kolkata jingles

Songs for Spring

“Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear.”

I

Morning seeps through
The smell of unclean sweat.
One by one the blackened words
Flash across the dizzy rush-
“how many deaths?how?”.
The throng of nameless faces pass-
Jerk, nudge, push, trip.
The mouse in lab begins the run.

II

The whips crack throughout the day.
Ticking clock’s the rhythm divine.
Kling klang beep cling,
Click copy paste click;
Shadows are flushed down the toilets.
Click copy paste click.
Sighs are squeezed through greasy lips,
Sluggish drop the soiled cuffs.

III
Once again the muddy rush;
Waves on waves of stillborn eyes.
At last arrives the promised end-
A riddling roar of digital kin;
Mothers wives and mothers-in-law-
Love weep shout plot,
And bills and lists and calls and bills.
Trembling fingers crawl for pills.

IV

Eyelids muse at scratched up walls
As island-riven bedsheets snore.
Either a daily dose of blank
Or just a fruitless physical drill.
Only during rarest nights,
Shining stardust showers forth
And painting eyes with rainbow dreams…

Torn by the heat of stagnant blades.


A beggar starts his jarring song,
Feebly stretching stinking arms-
A hapless quest for absent alms.