Poems on Darjeeling

Darjeeling deja’ vu

Silent roofs
Curl up inside
Purple fumes of uncertainty.

Courage-flags
T-r-e-m-b-l-e
Within cold tremor
On the bare breasts of
Old colonial streets.

All of a sudden,
Twenty one years of terror and tyranny
Fall down
Like a rotten egg.

Cool celebration
Rocks
Sleeping Stones
Static Dynamisms
And
A Still Storm.

End of political eclipse
Defame
‘Apolitical’ stands
Famous till now.

People start talking
Moving
Loving
And living politics
For once again.

And now
Who can stop them?
They are in festive mood
Enjoying
In their gala of struggle.

Numb air
Breaths in oxygen
When protest blows in the wind
Just like a reckless hip-hop song.

They’ve cracked again
The forgotten password
To log in the world of dignity.

‘Land of Mystic Thunderbolt’
Is roaring
Punk slogans of justice and equality:

“We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control.”

Colonial Transitions

They said
Colonial transition
Will bring in the freedom for all.

Colony still exists
In the disguise of freedom.

So, this freedom
Seems to be a mask
For freedom itself.

Tourists may feel emancipated by seeing
The sunrise from Tiger Hill.

But Darjeeling itself
Starves
seriously
For
Emancipation.

Sometimes
Face becomes more important
Than bread.

Blending of bloods and tears
Yielded
World class aroma
Of
‘Darjeeling Tea’
for more than two hundred dry years.

Faceless Darjeeling fights for its
Face
Lost under colonial annals.

A history
Covered by imperial ruins
Waits
To be explored
In the riverbed of The Teesta.

Darjeeling Torso

Tea
Tourism
Timber
Toy Train
And
Tear

Smile! Smile!
See the ghost of glory
Behold the spectre of dignity

A live torso
Lies discriminated
And deserted on the floor
Of democratic nation

They love and serve the nation
They tune in to patriotic songs
Searching their heads
To live in pride and peace
And searching their legs to stand and walk firm:
They tell a spade a spade

They are taught family planning
And communal fraternity

By nation they mean
Rivers and mountains and deserts
What else more?

What they know
Is
The nation is deaf and dumb


People Cried


People cried
For water

-They got corruption.

People cried
For freedom

-They were labeled separatists.

People cried
For identity

-They were hit by lathis and bullets.


And now
What should they cry for?

Darjeeling Metamorphosis

The stretched silence was a womb
For a rebel tornado

Winds stumble against
Anti wave currents

Dry cough of hills
Relapse
Unknowingly

Confusions start growing
Again In the farming terrains

Hospitalised
Cinchona plant
Waits for its nutritious breakfast and medicine

Colonial tea plants
Sneak
On the creeping democratic land

World famous flora and fauna
Join laughing club
To learn the art of laughing

The storm
Stare
From behind
The shoulders of Kanchenjunga

Journey
Still remains to be covered

Houses
Are in fear of losing roofs
In the storm which is moving
Inside the rooms