First Class in Room 016

 

No longer that young, but still young

Enough for life to be an adventure

Of possibilities…

 

 Even, if looking at others,

some

Feel they are already behind,

Small town, old fashioned dregs of history;

 

Cursed be their loving parents

(oh, why couldn’t they let go?).

Their beloved parents.

So embarrassing, so…

 

 A class

Full of (silent) expectation,

Most will find their voice;

Some their destiny.

 

Room 016

Never disappoints those that seek

 

 -GJV Prasad

Retd. Prof at CES,JNU

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Catering to both the dog and cat communities

 

There once was a girl in a flat

And she had a naughty tomcat

He fell from the balcony

And dropped stories three

But he survived despite all that.

 

There was a dog who called himself Clue

He wanted to be human like you

So he walked on hindlegs

Drank beer to the dregs

And finally developed the flu. 

 

Rittika Dhar

M.A. Batch of 2020

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‘Nothing is easy, not even poetry’

 

I look for poetry everywhere:

In between the shifting clouds and the shuffling feet,

Or the birds that journey past my window.

Before a mosquito, my Muse’s ambassador,

Brings me a loud ringing couplet, right up to my ear,

And finally settles down on my hand

For a drink or two-

I watch,

‘Nothing is easy, not even poetry’ I sigh.

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Madhure Akilla. C

 M.A. Batch of 2020

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The Room Of My Life 

(Anne Sexton appropriation of the poem by the same name) 

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Here, 

in the room of my life 

the objects remain the same. Posters 

as I had left them, fairy lights unlit since I left,

the metal leaves of the wind-chime chiming,

knickknacks covered in a velvet of dust, 

books read and unread like old people, waiting 

for someone to pick them up, 

the clock, burdened with the exertion of timekeeping

strikes the same hour twice a day, the table fan 

is the only thing in motion 

in this torpid March heat, the mirror turns inward 

like looking glass you could walk into,

a calendar of the wasted years turns to face the wall. 

The Van Gogh reproductions I gifted father on his birthday

lie in a corner of the room. We had put it off for far too long. 

Once this is over, once we survive this, that is, 

if we do, I'll call the carpenter

first thing in the morning and ask him

to put some nails on the wall; All the places art could sit.

The flower pots outside are patient climbers, I want 

to spread my roots like that indifferent 

to the fluctuations of time, its windy sickle 

now stopping twice, ineffectual calculator,

losing count of days. 

The windows stare out at empty streets 

and the neighbour's kid crooning like an idiot from their building, 

I draw curtains and peek out through a chink, 

like sunlight intruding into my mornings. 

My balcony I give to the birds and trees, 

the one sharing my silence, the other performing 

the oppression of words at my throat. Birds 

don't leave things unsaid. On sultry summer noons like this, 

I remember fairy tales and princesses 

perfectly pleased in towers, walled in since birth, 

unaware of the world outside, all those spaces they could inhabit

beyond the view from the window. I think of worlds 

inside and out and how perfectly content I was

to remain inside before the room became the world and 

the walls walled shut, like full stops, ending 

what is in, like parenthesis, the linings 

of language, as if anything can ever remain 

in barricades, as if the story begins 

or ends where it will have you believe,

the stories sting like bees in my stomach,

all the things 

I must tell.

 

Ahona Das

M.A. Batch of 2020

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