the moment to become momentous
For imbalance to transmute to balance
For joy to metamorphose to ecstasy
For the instant to evolve to permanence

For when the ethereal seizes you
And begins to cradle your heart
Your mate transforms to a soulmate
With true love finding its mark

Subir Chakraborty / 6th April 2018

This pandemic gave me an opportunity
To meet this very important person
Someone close to my heart
Myself

Have delved within deeply
Contemplated, introspected, meditated
Often talked to myself, the person
I want to understand, unravel

The meeting is not serenely pleasant as expected
For multiple traumas lurked in the shadows
Multiple fears, embarrassments
Many errors of judgment

It is not a cake walk
When the person I think I am
Is trying to moult to a new avatar
The person I really am

Zones of conflicts, compromises, greed, desires
Lie shattered on the landscape of my consciousness
As the person who I truly am
Struggles to find its rightful space

The release of tension, negative energy
That ensues with the process
Is electrifying yet calming, tempestuous yet silently soothing
Taking tons of payload off my chest

Making me a free man once again
No more enslaved to a make believe persona
No more a serf to my own tinsel creation
No more afraid to face myself

Subir Chakraborty
23rd Dec 2020

You love me, you say
I reply, I love you too
You turn back and ask
Do you really do

Is it just a force of habit
Or is it just good to hear
Cannot say for sure
Nothing is really clear

If I say I mean it
And you also say the same
Does it impart a new meaning
To a relationship already tame

Or does it raise it
To a slightly higher level
A reminder of sorts
That all is actually well

Perhaps a cue
To pause and think
For a partner you take for granted
And a relationship supposedly in the pink

Subir Chakraborty/ 10th April 2018

When the road less travelled beckons
When the unknown sends you a summon
When certainty tires you out
And you want to run the marathon

The hazy path lying ahead
May be both dangerous and deviant
It is not the roses which draw you
But the thorns garnishing the stem

When your heart yearns for a way out
From the monochrome existence engulfing you
You do not need to think twice
To embrace the romance of the new

The journey through the extremities
Tests your skill at each step
For every success that you mount
Failures lie strewn along the breadth

New people, new roads, old fears
Slowly give way to a new you
Stronger, bolder and more evolved
Ready to face the world anew

Subir Chakraborty / 28th May 2018

 

Life is not a bunch of notes
Cradled in sweet symphony
Neither a lovely string quartet
Creating melodious rhapsody

Really a nosegay of sounds
With peaks and abysses
A bouquet of near opposites
With frequent hits and misses

The hits lift your spirits
While the misses cause pain
For the former you take credit
And the latter curse your Dame

If you care to analyse it closely
And dissect all the layers
Life is actually teaching you lessons
From both successes and failures

You can always be on top
If you maintain your calm and poise
Unperturbed and undisturbed
Amidst the chaos and the noise

Subir Chakraborty / 16th April 2018

Why do we constantly desire
This ring of certainty
To surround us permanently
To provide a modicum of satiety

Why do we constantly desire
The absolute opposite dimension
Of what has induced evolution
And made us intelligent humans

A strange contradiction in terms
Where we want to progress
Yet ceaselessly seek and pray
For a painless process

When we know for certainty
That uncertainty forces us to think
More so in a situation
When we are standing on the brink

When we know for certainty
That the path to an enriched future
Lies not through the ring of certainty
But through the ring of fire

Subir Chakraborty / 30th April 2018

My tryst with life
My tryst with nature
My tryst with myself
My struggle for the future

What I receive easily
I do not always treasure
And what I long for
Goes beyond my measure

What I want to give
May be minuscule, tiny
What I want to conquer
My moments, my destiny

May be the truth
Is what I want to say
But what comes out
Are half-truths everyday

Each day I rise
With a fresh resolve
Before I go to bed
I beg to be absolved

Who am I
Is the question to ask
What I might discover
Is a face with a mask

Subir Chakraborty / 6th May 2018

The past of the instant
Is enduring, enchanting, beautiful
While the instant itself
Dissolves gradually into starry ether

And the remnants which persist
Are voids of sheer beauty
Which remain entangled delicately
In the crevices of my mind

Floating daintily in my imagination
Bearing a life of their own
To flower, to seed and to grow
To embellish and to freely flow

For beauty belongs to no one
Owing allegiance only to itself
For it cannot ever be enslaved
By human greed or pelf

Subir Chakraborty
15th Oct 2020

Tomorrow we shall scale the mountain
Tomorrow we shall share the pain
Tomorrow we shall seek true freedom
Tomorrow we shall again be men

Tomorrow is just a concept
Tomorrow is just a postponement
Of what you need to do today
Of what constitutes the urgent

Tomorrow may never come
If you continue to procrastinate
Tomorrow may be just a mirage
If you continue to hesitate

Am I ready today
To face tomorrow’s question
For the tomorrow I dream of
Is knocking today at my bastion

Today is the only day
That we live at this moment
Today is the only time
On which we can comment

Live today
As if tomorrow may never come
Love today
When your heart is as yet young

Subir Chakraborty / 8th Aug 2018