Teesta Review: A
Journal of Poetry, Volume 8, Number 1. May 2025. ISSN: 2581-7094
--- Debleena Mukherjee
The city’s chrome and
steel shadows both forge and embroider that hanky sized lawn,
The sunlight caressing
the geometric streets traces the quaint phrase
“a charming morn”.
Sophocles, Socrates, and you my friend, often
meet at this Polis in the rush hours,
You haggle over the expensive existence
labelled ‘Life’ as you guzzle cheap beer.
Here sunsets and
seasons paint their colours on the graffiti,
and the apartments,
While the paint peels
off the old houses, and tired trees doze in the relic gardens.
In the city, the
railway stations clank with the cacophony of livelihood and more:
The clamour of desperate liveliness of those
who throng here for an El Dorado.
Then there are those
who live in this city, in cramped or sprawling quarters,
Chic French windows, or
a slit with a glass; they view this as
their home forever.
The urban urgency that
pulsates on the tarred roads and on the dusty gold laburnums,
It also pulses in people’s
veins as roadside stalls and neon lit pizza hoardings beckon.
The blank faces of houses with windows are blind to the world
with an invisible sky,
Do you know that in
this city the bright lights highlight stories of ordinary lives!
The walls of the buildings are high or low, gated or
fenced, from prying eyes,
Yet there is a bonding
among strangers who come to the same supermarket nearby.
There is no “ hello”,
but often an absentminded smile as they meet again on the road,
Every stranger is
reassured with a lonesome comfort that we will meet again at the store.
I choose to sit at a cafe on the sidewalk, with a
coffee , cake, and in my own personal space,
Soon I am enmeshed in a
wondrous welter of voices, colours, and captions written on strangers’ faces.
This is the city where
planes zoom casually through the morning fog to other cityscapes;
And smog chokes your breath but through this gray
grit a cart trundles jasmines and, hibiscuses.
As you stroll on the
sidewalk or elbow through the frenzied shoppers chasing festival offers,
Stop for a moment at
that tiny temple under the banyan and a wordless prayer do offer.
Fear stalks the lone
soul walking or driving down the wide roads, or the hidden winding lanes,
Streetlights show lurid
faces through the windscreen, and the shape of darkness grips with vicious
fangs.
Also there are the
by-ways and street corners that have remote postal numbers, names and codes,
But in the friendly
dusk the streets resound with the laughter
of friends who live on this road.
Cities rise; cities
fall, history unfolds and fades in the city that is both home and the
battlefield ,
You find a middle class niche, then the traffic of ambition’s cars lure you
with a Mercedes dream.
Walk down the Main
Street , see the scintillating malls and an ornate cupola squeezed in between,
In a pitch dark corner
you get the stench of garbage piles that the municipal body forgot to clean .
But walk on, walk
away, and your senses are dazzled, your
tastebuds are tingling too:
Aromas of exotic
cuisine tickle your nostrils , and your feet itch to buy the Jimmy Choos.
City lights, starlight,
moonlight, neon lights, and all the lights in the far horizon you do see,
While concrete
highrises dream in the clouds, and window grilles trap the window box’s leaves.
This is the city where
we live, and make room for the world that seeks an apartment block,
This is the city where
lights glow, bulbs break, people straggle, people grow —it’s a city : a
paradox!
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Bio:
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