Monday, April 24, 2017

Diary of a Generation Below

Diary of a Generation Below.
Inch by inch, the night falls -
It's voice replaced by the jarring
Of a thousand air conditioners.
I remember when I was young,
one could hear the siren of the
last train that left Sealdah
for Plassey, or some forgotten
capital of my old country. The nights,
are loud now perhaps, or the trains
have chosen to be silent-even they are tired
Of the endless repetitions, the to and
fro between obscure hamlets.
"Once upon a time your grandfather,
had taken a train to Dhaka", baba said to me,
one of those nights, and I had thought
to myself when I grew up , I would do the same.
Like Stephen Daedalus, I had marked points
on the Atlas's of the Orient, places I must go,
places that were more fascinating than
the palaces of Samarkand, this place in the
East where Dadu grew up catching fishes,
and wallowing in the silt of the mighty
rivers-and if it were possible,
I would ask you to come with me.
You would fret, laugh and make all sorts
of discourses on sentimentality, but
agree to come, after all-
It was your home too.

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