Mandakini Bhattacherya 

Autophagous

In the first summer we looked askance,
eyeing the leisure spread like a feast.
We ignored you, children.
Winter was far away; summer had to be borne.
And we suffered it with pleasures
crafted out of iridescent screens,
making you grow up, watching adults on a screen.
 
In the second summer,
we were bored, blithe, blasé.
We had discovered ways of eternal happiness,
of friendships at a click;
revenge-making, king-making, all became games.
We forgot you, children.
 
In the third summer,
you fell like flies, children.
You found a rope, or a fall, convenient.
You found cruelty, you picked on each other, —
Some caste-or-gender nit-picking enough to slaughter.
We were not around, children.
 
Sometimes you drowned,
sad like Ophelia, quiet,
because we didn’t hold you
tight enough.
Because we did not say,
we value you.
We let you slip away, in our laziness,
on a stormy May afternoon,
because we were too busy to look.
 
In the fourth summer,
we ate our souls.

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Knock for a Loop

The run-up to the run-down
proved to be ecstatic!
The brain was in denial, and
the bonding thought to be mastic —
It was all oh-so-fantastic!
 
The coloured and blurry visions
played marbles
in the mind’s attic.
“I gazed and gazed, but
little thought” - of fatigue!
All oh-so-fantastic!
 
Till the heart grown ‘young’
and caustic
refused to do more gymnastic;
folded and conked-up
under the strain
of grins oh-so-plastic!
 
Fading-in, fading-out —
Oh, the mirror’s grown static -
The mirror’s grown static!
The face throws a wobbly -
But the mirror’s jammed static.

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