I stand in the echo of
Myself
Waiting to decipher
To discern

My true self
Undiluted by sophistication
Unsullied by rumours
Unhurried by punctuality

My image bounces off me
My sounds I strain to hear
The echo crisscrosses the distance
Befuddled, in deep despair

What I can see
Is not the true me
What I can hear
Is a voice unfamiliar

What I project
Perhaps not what I am
Unknown to the echo
Hides the true man

Subir Chakraborty / 14th Feb 2018

When youth decides to fade
And the halo begins to dim
When the leaves start to fall
And autumn seeps in

It’s not the big successes
Which make you gasp
Nor the big ticket events
Which adorned your past

Time to take in the small things
And begin to savour life
Time to shift gears, and enjoy
The non-events in your stride

Time to watch the butterfly
Emerge from the caterpillar
Time to watch the birds
Sing with rare ardour

Time to try out new hobbies
Time to uplift your mood
Time to reconnect with friends
Time for a renewed childhood

Subir Chakraborty / 18th Feb 2018

Ha! Democracy
Nah! Democracy
For better or for worse
Sheer ecstasy

The first world preaches
And the third world listens
Freedom and equality
Together they glisten

What they forget to teach
Are the smart lobby groups
Hiding behind the curtain
Along with their troops

When the third world adopts
They are taken aback
By the sheer inconsistency
Of democracy at heart

And by the time they realise
The goons have stepped in
To wield their power
With democratic sheen

The common man aghast
At the sheer enormity
Of how ideals lie twisted
And mauled in totality

How routinely identical
The common man’s plight
Shrouded in uncertainty
With only hope in sight

Ha! Democracy
Nah! Democracy
The common ideal
Uncommon notoriety

Subir Chakraborty / 14th Feb 2018

The romance of youth
Is torrid and tumultuous
Laced with impatience
Spirited and incautious

The romance of mid-age
Haltingly strolls
Burdens and responsibilities
Taking its toll

The romance of old age
Goes like a dream
None of the impetuousness
Of the late teens

Or the ambivalence
Of the mid-life years
When career and children
Intervene between the layers

Strains of early years
Now a distant memory
Of successes and failures
Laced with history

Each day a pleasant saunter
In the autumn of your life
Just holding of hands
And looking into the eyes

Subir Chakraborty / 10th Feb 2018

Man woman
Woman man
Equally unequal
Delicately imbalanced
Soothingly volatile
Lovingly cruel
Cruelly caring
Uncaringly sympathetic
Sympathetically egoistic
Egotistically tender
Tenderly hurting

Yet
Beautifully bonded
Affectionately disposed
Sweetly murmuring love songs
Life long

Subir Chakraborty / 20th Aug 2017

I can hear the antique
Whisper out its name
I can smell the antique
Wafting out its fame

Lying discarded, neglected
Sitting silently in a corner
Ruing its past glory
Completely lost, a loner

Yet the pride remains
Of a long glorious past
A time of bravery and valour
A period turned to dust

Holding the piece, I wonder
When my time shall come
When I shall lie unnoticed
Stranded, deserted, abandoned

The antique now speaks to me
In a voice loud and clear
Do not dwell in the past
Nor anticipate the future

Live your life here and now
Enjoying every minute
For who knows when
You shall become an antique

Subir Chakraborty / 8th Feb 2018

The power of the truth
Determines the power of the lie
One existing because of the other
Conjoined twins at birth

The power is heady
Seductive, sinewy, lithe
Winding its way up the spine
Till it settles firmly in the brain

Turning the equations upside down
With a heady mix of control, authority
Playing havoc with the tapestry
Converting symmetry to asymmetry

Can power be detached from the truth
Or from the lie
Can truth and lie exist
Without the ambition of ascendancy

Truth for the sake of truth
And the lie to exist
Only for revealing the truth
In its clinical clarity

So that equanimity and equipoise
Can continue unhindered
And the mind can traverse smoothly
On its path of reasoning and objectivity

Subir Chakraborty / 4th Feb 2018

The nod of the head
A few half spoken murmurs
And then the pause
Always the pause

For a pause can speak
Not merely the hiatus
Nor the unspoken interval
Between two spoken words

One can deal with a word
Fight, argue, agree, disagree
Vehement, passive
Scream, soothe; involved, indifferent

But a pause
Always a pause
A mystery, an enigma
Conveying a myriad meanings

Never superficial
Or repetitively boring
Each screaming for attention
Crying for its unique space

A pause
Always a pause
Pregnant with possibilities
Never without a cause

Subir Chakraborty / 1st Feb 2018

Enveloped by the crescendo
Of the piercing silence
I peel off the barriers one at a time
And allow my being to confront its own bitterness

What can it inform me, I’m curious to know
Of my own frailties, my failings
Trapped in the innermost recesses
Guarded zealously by the sentries of my mind

Protecting me from internal violence
Which can rip me apart
The realizations and the fears
The self confessions of weaknesses and unlawful desires

But the time approaches presently to dare it
In a now or never act
To free my soul from the bindings
And let it soar free, ever free

Subir Chakraborty / 29th Jan 2018