Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 8, Number 1. May 2025. ISSN: 2581-7094
Chennai
Eternal
--- Uma Raghunath
Where land meets sea in a humid
embrace
Chennai stands firm with an ageless grace
Once Madras born of colonial
might
Now a city's soul reborn in light
It sings in temples and cinema
halls
In jasmine air and Marina’s calls
A refuge to some who flee the
storm
To others the tempest itself in form
Sarees sway in Ranganathan street
A chaos where daily lives still meet
It nurtures the lost with quiet
care
Yet roars with rage in protest flare
A lullaby sung by an auto’s hum
And the metro's heart now learning to drum
Idli and filter kaapi at dawn
A comfort found long after it's gone
The salt of sweat the tang of
brine
Mark every step on Mount Road’s spine
The sky breaks open in monsoon
pain
Yet joy is born in each flooded lane
A whisper of past in Fort’s proud
stone
A future coded in tech zones grown
The smell of books on Moore
Market shelves
Or bytes that speak in startup selves
It shelters saints and rebels
alike
From Marina march to Kilpauk strike
Beaches cradle lovers and loss
Kites and grief in parallel gloss
Time sleeps in Mylapore’s slow
breath
While Velachery races ahead of death
It frightens with its ceaseless
pace
Yet grants the stranger a quiet place
From slums where survival writes
its script
To mansions with histories tightly gripped
There’s pain in the alleys of
Parry’s soul
And hope where young dreams dare to stroll
Chennai is heat that holds your
skin
And memories you carry deep within
A map of moments drawn in sand
A city that vanishes yet still stands
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Bio:
Umasree Raghunath,
a senior IT professional, blogger, poet and published author. An active social worker working in the area of
diversity and inclusion.
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