Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 7, Number 1. May 2024. ISSN: 2581-7094
--- Sankar
Narayan Mallick
When he came
from Kolkata,
The youngest
son,
There was no
flight ticket then for him,
And he took the
sad, somnolent train.
He had got a
sudden phone call from his eldest brother
That there was
serious ailment of father,
And he had to come
home.
When he stepped
into the house,
There was a
sudden and sad silence.
His companion and mentor, his father
His own teacher
of Mathematics and English,
After a tired
day, with a few cigarettes to stoke him up,
Was now no more!
He could not see
him for the last time
Maybe, somewhere
within, he was weary of witnessing it
And refused the
reality of the scene.
Siblings, six in
all,
Burst into tears
on seeing him come after it was all over.
He could hardly
go up to join the lament,
Only half a drop
of tear
Slided half-way
down his right check,
As if his grief
he was keeping frozen
To be taken out
and looked at later.
A void was
around him in the mute house.
A void in the
room where his father sat.
A void on the
roads he had walked and his bed.
A void in the
writing desk, and beside the radio set.
A void into
which once or twice,
His father’s
image came sailing in;
In solitary
nights, simple dreams, life-like and so real
Telling him
whatever was empirical,
And for the
world to see in the light of day, was not all!
Even now I take
it out sometimes,
On holidays and
holy days, in noontime and at midnight
To look again at
that half a drop of tear
And lo, it is
all there,
Expansive like a
desert,
Like the immense
night sky.
The void that is
so vivid,
And keeps
flowing on and on
Like a wide wild
river!
Meditation
---
Sankar Narayan Mallick
Emptying the
mind,
To be mindful.
One looks at it,
It is so
soothing and soulful.
The power of the
Null
To touch
Nihilism
The
pure and contentless
Neti-Neti
The
continuous denial.
It
fills it all
With
a vast silence
Whence
comes all the music,
All
notes and many a nuance.
Taking
it all and moving beyond
Transporting
one to a trance,
Whence
all movements ensue
And
comes all disorder, delight and dance.
Neti-neti
Meaning
the infinite ,
It
is the canvas of all arts
It
is the soul of music around which
We
play all concerts !
It
is Agape, Rahim and Sufiana
It
is Tao, Shinto and Zen.
It
is Om, Amen and Meditation
It
is infinite and it is Null.
It
is being nothing and being all.
It
is void, so tranquil and tenuous
And
almost not there!
And
yet it is vivid, vibrant, vast
It
is all love and all power !
(Notes
:
Neti-Neti
– Means ‘not this,not this’, an endless negation
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Bio:
Sankar
Narayan Mallick is a graduate from Ravenshaw
College, Cuttack and a postgraduate in Management from Utkal University. He has
worked in the field of agriculture and rural development in Odisha, Assam, West
Bengal, Tamil Nadu, UP and Mizoram in various capacities in NABARD. He is a
bilingual writer in English and Odia. His passion is reading different genres
of literature in English, Odia, Hindi, Bengali, and Assamese and listening to
music. He is also into editing, reviewing and translation of books and studying
the nuances of different cultures.
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